By Kamila Del Grito
There was a little more than an hour left before the sun would begin to kneel before the night. Sunday afternoons are always cooler and more even-tempered, I told myself as I walked through the streets of central Havana. My plan was simple: I would go in search of good music for El Grito. The idea felt exciting — maybe I would manage to capture that troubadour sound that captivates both long-time residents and first-time visitors to Havana.
At the entrance of Parque de las Palomas in Old Havana, a middle-aged man with his guitar caught my attention. I walked toward him. He told me his name was Luis, though everyone knew him as Luisito. I told him about El Grito, and he happily agreed to the interview and to let me record him playing a couple of songs.
He played two of his own compositions — songs whose lyrics spoke of love, and whose melody, though simple and without elaborate arrangements, carried that unmistakable essence of Cuban music. And so, between chords and boleros, he began telling me his story.
He said that although he was born in Las Tunas, for the past forty years he has wandered through the tourist areas of Havana every day with his faithful friend, the guitar. He is a romantic, a lover of boleros and traditional Cuban music, and the songs he is most passionate about are those by the composer Isolina Carrillo.
But what struck me immediately was how unusual his first song, Para Sembrar Amor, truly was. This is surprisingly ambitious for a Havana street troubadour: it isn’t a love song but a social-environmental lament, almost apocalyptic in tone. It feels like Nueva Trova meets street poetry — flashes of Silvio Rodríguez or Pablo Milanés, but more raw, more improvised.
The song revolves around a sharp contrast: the world falling apart — heat, drought, trembling earth, volcanic eruptions, “imperial wars” — alongside a yearning to “wash away envy and resentment” and “sow love.” This is rare for street performers, who usually lean toward boleros or familiar classics that draw tourists. Luisito’s piece reveals personal philosophy, anxiety about the planet, and a kind of spiritual desire for renewal.
His performance matched its intensity. The delivery rose toward a passionate, almost angry crescendo that overwhelmed our recorder — the microphone distorted under the force of his voice. But the distortion almost suited the song’s urgency, as if even our equipment couldn’t stay neutral in the face of what he was expressing.
Wanting to understand more, I asked him how he composes.
Luisito, with a clear smile and deep humility, told me that inspiration can arrive at any hour, though his favourite time is dawn. Just as Havana’s streets and his guitar are his accomplices by day, the stars and his notebook are his accomplices at night — the hour when his music is born.
Music, he said, is a family inheritance. Filled with memories, he told me how he began singing and doing harmonies at twelve. His uncle taught him to play the guitar — or rather, he learned by watching the fretboard carefully and memorising the chords as his uncle played. He remembered borrowing a guitar from his grandmother, on the condition that he not break it, and practising day after day until he finally managed his first chord.
His second song, Dos Corazones, arrived like a calm after the storm — the contrast felt deliberate, almost theatrical. Where Para Sembrar Amor was fiery and urgent, this one was soft and tender. The recording quality suddenly behaved better; his voice was smooth, the guitar warm. A classic bolero-son scene unfolded: two names drawn in the sand, waves threatening to erase them, and a repeated plea not to wipe them away.
It revealed another side of him — romantic, melodic, rooted in the Cuban tradition that tourists and locals both recognise instantly.
The life of the street troubadour is difficult, Luisito told me. Many people don’t see it as formal work, though for him it is truly his profession. In his forty years as a street musician, he feels that the work they do to preserve Cuban music in Havana’s streets — the calls, the rhythms, that indigenous sound — often goes unrecognised, even though it forms part of the city’s identity.
I said goodbye to Luisito and watched him walk away. Another day, another audience — the music moving along with him as naturally as breath.
El Grito 