One resounds with the rhythm of music of today's Cuba. That city embraces it, allows it to fill its stages. The other seeks to censor anything that smacks of the island. This is the story of Miami Beach, the city flowing with Cuban sounds, and Miami, the city that wants to halt that flow.

The contrasts emerged most dramatically in the ongoing uproar over the booking of the wildly popular Cuban dance band Los Van Van at the James L. Knight Center. When a South Beach promoter announced she had contracted the band to play at the city-owned facility, she unleashed a political firestorm.

Even though the concert has been rescheduled, under threat of lawsuit, the episode brought back the old days, when politicians tripped all over themselves to pander to knee-jerk factions.

Miami Mayor Joe Carollo called Los Van Van ``the official communist band of Fidel Castro.'' Following his lead, the regulars in the peanut gallery hurled out all the old epithets. They actually flung around words like comunistoide  to label the musicians from Cuba and their fans.

It had been awhile since City Hall went on a Commie-baiting rampage. But this overreaction only reflects what people suspect about Miami -- it's stuck in the '80s. Not only have its agenda-setters failed to update their vocabulary, they have failed to keep up with the times.

Had they chosen to join the rest of us in 1999, they might have heard about the Cuban music movement across the MacArthur Causeway. They might have heard about the other wildly popular Cuban bands that have played the Beach in the past few months.

These have been big-name bands. In the past few weeks alone, South Beach audiences have jammed -- hassle free -- to internationally famous groups like NG La Banda and Bamboleo.

Just about every star from Havana's Buena Vista Social Club, a national sensation, has played the Beach. And this very weekend, Manolin, Havana's so-called ``Doctor of Salsa,'' is playing on South Beach.

So jumping all over Los Van Van at this point is like warning your teenage daughter to use birth control -- when her baby is already 2 years old.

Miami Beach got that a long time ago. Some of its folks even joined an unofficial delegation to the island for the Havana Jazz Festival last winter.

``There's an attitude adjustment when you cross the bridge into Miami Beach. Ours is a policy of inclusion vs. exclusion,'' says one member of that unofficial delegation, Raquel Vallejo, who belongs to the Miami Beach Cultural Arts Council.

It took a while for the Beach to get it -- three years ago, the city derailed a controversial concert by veteran Havana entertainer Rosita Fornes -- but it did. Forward-minded folks began to recognize an undeniable phenomenon: the Cuban population had been transformed, dramatically so, by recent migrations.

Each migration has brought a new definition of nostalgia. For those who left in the '90s, nostalgia doesn't necessarily mean Beny More and pre-1960 music. It means Los Van Van. And, contrary to what Miami politicos may believe, Cuban dance music has only one dictator -- El Ritmo. The Rhythm.

I watched a Havana-fresh crowd jam to Paulito FG y Su Elite, a visiting Cuban band, some months ago at a South Beach club. Dancing amid them, in a cloud of his own nostalgia, was New York Yankees pitcher Orlando ``El Duque'' Hernandez.

Across the bridge from that other city, it was a memorable show.