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One is a Broadway veteran; the other a debutante. Natalie Venetia Belcon and Isa Antonetti are the stars playing legendary singer Omara Portuondo at different stages of her life in BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB, the new Broadway musical about the Cuban artists who brought the acclaimed Grammy-winning album of 1997 to the world.
With Broadway credits including Matilda (Mrs. Phelps) and Rent (Joanne), Belcon is a Trinitarian-American actress and singer best known for originating the role of former child television star Gary Coleman in the Tony Award-winning Broadway musical Avenue Q. She had already played the Cuban icon knows as “La Novia del Filin” (“The Bride of Feeling”) during the BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB off-Broadway run, receiving the 2024 Lucille Lortel Award for Outstanding Lead Performer in a Musical and a nomination for a Drama Desk Award for the role.
Meanwhile, Antonetti is a “Latinx, indigenous, mixed race LGBTQIA+ actress and singer from the Greater Rochester, New York area,” as stated in the show’s playbill, and is currently completing her BFA in Musical Theatre at Carnegie Mellon University. With credits including Evita (NYCC), Macbeth (CMU), and A Chorus Line (OFC Creations), she recently made her film debut in Gift of Fear, and is excited to make her Broadway debut in BUENA VISTA SOCIAL CLUB — “as it reflects her own experiences growing up performing with her father’s Latin band, Orquesta Antonetti.”
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Buena Vista Social Club was formed in Cuba in 1996, as a project organized by World Circuit executive Nick Gold, produced by American guitarist Ry Cooder and directed by Juan de Marcos González, who named the group after a popular music venue in Havana in the 1940s. To showcase popular styles of the time, such as son, bolero, and danzón, they recruited a dozen veteran musicians, some of whom had been retired for years.
The group’s eponymous debut album was released in September 1997 and quickly became an international sensation. On the Billboard charts, it reached No. 1 on Tropical Albums, where it stayed at the top for 24 weeks and spent a total of 266 weeks on the chart. It also reached No. 1 on Top Latin Albums and World Albums, and spent 19 weeks on the Billboard 200. In 1998, it won the Grammy for Best Tropical Latin Album, and the Billboard Latin Music Award for Tropical/Salsa Album of the Year by a Group. The Buena Vista Social Club album was also voted into the National Recording Registry in 2022 and the Grammy Hall of Fame last year.
With a book by Marco Ramirez, the Saheem Ali-directed Broadway show is inspired by true events, and features a band of international musicians to narrate the legendary story of the artists who brought the original album to life, going back and forth between the mid-90s and the 1950s. The company also features Julio Monge as Compay Segundo, Mel Semé as Ibrahim Ferrer and Jainardo Batista Sterling as Rubén González — with Da’von Moody, Wesley Wray and Leonardo Reyna as their younger versions, respectively. Renesito Avich plays Eliades Ochoa, and Ashley De La Rosa a young Haydee. Also performing are Angélica Beliard, Carlos Falú, Hector Juan Maisonet, Ilda Mason, Marielys Molina, and Sophia Ramos, among others.
Last Tuesday afternoon (March 19), dressed to the nines for the musical’s official Broadway premiere, Belcon and Antonetti sat with Billboard Español to share their experience giving life to one of the most beloved singers of Cuba. (Hours later, Omara Portuondo herself, now 94, would pay the cast a visit at the Gerald Schoenfeld Theater in New York City ahead of opening night. She was not available for press).
What did you know about Buena Vista Social Club before joining this musical?
Natalie Venetia Belcon: I have musicians for parents, and they introduced me to Buena Vista Social Club, the album. I was 26, 27, something like that.
Isa Antonetti: I also have musicians for parents, and they would play the music [with their band] or the music would play it in the background and I would never know what I was listening to, until my dad told me: “You should do some more research on this on this Cuban band that we love to play sometimes.” And I was like, “Okay.” So I heard [the song] “Chan Chan” and I heard a couple of their songs and I was just humming them all over the place. And then they kind of just stayed in my Spotify and I would listen to them once in a while.
In the musical, you speak in English but sing in perfect Spanish. Are you fluent? How did you achieve the accent?
Antonetti: I’m not fluent, but I do speak.
Belcon: My father’s side of the family is Spanish, [but] I don’t speak Spanish. When we moved up to this country, we moved to the South Bronx, which is, you know… [heavily Puerto Rican]. So I am used to hearing it. I just never had to speak it. But I treat languages like I would music — I go off of the sounds and the dialect coach, so I’m good like that, just repeating and recording and putting my earphones in and you know, listening to it all the time is how I learned, anyway.
Antonetti: I always think musicians have the ear. You could give me some sheet music and I could make my way around it, but I learned best by our dialect coach, you know, speaking it and sending us voice memos, making sure I’m pronouncing it the way that is authentic to this show.
Beyond the Spanish, how did you both prepare to play Omara at these two stages in her life?
Belcon: I’m lucky in the sense that the stuff that you see of her is of her older. And so I watched “Adiós” quite a few times and listened to the stuff a lot. I mean, I can’t even help it now, it’s just kind of, you know, on repeat, basically.
How about you, Isa? There’s not so much of Omara from that era.
Antonetti: It’s so funny because I was thinking about it and I remember in the rehearsal room when they had the pictures up, it’s just like one picture of Omara when she was younger. I would do some research, I would look to see if there’s some videos of her when she was younger with like her sister and with her quad. And so I would use that, and I would also talk to [Associate Music Director] David Oquendo and ask what is the essence of someone who’s 19 in Cuba? You know, and I would try and bring that to her as well.
What was the biggest challenge of portraying a vocalist known as “La Novia del Filin” [The Bride of Feeling]?
Belcon: Well, today, it’s going to be [hard] to not pass out when I meet her. I hope my understudy is ready, ’cause I might be in the ER with IV (Laughs). The challenge is, even though this is a fable, to make sure that we are still being respectful and not making up somebody entirely. And to have a semblance of who she is, to have it resemble her as much as possible.
Antonetti: Absolutely. I could just quote what she said. All of it!
But this is your Broadway debut so, for you, what was the biggest challenge?
Antonetti: Besides the genuine general things about Broadway being exhausting through the rehearsals and the previews — you know, that it’s challenging in its own way. I think for the show specifically, it’s keeping making sure the time period stays in your body when you step on stage. I’m playing someone in the 1950s, so that’s different than how I would play someone else. I think the challenging part is remembering when you step on stage that you are a different person and you’re being respectful and you’re bringing life to something. It’s challenging and rewarding and all of the above.
At some points during the musical, your characters meet, creating really emotional moments. Any favorites for you?
Belcon: I think it might be [Ibrahim Ferrer and Portuondo’s duet] “Silencio,” when the younger two are up top on the malecón (pier) and Ibrahim comes in and then I’m having all the memories of things. That and, not necessarily my favorite but I think in my head the most important, which is how it all starts when she — again, it’s a “Do I go left or right?” It’s a crossroads: “Do I make the album or not?” Then she chooses and it’s a butterfly effect; it kind of affects everything and everybody else.
Antonetti: I would say “Chan Chan” — it’s had different iterations since we started rehearsal and I’m so grateful that I get to be a part of that number even longer because it’s so emotionally devastating, but I love the moment and I only get to see it from behind the stage of the malecón. I get to see Natalie come in and Angélica [Beliard] do this beautiful dance move where she transfers the trauma into Natalie. Just remembering it, that moment, I’m telling you, I need like three hours to recoup.
Belcon: I need three drinks! (Laughs)
What did you both learn from Omara Portuondo in this process, as a person and as an artist?
Belcon: I mean, to say that she’s strong is an understatement. There needs to be a better word — maybe it needs to be “I am Omara,” right? You know, she’s been through a lot, just a lot, and came through it all and succeeded. More than succeeded. Just the time period, what was happening [in Cuba], and she not only survived that, she thrived regardless.
Antonetti: As a person, as an artist… She is more than just those words. Whenever I think of her, it’s like what you said, strong is an understatement. She is just this powerful being that can take my breath away.
After months of rehearsals, how does it feel to see the whole show finally come together on Broadway?
Belcon: I had a little bit of a heads-up cause I’ve done it once before [off-Broadway.] I think it is different in the bigger space, definitely, but that’s always a fantastic payoff moment. All the hard work and the not sleeping and all the rest of it, when you see everything fall into place, you know, those moments when you see the younger and the older [characters together], it’s always the payoff. They’re emotional moments. They are.
Antonetti: There are moments where I just have to hold myself back because I am an emotional person. And I was like, “This is a dream and it’s coming true and I have to be grounded in that or I’ll freak out.” It’s like what I told someone else outside: It has been exhausting, but it is worth every inch and ounce of that exhaustion. Absolutely.
Actors Natalie Venetia Belcon and Isa Antonetti on the red carpet as they arrive to the Buena Vista Social Club musical opening night on Broadway on March 19, 2025, in New York City.
Andy Henderson
When Cuban actor Héctor Medina read the script for Los Frikis, he immediately knew he wanted the leading role of Paco. Initially contacted as a sort of consultant for the film, Medina was familiar with the story about a group of punk rockers in early ’90s Cuba who, in search of freedom, deliberately injected themselves with HIV to live in a government-administered rural treatment retreat and create their own utopia.
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“I was born in 1989. It was the year the socialist wall fell and in 1990, what is called in modern Cuban history the Special Period, began, which is a deep energetic, economic food crisis,” explains the actor in an interview with Billboard Español. Additionally, it was forbidden to listen to rock and roll and having long hair could get you arrested, he adds. “So, the Frikis were very marginalized. It’s a story that even in Cuba is very little known.”
Written and directed by American filmmakers Tyler Nilson and Michael Schwartz, Los Frikis, an independent film inspired by true events, arrives this week in theaters in the United States after making the rounds in the festival circuit, where it has received a variety of awards.
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Medina, who left the island about eight years ago and lives in Miami with his wife and two children, not only ended up landing his dream role, but also a credit as a co-producer thanks to his contributions to the film, which was shot in the Dominican Republic (as it could not be done in Cuba).
The movie also stars Eros de la Puente as Gustavo, Paco’s younger brother; and Adria Arjona (daughter of Guatemalan singer-songwriter Ricardo Arjona) as María, the sweet caretaker at the retreat. The cast also includes Luis Alberto García and Jorge Perugorría, among others.
Produced by Academy Award winners Phil Lord and Christopher Miller, Los Frikis received an R rating from the Motion Picture Association of America for language, sexual content, some graphic nudity and drug use. It premieres on Friday, Dec. 20 in New York and Los Angeles, and on Dec. 25 in markets including Atlanta, Boston, Chicago, San Francisco and Miami.
Below, Medina details his rigorous physical and emotional transformation process to bring Paco to life, the role music plays in the film and the reception this work has had so far.
Los Frikis
Courtesy of Wayward/Range
How did this project come to you?
The project came to me through producer Rebecca Karch Tomlinson, who contacted me to ask some questions about the dialogues and some events that happen in the script. It was more or less something like a review. Of course, I read the script and I [was] totally impressed by how two Americans have written a script about Cuba, such a believable story about my country, and how they want[ed] to do it — and also want to do it with Cubans. And of course, I also fell in love with the story and my character, Paco. From there, I said: “I want to be here, and I want to be Paco.”
Did you have to audition for the role?
Well, yes. They told me, “If you want to be Paco, you have to fight like everyone else and do the casting.” I remember that I did the last scene in the movie, and as soon as they saw the scene, they called me and said, “Are you ready? You’re going to be Paco.” From there began a very tough process of character construction and transformation that was truly a most beautiful experience, because Michael and Taylor have a very particular and very strong method of working with the actors and creating this atmosphere, and get to the point that you are not trying to play the character, but you are the character. And that allows you, once you are on set, to feel confident, to be able to improvise, because they also give you that freedom. It is a very substantial work process; there are many scenes in the film that were not in the script.
You completely disappear into the role, to the point that at the beginning of the film I was looking for you, I didn’t recognize you. How was your transformation, physically and emotionally, into this character? I know you lost weight, you have the mohawk, you lose a tooth in a scene…
It was a very intense, rigorous process. From the first day I had to give up everything gluten and sugar; I only had seltzer water as a reward and one meal a day, which was a little bit of chicken and a little bit of spinach. It included heavy training, running and walking more than four or five miles a day. Then came the process of learning to play music. Mike and Taylor are so specific that they knew every detail. For example, at that time in Cuba there were no American electric guitars, there were only Japanese guitars, Russian amplifiers, Russian basses, and the drums were made with what was found, sometimes even drawers, and they had those specific types of instruments sent to us so we [could] learn how to play them. We got to a point where we even started playing our own music and putting lyrics to it and giving concerts, like in the movie.
Music plays a fundamental role in this story, with Paco as the guitarist in his rock band. Did you play before or did you have to learn for the film?
I played acoustic guitar, but I remembered like two or three chords that they taught me in my neighborhood, back in Cuba, when I was a child, so I didn’t remember very well. In other words, working with the guitar was the most difficult for me, because on top of that, I have no musical ear, I admit. What I do have is a rock and roller spirit and being bold. And also this thing [where] I don’t like to give up, I like obstacles and I like to transform and work hard. I like a challenge.
Did you know about the real Frikis story before getting involved in this project?
Yes, I knew vaguely. I was born in 1989. It was the year the socialist wall fell and in 1990, what is called in modern Cuban history the Special Period, began, which is a deep energetic, economic food crisis. There were shortages of all types of products. In addition, there were also prohibitions: listening to rock and roll music was frowned upon, and for having long hair you could be imprisoned. So, the Frikis were very marginalized. It’s a story that even in Cuba is very little known.
I had an uncle who was a rock and roll lover, and when I was a teenager he took me to a place called Pista Rita, where they played exclusively rock and roll. Going to those places with him at 13, 14 years old, I was able to see Nelson, who was like an urban legend that we had in that town, of course with the spiked mohawk, black boots, tattoos — a very transgressive image. And yet, when I got to know him well, I remember that he handed me a cigarette and he had a great sense of protection with all the boys there. In other words, he greatly encouraged that family spirit, not a gang spirit, but music and family spirit. There was nothing illicit or illegal. It was a feeling that united us with a passion for music, for rock and roll.
From what you say, he sounds a lot like Paco, doesn’t he?
Yes. Paco’s character is not specifically based on a real character, but on several, like all the characters in the film. Paco has a lot of Papo La Bala, one of the leaders and singers of the punk rock band Eskoria in Cuba, who has since died; and he has a lot of that from my personal side, having known him [Papo La Bala].
What made you say “this role has to be mine” when you read the script?
First, the transformation I had to undergo. Second, that he was a difficult character and had a lot of energy; I wanted to do something like that, different. And also, perhaps most importantly, that as a Cuban artist I wanted to say many things that Paco also says — and feels. Feeling that almost kamikaze spirit of freedom above all else, I wanted to share that. I think that was what drove me the most.
You’re not only the leading actor, you are also credited as co-producer. What was your role in that regard?
I think what I did the most was contribute. I mean, I wanted this movie to happen so badly, I wanted this dream to come true so much, that without realizing it I began to contribute to the casting, to writing the lyrics of the songs, changing them and a little bit [of] the scenes. I got involved a lot. In fact, I even designed the logo that appears at the beginning, the Lord Miller logo. I have done so many things. And I feel so grateful and so good that I have always done that. Every time I go into a project I give my all, but the truth is that it is the first time that they have recognized me not only for doing my job as an actor. I think it says a lot about the producers and directors of this film. I am very grateful to them.
Now that Los Frikis will reach a wider audience after its festival run, what do you hope people take away from it?
I really don’t expect anything. I have a very nice feeling about this film through the different screenings we have been to. It is a tremendous delight to turn around and see people’s faces. I believe that it is not an educational film or one that has a specific verbal message for people, but rather a management of a bundle of emotions, a journey of various emotions that in the end stirs your soul and leaves you thinking and perhaps doing what I call the movie after the movie. I think that is the greatest achievement of this film. More important than a verbal message, is that of an emotion, and it shows.
Héctor Medina
Carlos Eric Lopez
Juana Bacallao, a renowned Cuban singer and cabaret diva who still performed until recently, has died. She was 98. Bacallao died Saturday (Feb. 24) after spending several days at a hospital in Havana, according to a statement from Cuba’s Ministry of Culture. Officials didn’t say why she was hospitalized. Bacallao was known for her husky […]
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One of Hip-Hop’s most hated figures has received an unexpected honor. A statue of 6ix9ine has been created in Cuba.
As reported by HipHopDX, the “GUMMO” performer is now immortalized in the streets of the communist country. This week, a local artist unveiled a bust of the rapper turned federal informant. The art piece captures all of 6ix9ne’s signature features including his rainbow braids, matching teeth, multiple tattoos and his truck jewelry. In one hand, he’s holding stacks of money over his shoulder and a microphone in the other hand. To add further depth to the instillation, the rainbow colors with the number 69 are also painted throughout the back wall.
Genis M. Osoria Vargas, who created the statue, admits in an Instagram post that the “work is misunderstood” but reveals that it was commissioned by an unknown buyer. The piece is located in Pinar del Río, a city west of the nation’s capital. Thus far, the feedback that Vargas has received from locals has been largely positive with some commenting in Spanish “Good job” and “Your work is beautiful.”
In October, the rapper was arrested in the Dominican Republic for allegedly assaulting some producers. He was granted bail and posted it right away. 6ix9ine was ordered to stay away from the victims via a restraining order prior to leaving the country. He explained his side of the story on social media and thanked the people of Dominican Republic for their love and support.
6ix9ine has yet to comment on the statue. You can see footage of it below.
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The president of Cuba made a special appearance in Harlem to pay homage to Malcolm X and show solidarity with the African diaspora.
On Monday (September 18), Cuban President Miguel Diáz-Canel visited the Malcolm X & Dr. Betty Shabazz Center in Manhattan. He is currently in town for the United Nations General Assembly, which began this week in New York City. The visit was an affirmation of the ties that Cuba has had with the people of Harlem since the late Fidel Castro first visited in September 1960. Castro, not wishing to follow the lead of other world leaders attending the General Assembly, opted to stay at the legendary Hotel Teresa on 125th Street which led him to meeting Malcolm X in person.
In his speech, President Diáz-Canel highlighted how the civil rights icon referenced the Cuban Revolution in several of his speeches. He also spoke glowingly of Malcolm X’s constant activity as a fighter for social justice for Black people in the United States, as well as his connection and involvement with the liberation movements on the African continent. Dr. Ilyasah Shabazz was in attendance, along with former New York City Councilman Charles Barron and other dignitaries.
To further mark the occasion, President Diáz-Canel also presented a commemorative bronze plaque featuring the faces of Fidel Castro and Malcolm X, which will be placed in the Malcolm X and Dr. Betty Shabazz Memorial and Educational Center. The building was formerly the site of the Audubon Ballroom, where Malcolm X was assassinated on February 21, 1965. The building was acquired by Columbia University which developed the center as part of a medical complex.
The Cuban President’s visit begins a busy week, as he is slated to speak before the General Assembly on its opening day Tuesday (September 19th) in addition to being the prime representative of the Group of 77. The G-77 is a coalition of 135 developing nations predominately representing the Global South who’ve joined together to enhance their negotiating capacity within the United Nations. As chair of the G-77, Diáz-Canel is expected to address the General Assembly on its lack of action concerning the climate crisis.
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