She would pay the price for such boldness. And he also shows us how he viewed Maggie: her defenselessness, a totally free spirit, which they both knew was not well seen at that time. The poet also gives indications of the nature of that relationship, which feels fierce and controversial, even addictive (“nos hicimos jugando todo el mal necesario”). The circumstances, ubiquity and dedicated inspiration for “Blues for Maggie” are evident from the title itself the song-poem by Pablo Milanés as leitmotiv -”Ya ves, / y yo sigo pensando en ti” (You see, / I’m still thinking of you) - and references to a context that is too obvious to be ignored 4. Photo: Cinema magazineĬortázar and Maggie coincided in the same spaces. As her friend the poet Nancy Morejón states, this also “… legitimately inserts Maggie in the field of the so-called Protest Song.” 1 Maggie Prior singing at the Red Room at the Hotel Capri. Prior sang the monumental “Ya ves” by Pablo Milanés, who was already under the influence of feeling and moving toward a new song movement. Texts by Aimé Césaire and Frantz Fanon were heard through her voice she joined the struggle to free Angela Davis, singing “Por Ángela,” by Tania Castellanos. And although he toured the entire country and the most unexpected corners of the capital, the memorable stops in Cortázar’s Cuban repertoire would be the Casa de las Américas, the Hotel Nacional and El Gato Tuerto-anyone looking for him in Havana would find him there in the evenings.ĭuring the convulsive sixties, Maggie Prior was always at the vanguard of her times: she sang in the first concerts of what would become Nueva Trova music, while bringing the best socially-minded songs to Havana’s bohemian spaces: she sang her version of Silvio Rodríguez’s haunting “Terezin” Italian Luigi Nono’s “Creare due, tre, multi Vietnam” and Marta Valdés’ “Hagamos la canción,” all with the same anti-war message. When Cortázar arrived in Havana, Maggie was already singing in clubs where jazz musicians jammed -La Gruta, Habana 1900, Descarga Club- but his favorite place was El Gato Tuerto, opened less than a year earlier by Felito Ayón in the splendid mansion overlooking the sea from P Street, in El Vedado. Her voice devoured those immortal standards that have been vital in reconstructing the soundtrack of her nights: “But Not for Me,” “Stormy Weather,” “Tenderly,” “Night and Day.” She also played Cuban son and guaracha classics in the freer jazz style, and her scat covers of “Cachita” and “Mama Inés” were memorable. But this was not the most important thing about her: against all odds and all the obstacles in Cuba that demonized the genre that was so closely associated with the United States, Maggie continued to sing jazz music and was, in fact, the only woman who did so. Maggie was educated, informed with a proverbial elegance, her style was of European inspiration. 1992, Havana) was a slender black woman with a halo of sensual refinement that distinguished her as an habituée at the best intellectual and diplomatic circles in the city. When Cortázar arrived in Havana for the first time, in 1961, Maggie Prior (b. They knew what could happen when -according to another poet, the late Roberto Fernández Retamar- “in those Havana nights, making his way among journalists, Julio Cortázar managed to drag his phosphorescent self to El Gato Tuerto.” 2 From left to right: Rolo Martínez, Maggie Prior and Bobby Carcassés in Cienfuegos. It wouldn’t be difficult for them to agree with such a statement, and they’d be able to identify contexts and motivations: the presence of Maggie Prior in the life of Julio Cortázar crystallized in the first half of that decade, in what was an intense and important relationship for both, according to mutual friends who were witnesses or enthusiastic accomplices to their relationship in Havana. Those who were part of certain intellectual circles in Havana in the sixties, recall and share those experiences. “Blues for Maggie” evokes Havana, a black Cuban woman, a jazz singer. 1 The posthumous publication includes the aforementioned poem, among thirteen unpublished poems by the author of Rayuela (Hopscotch). Rummaging through the drawers of an old dresser, she found several manuscripts, including the poem “Blues for Maggie.” These texts and verses became part of a copious unpublished legacy which, after arduous editing together with Carles Álvarez -a student of Cortázar’s work- would see the light of day as the volume Papeles inesperados. One day in 2006, Aurora Bernárdez, editor and executor of the Argentine author and poet Julio Cortázar, returned to the apartment they had shared in Paris.
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