Heart and Soul

This young singer brought up in Miami since the age of five sings the most authentic Cuban salsa music.

Of course the pornographc lesbian Ellen Degenerate has her claws on her and invited her on her show. Nonetheless the Havana Girl shows herself to be thoroughly heterosexual despite the Ellen Charm™.

I know. I had a flair for salsa dancing. During my Mexico years, I befriended a group of people who liked to frequent a small salsa joint, Bar Leon, in the city's Centro Historico (actually not a very safe district).

A dorm mate at the University of Connecticut from Puerto Rico taught me some basic steps and I practiced them in my cramped room with latino music from a cassette I had borrowed playing on my compact player. Even she was impressed by my results.

At Bar Leon, I would drag whatever partner I could find in my group who was naive enough, or curious enough, to go to the dance floor with me and I would dance as the GUIDE, something unheard of in Latino culture - the woman never GUIDES for the love of God!

Some young man either from the audience or from the floor would ask my clumsy partner to step aside and he would gently nudge me in the directions he would like me to go. He was the guide.

People thought I was some gringo Cuban (or from Vera Cruz). Never the African I was. Although in the my later encounters with deeply religious Catholic rural Mexicans, they thought Ethiopia was not "African" but rather the land by the Red Sea with Mosesian associations. "Vengo del pais por el Mar Rojo" I would dramatize my origins. One time, when a farmer knew I was coming back in the area (word gets around in those hilly villages), he came along to see who this person was. I don't think he was disappointed. But I brought things back to earth by asking him if any senora in his village could make me one of the embroidered tops typical of the region. He told me to come back in a couple of weeks. By then, I had left the region and was renegotiating my future - to stay on with my program or to start new frontiers. Of course I chose the latter.

Lyrcs to:
Havana, Oh na-na
Havana, ooh na-na
Half of my heart is in Havana, ooh-na-na
He took me back to East Atlanta, na-na-na
Oh, but my heart is in Havana (ay)
There's somethin' 'bout his manners
Havana, ooh na-na

He didn't walk up with that "how you doin'?"
(When he came in the room)
He said there's a lot of girls I can do with
(But I can't without you)
I knew him forever in a minute
(That summer night in June)
And papa says he got malo in him
He got me feelin' like

I knew it when I met him
I loved him when I left him
Got me feelin' like
Ooh-ooh-ooh, and then I had to tell him
I had to go, oh na-na-na-na-na

Havana, ooh na-na
Half of my heart is in Havana, ooh-na-na
He took me back to East Atlanta, na-na-na
Oh, but my heart is in Havana
My heart is in Havana
Havana, ooh na-na

Havana, ooh na-na
Half of my heart is in Havana, ooh-na-na
He took me back to East Atlanta, na-na-na
Oh, but my heart is in Havana
My heart is in Havana
Havana, ooh na-na

Take me back to my Havana