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Title: The Freshness is Gone.
Review: I grew up hearing and dancing with the Van Van rhythm. When I was a student, old hits such as "El Mechon" made my forced labor in the cane fields a little more endurable. When we returned sweaty, hungry, and tired from Castro's fields, the foul plate of chicharos (pea soup) tasted a little better by listening to Van Van. The naivete of "Te digo ahorita" was extraordinary. That was 30 years ago. Today their creativity is like a shadow of a great past. Van Van's lyrics nowadays are just mumbo jumbo of the worst kind. Even Cubans cannot understand what Van Van is singing. Most people attribute that phenomenon to the bad recording quality of the CD, but the truth is that the grace and imagination of the Van Van orchestra is gone. Nostalgic rafter that I am, I went to one of their concerts and saw these middle age men acting like clowns on stage and singing melodies that are poor parodies of a sound that once was inspired. I felt pity for them.
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