The History of Cuba, vol. 5

by Willis Fletcher Johnson

The Municipal Band of Havana, with some eighty artists, under the direction of Guillermo Tomas, furnishes music, either in Central Park or the Malecon, several evenings each week. It is in attendance also at nearly all official functions, and funerals of prominent men, soldiers, and officers of the Government.

This same band has won at different times the admiration and approval of many audiences in the United States, including that of critical Boston, where concerts were given in Symphony Hall in 1915. It was also heard at New York City’s Tercentenary Celebration during the fall of the same year. Director Tomas is very proud of the medal awarded to his band by the judges of the Buffalo Exposition in 1901.

Many other excellent bands belonging to the Navy, and to different branches of the Army, are noted for their music, and share with the Municipal in entertaining the public during different evenings of the week at the Malecon, and at various parks scattered throughout the City.

The Conservatory of Music located on Galiano Street near Concordia Street has turned out many brilliant artists during its career of half a century or more. Recitals of music are usually held in the National Theatre or in the Salons of the Academy of Arts and Sciences on Cuba Street. In these halls nearly all the celebrated artists of the world have given concerts, and hardly a week passes without entertainments by the best local talent.

Next to music, driving, either in automobiles or open carriages, over the beautiful “Careteras” radiating from the City, furnishes probably the most popular form of diversion in Cuba. Nearly every evening throughout the year, the view of the Malecon where the Prado and the beautiful Gulf Shore Drive meet is a scene of animation not soon to be forgotten.

The circular Glorieta, with its dome-shaped roof, supported on heavy stone columns, shelters some one of the famous National bands while hundreds of people in machines, in carriages, on stone benches and iron seats, enjoy the music and between selections chat about the various topics of the day. From eight until ten, under the shadow of the grim old fortress “la Punta,” and in the blaze of electric lights which line the Prado and the Malecon, this diversion holds the public, including all grades of society, from the highest officials to the humblest clerk, or girl worker in the tobacco factories, who enjoy the benefits of a true democracy, social and political and financial.

Some two miles west of the mouth of the Almandares, a little inlet known as La Playa, fairly well protected from the outer sea, furnishes the nearest bathing beach for the citizens of Havana and visitors from abroad. Since the temperature of the Gulf Stream which sweeps along this part of the northern coast is practically uniform throughout the year, bathing may be indulged in with pleasure both summer and winter. In the latter season, however, owing to cool winds that sometimes blow across the Gulf from the north, only visitors from the United States and tourists take advantage of this sport. The residents of Havana confine their bathing season largely to the strictly summer months from May until November.

The Havana Yacht Club stands just back from the beach, and from its front extends some two hundred feet out into the water a splendid concrete pier, shaded by canvas awnings, and patronized by members of the club and its guests. This club was established during the first Government of Intervention and counts among its members many of the best families of Havana. The interest in yachting has grown rapidly and every year brings with it interesting sloop yacht and motor boat races, held either at the Playa or at Varadero, near Cardenas.

During the bathing season the Marine Band furnishes music from five until seven in the afternoons. This is enjoyed not only by the members of the Yacht Club, but also by crowds who throng the beach for a mile or more on either side.

The finest beach of Cuba, however, is known as the Varadero, located on the sea side of Punta Icaca, a narrow strip of land that projects into the Bay of Cardenas. Here many of the regattas are held during the summer months, when visitors from the capital go to Cardenas to enjoy the twenty mile stretch of outside surf bathing. Bathing places cut out of the coral rocks along the beach of Vedado are also used, especially by the citizens of that locality.