Smokin' Cubans defy their age

By PHILIP ENGLISH

Some of Cuba's best-known exports are in New Zealand, and like rum, sugar and cigars they are finding themselves popular.

Billed as the best Cuba has to offer in music and dance, the performers are getting old but all have links to the nation's best-known groups, starting with the Buena Vista Social Club.

Reinaldo Creagh will turn 86 on Friday when the show, The Bar at Buena Vista, plays in New Plymouth.

Originally from supergroup Vieja Trova Santiaguera, Creagh was a driver by day and singer by night for 37 years before Cuban music was discovered by the world.

The show has just toured Australia, where it premiered in Perth about five weeks ago.

From New Zealand, where several shows have sold out, the 17 musicians, singers and dancers, plus a manager, head back to Cuba before beginning a seven-week tour of Germany in September.

Creagh said in Auckland yesterday that the cold was not bothering the performers too much.

"It has been cold in terms of the weather but not in terms of the people," the octogenarian known for his show-stopping performances said while drawing on a cigar at the Havana Gallery in Great North Rd.

The show invokes the Buena Vista Social Club through the sensual music of its legendary musicians. An original Buena Vista bartender helps to tell the story.

At the gallery, a half-dozen show members perform for the media. Coffee cups, rubbed hands and the sides of an ancient upright piano become instruments of percussion.

A television interviewer asks what they like about New Zealand.

"That girl in the corner," says drummer Odelkis Reve.