CAMAGÜEY.- Candita Batista, the Cuban Black Vedette, would turn 103 years old today. Adelante Digital remembers her, with her wide smile and humility, through this interview published in October 2010. She passed away on April 1^st 2016, but she remains in the memories of her birth home Camagüey.

 An aged tea with Candita

To the house of Candita Batista I arrived with chills all over my body for one of those academic exercises that move your life around. I was supposed to discover the soul of the diva using the rudiments of a few weeks in the university, as a student of one of the careers that almost everybody wants and find beautiful, Journalism. Like in a soup-opera, I knocked on the door number two on Cristo Street feeling like fleeing.

 It is not every day that you set an interview with the “vedette” that toured half the world and shared the stage with Lola Flores, Charles Aznavour, Josephine Baker, Nat King Cole, Rosita Fornés, Ernesto Lecuona, Celina González, Bola de Nieve… Maybe for over thinking about that I was blank while going through the questions in my mind.

 She opened with her smile. Her image displayed height and immensity. The white in the eyes was an almost perfect contrast with the ebony body. She had long past the age of eighty and not a wrinkle showed on her face, thanks to a simple secret, the care of washing it with fresh water before going to bed. Three or four keys were hanging on her neck.

 The living room is furnished without luxuries, only some wooden rocking chairs, some chairs and a lot of certificates. She has an image of José Martí, the photo of Ernesto Guevara by Korda, and others telling her unrevealed story about the privations as a youth when the home incomes could not afford to pay the university studies for her, although her dad decided to pawn, if necessary, for her artistic education. The girl Cándida Alicia Batista Batista had the gift. “I was born with music”, says.

 Candita debuted in 1936 in the Victory Society and was the first woman in Camagüey to sing with an band.

Then she increased her fame with the feeling and when coming back from Mexico, without overlooking Havana, she brought with her the nickname The Queen of the Afro-Cuban Music.

 Now she is looking in a little metal box, those that say on the lid “rescue a little of yourself”, for some tea bags mingled with earrings, a brooch without diamonds and old papers. A little embarrassed she says: “that’s how we artists live”.

 From my seat I can see the little yard with a cement floor and ceiling of creeper plants. A band is tuning guitars, heating the drums and waving maracas. They are the “Mokekeré”, players of her band. With them, she makes us feel Cuba among sons and guarachas, new or old, defended abroad and in the famous corner, where she performed with Filo Torres. There she sang for the first time “Angelitos negros (Black little angels)” in 1983, in the inauguration of the gig.

 She is back on the conversation: “The people has given me all of those awards”. She looks at the walls where her titles and distinctions of “Distinguished and Illustrious Daughter of the province” are hanging. She tells how the children from different schools sing for her on her birthday and the homage of the neighbors in every Culture Week. “The Cuban Black Vedette is how you have wanted to call me”, continues.

 Her image speaks. On the street she is seen with a big high bun and a turban. That is how she has looked since the decade of the fifties because of an advice that she received in France about using a style of her own. She is quiet sometimes, maybe thinking over her years. Then she says: “I think to say farewell to the art joyfully, rest of the exhausting life and the stage”. But not even she can believe that because she replies with the noble and flirty smile. In the yard, they are waiting for her to rehearse.

 The invitation still stands to return on any day and tour around the stages of Europe, America and Africa with the grace of Candita, to laugh at her witticism, have a tea and say farewell like eight years ago with a good bolero, by José Luis Pena, “Tremendo corazón (Tremendous Heart)”. Tremendous, Candita.

 Translated by Elianna Díaz Mendieta