P.M

El necio, written by Silvio Rodríguez in 1991, emerged during the early years of the Special Period as a declaration of persistence: not to repent, not to renounce what one has stood for, to continue even in the face of the possibility that what one believes in might disappear. For years, the song was part of official events and marches in Cuba. It also became part of a generational memory: I grew up hearing it in those spaces, associated with a particular way of narrating and understanding the country.

Decades later, El necio reappears in the voice of Chocolate MC. This is not simply a shift in musical genre. A song charged with political and generational significance moves into reparto, one of the most prominent forms of urban music in contemporary Cuba. Chocolate appropriates it, alters fragments of the lyrics, and sets it in circulation from a different place, among a generation that is also my own.

The work situates this displacement within Cuban nightlife. What I first heard at official events and marches returns through the party. On the floor lies a disco ball that once spun in Havana’s nightlife. The music keeps playing; the ball no longer turns.