No show in Bayamo

Yesterday we travelled from Holguin to Bayamo. It was only a short ride and so we had some time to relax before we went to the venue. When we got there we could hardly believe what we saw: the stage was enourmos and about one and a half meters high and in front of the stage was a huge square with almost the size of a football field! I guess they like it big in Cuba...right next to the venue there was some kind of street food festival with a lot of locals hanging out and there also was a pretty cool Cuban band playing traditional music. So of course that got our first attention. Meanwhile the local audio crew was preparing all the gear for the show. Soon we got word that there seemed to be a problem with the electricity. I wasn't to much worried at first but it turned out to be a more serious issue. Apparently there are limited contingents of electricity for events and there seemed to be not enough left for all the bands to play. A lot of phone calls were made by the brutal fest staff and the mood got kinda tense. But finally it looked like the show was about to happen. We just had to wait for the official electricity tech to sort things out. A lot of kids were already hanging out in front of the stage and were waiting patiently but anxiously for the show to start. Around midnight the power could finally be switched on and the first band prepared for a quick soundcheck. But it was not kent to be...pretty much when they were about to hit the first note it started to rain. It only rained for like five minutes but it rained heavily! Because the stage was not covered all we could do was to get the backline out of the rain as quick as possible. After the rain stopped it quickly became clear that there would not be any show that night. There was to much water on the stage and dangerously close to the electricity sources. All the bands especially all the kids were really bummed out about this fact. We went into the crowd to hand out some records at least and it was really sad to see the disapointment in tbe kids' eyes. Besides the Brutal Fest there is pretty much no alternative live music in Bayamo which means that the kids have been longing for this event for half a year! It was really sad but there was nothing we could have done...
Let's hope that we'll be more lucky in Santiago de Cuba tonight.

By the way...it turned out to be quite an epic night after all...including a lot of horse taxi riding, snakes and the local CSI branch trying to solve the case of a stolen mobile phone...