Echoes of My Barrio

In August 2025, in Camagüey, Cuba, I recorded the everyday sounds of my neighborhood, where street vendors selling bread, medicines, or household goods create a living soundtrack. The calls of the vendors—pregoneros—are musical, rhythmic, compelling: “¡Tamales!” “¡Medicamentos!” “¡Aguacates!”

Echoes of My Barrio will portray the sensory memories of my city and the reality of today’s Cuba. The unique calls of the pregoneros are humble voices born from necessity; but they also reveal something deeper: the resilience of a people who endure. What seems to relate only to subsistence can transform into a greater cry: a call for freedom, for respect, for dignity. The score alternates between dancers expressing their own pregones and moments when only recorded echoes remain, fading suddenly into silence. The music is composed from the pregoneros’ cries, street ambience, and fragments of Cuban music, creating a landscape where survival becomes rhythm, and necessity becomes dance.

My dream is to see a Cuba where these pregones no longer arise out of scarcity, but rise as hymns of hope and plenty. A free Cuba, where every voice can be heard without fear, where life itself becomes the greatest pregón.