By Angus MacSwan
MIAMI, Feb 22 (Reuters) - This year's Grammy Awards offer an intriguing choice in a Latin music category between a Cuban singer who fled her homeland and found fame in the United States, and a renowned American guitarist who traveled to Cuba to create a jewel of a recording.
Albita Rodriguez has been described as a Cuban Lili Marlene. With her cropped peroxide hair and black designer outfits, she is the epitome of a modern diva, mixing the island's rich musical traditions with pop and jazz, and wowing the crowd at her regular shows at Miami's Yuca restaurant.
Ry Cooder is a highly respected guitarist who has played sessions for the Rolling Stones and other rockers, crafted memorable soundtracks such as the eerie "Paris, Texas'' theme, and explored musical styles from Hawaii to Mali.
In March 1996, Cooder gathered several generations of Cuban musicians in a Havana studio for what he would call "the greatest musical experience of my life.''
The resulting "Buena Vista Social Club'' and Albita's "Una Mujer Como Yo'' (A Woman Like Me) have both been nominated for best Tropical Latin Performance. The Afro-Cuban All-Stars' "A Toda Cuba le Gusta,'' (All Cuba Likes It), which also emerged from Cooder's Havana sessions, is nominated as well.
The awards ceremony occurs in New York on Wednesday and there will be a certain poignancy whoever wins.
Cooder's project recalls the days before Cuba's 1959 revolution and a U.S. embargo, when Havana was a playground for U.S. high-rollers, but there was also a lively exchange between jazz musicians on the island and in the United States.
Cooder assembled musicians who could recall those times, such as 89-year-old singer Compay Segundo and 77-year-old pianist Ruben Gonzalez, at the state-owned Egrem studios to delve into the wealth of Spanish and African-rooted Cuban traditional music such as "son.''
Gonzalez, who recorded with the legendary Arsenio Rodriguez half a century ago, had not played a piano for years as his own had fallen apart in the decrepit Havana of the 1990s. Since playing on "Buena Vista Social Club,'' he has recorded his own album and played dates in Europe, including Ronnie Scott's jazz club in London.
Cooder is heading to Cuba again soon to explore the regional styles of eastern Santiago de Cuba.
"It's not a modern economy in Cuba. It's not a modern way of life. They are not part of the modern world and so the music reflects that,'' he said in February's FI magazine.
"There's no corporate bombardment of everybody. It's not bought and paid for. These guys...they play all the time, they go to each other's houses. If they get a job, that's good.''
Some can play in Europe, where they are revered, he said, "because they have this connection to the culture, to what Cuba really is. They are it.''
For Albita, the reality of Cuba under Communist rule was different. Five years ago, while on tour in Mexico, she and her band defected by walking across the border bridge over the Rio Grande and into El Paso, Texas.
"For me, it was the longest bridge in the world,'' she told Reuters at her Miami home. "I didn't come to the United States to find fame and fortune. I came to find space,'' she said.
The 35-year-old was already a star in Cuba. From age 19 she regularly appeared on a television show playing songs rooted in the peasant "guajira'' folk music her parents taught her.
She had recorded an album that sold well and was allowed to travel overseas -- although under Cuba's system that meant handing a chunk of earnings to the government.
"You can't avoid that from the moment you have popular success in Cuba, you have to support the government and become a political personality. You have to play the game or break with them,'' she said.
After defecting, she made her way to Miami, the exile capital, where word of mouth spread about her incendiary shows at a Little Havana restaurant. Latin pop superstar and fellow Cuban native Gloria Estefan and her husband Emilio took her under their wing and she has hardly looked back since.
She sang at Madonna's birthday party, performed for President Bill Clinton and his wife Hillary, and been photographed for Vogue magazine.
"Una Mujer Como Yo,'' the second album for which she has received a Grammy nomination, is a mix of Cuban and other Latin styles set to a thumping modern beat.
"It's fun, it's commercial, most important it's danceable,'' she said.
She pulled a copy of Cooder's "Buena Vista Social Club'' from her CD shelves and said she loved it.
"I support anything that helps expand the knowledge of Cuban music in the world,'' she said. REUTERS
11:20 02-22-98