Las Vegas calls Havana. And the message will have arrived loud and clear, because at the Latin Grammys 2021, celebrated in the capital of entertainment in Nevada in Las Vegas, the award for the song of the year went to “Patria y Vida”, a song that has been sung for weeks in the roads from protest to the Castro regime. The song is the result of a crowded collaboration: that between the reggaeton duo Gente de Zona, Yotuel, former member of the rap group Orishas, the singer-songwriter Descemer Bueno and two Cuban rappers, Maykel Osorbo and El Funky, who are part of the dissident artistic collective .
The song is a hip hop that tastes of defiance even from the title, because “Patria y Vida” is intentionally the answer to the regime mantra “Patria o Muerte”, which has filled Cuban walls since the Castro revolution of 1959. “Patria y Vida” it tells of ideological intolerance, food shortages and the exodus of young Cubans who do not see a future in their land.
Alexander Delgado, Descemer Bueno, Yotuel, El Funky, Yadam Gonzalez, Randy Malcom and Beatriz Luengo presented themselves to sing it on the Las Vegas stage. All dressed in white, the symbolic color of the protest. “This is for my country, for freedom of expression and for that of Cubans”, the words of singer Descemer Bueno after receiving the trophy. Yotuel instead dedicated the victory to Maykel Osorbo, already arrested at the beginning of the year and unable to attend the ceremony.