Irish Times Preachers' concert helps convert Castro to rock >From Brian Boyd, in Havana Fidel Castro led the standing ovation at the end of a rare rock music gig in Cuba last Saturday night when Welsh band The Manic Street Preachers played in Havana's Karl Marx Theatre. Castro was so impressed by the band's performance that he invited them to a private dinner the following day. The Cuban leader's enthusiastic response to the show is being interpreted as a softening of his attitude to rock music, which he has denounced in the past. Well known for their Marxist sentiments, the band received an ecstatic response for their song Baby Elian, written about the Elian Gonzalez controversy. "It was the most wonderful night of our career," lead singer James Dean Bradfield told The Irish Times after the show. "We met Fidel Castro backstage before the gig but we had no idea if he would like the concert or not, so to be invited to dinner in his place is a real surprise." Tickets for the sold-out show in the 6,000-seater theatre cost 25 pesos (about £20) and the audience included two of Cuba's sporting heroes, the boxer Felix Savon and the athlete Alberto Juantarino. At a press conference the day before the show, the band's lyric writer and bass player, Nicky Wire, was asked by a Cuban journalist if their decision to play in Havana would damage their US sales. He replied "I hope so." The Manic Street Preachers decided to premiere the songs from their new album, Know Your Enemy, in Cuba as "a gesture of solidarity with the Cuban people", according to James Dean Bradfield. Other politically charged songs they played on the night included Paul Robeson, a tribute to the black US singer, who was a communist, and Freedom of Speech Won't Feed My Children, a song about poverty in post-communist countries. The Manic Street Preachers have enjoyed considerable chart success over the last five years with their brand of Indie rock music and strident political sloganeering. Although their records are not available in Cuba, radio stations here had been playing their songs incessantly in the build-up to Saturday's concert.
