2023-12-02 02:46:18
This December 1st, Announcer’s Day is celebrated in Cuba, an event established since 1954 in compliance with one of the agreements of the meeting of the National College of Announcers (CNL), at the proposal of its members, in memory of the young and active colleague of the union, Jorge Luis Nieto García, who died early.
The commemoration became certain after the signing of a decree that stated that it would take place, starting that same year, on this date.
It is worth noting that seven years earlier, in the city of Camagüey, on January 25 and 26, 1947, the first meeting of the CNL was held, from which its board of directors emerged with the presence of professionals of this profession from all over the nation. , who, among other agreements, approved proposing to the authorities the Announcer Retirement Law, managing the creation of the National School of Announcers, founding the Announcer’s House in Havana and in the rest of the provinces – then six -, promoting the Radio Law and establish Announcer’s Day.
This last aspect was proposed by Félix Travieso (founder of Radio Reloj) who was a member of the CNL, and was then seconded with statements of support from several of those present, including Jorge Luis Nieto, who then worked at RHC Cadena Azul. The idea was approved unanimously and the steps for this purpose began.
Towards the end of November 1953, a victim of Hodgkin’s disease – cancer of the lymphatic system – and at only 33 years of age, Nieto died in the capital after leaving a long record of service on national radio since, at At the age of 12, he started as an announcer at the CMJP station, in the city of Morón, then part of the province of Camagüey. In 1938 he settled in Havana.
When the RHC Cadena Azul dissolved, he began to work in the CMQ. In his brief years of existence, he stood out for being an excellent announcer and entertainer, with a diction and timbre that soon won the sympathy of radio listeners. He was a fervent defender of the union’s unity and its demands.
Between July 27 and 30, 1952, Mexico City hosted the First Inter-American Congress of Broadcasters, organized by the directors of the CNL and the National Association of Broadcasters of the Aztec country. Ten years ago, Cuba proposed celebrating, every July 27, the Day of the Hispanic American Announcer to remember that meeting of word professionals.
Island communication phenomenon
The commemoration of Announcer’s Day in Cuba has its origins in the moment when Luis Casas Romero made his first radio broadcast in Havana, on August 22, 1922. The radio craze became a significant phenomenon among the island society that witnessed the prompt proliferation of numerous plants throughout the national geography, and along with them the beginning of a new profession: the announcer; which is why on October 20, 1935, the first Association of Radio Broadcasters in Cuba was established in Camagüey, from which the CNL emerged shortly after.
With solid organizational bases, the radio workers in charge of transmitting with their voices, through the ether, dissimilar sensations and emotions, fought for unity in the analysis of the aspects inherent to their work in each plant.
The most skilled ones were capable of educating, mobilizing and guiding radio listeners who also identified with their styles and their unique way of expressing themselves in the news and other spaces, including cultural and sports spaces. The image of that person who persuaded his interlocutors through the device that captured radio signals was imagined with an infinite number of figures associated with his voices.
A group of renowned radio announcers and managers, such as Goar Mestre, Ramón L. Bengochea, López del Rincón, Roberto García Serra, Eduardo Héctor Alonso and Ibrahim Urbino, participated in the first Inter-American Congress of Radio Broadcasters held in 1945 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and attended by delegates from all over Latin America. Among the objectives of that meeting was to unify the continent’s radio stations through the creation of the Inter-American Association of Broadcasters.
A rebellious voice from the Sierra Maestra
On February 24, 1959, Radio Rebelde went on the air from the Sierra Maestra, a station of the Revolution identified with the voice of the unforgettable announcer Violeta del Casal Díaz, a symbol of the female announcer in Cuba and an excellent actress. Since August 1958, she began to be persecuted for her revolutionary activities, which is why she left the scene until after participating in the April 9 Strike and suffering arrest in Havana, she left for the Sierra Maestra and register in history for national independence. Her voice joined, from the insurrectionary height, that of the revolutionaries Ricardo Martínez, Orestes Valera, Guillermo Pérez and Jorge Enrique Mendoza.
In the silence of the home, most Cubans waited for Violeta’s powerful voice with elevated nuances. Its memorable “Here, Radio Rebelde”came from the mountain to inform the people of the latest events of the Rebel Army.
A woman of admirable beauty, at the beginning of the 1950s she was considered, along with Marisabel Sáenz and Rosa Felipe, as one of the three best actresses of Cuban theater. She graduated from the University of Havana with a Doctorate in Philosophy and Letters and Pedagogy, respectively; She also completed studies at the Academy of Dramatic Art. In the 60s of the last century she was director of Radio Rebelde, a task that she alternated with her performances on radio and television.
Creation of the ICRT
After the triumph of the Cuban Revolution, between the final days of 1961 and the beginning of 1962, the Revolutionary Orientation Commission, the first of the Integrated Revolutionary Organizations—later to become the United Party of the Socialist Revolution—institutionalized the radio and television networks. existing in the country through the signing of Law 1030 that validated the creation of the Cuban Institute of Radio Broadcasting, on May 24, 1962.
Thirteen years later, this institution was renamed the Cuban Institute of Radio and Television (ICRT), in order to guarantee that both media would offer programming that had high political, ideological, social, ethical and aesthetic virtues at the service of knowledge. , culture, recreation and defense of the most sacred values and interests of the nation and all its citizens, aimed at deepening the highest patriotic and internationalist ideals of our people in the fight for their independence, sovereignty and national identity and his love for building socialism taking into account the needs and desires of the public.
Announcers throughout Cuba
Currently, Cuba’s broadcasting network is made up of more than 800 transmitters located in 363 technical centers throughout the country. Of these, several have been installed to improve coverage of North, Central and South America, as well as the Caribbean area, which also increased their efficiency and reliability.
Cuban Radio has grown to such a point that it currently has 99 stations, including national, provincial, municipal and local stations, in addition to the international Radio Havana Cuba, which cover 98 percent of the national territory.
Numerous speakers work in each of these plants, among them, young people who have been enriched by the experience accumulated over several years by other consecrated people, in order to identify these creators of spoken expression as a great group whose practice is characterized by their professional quality, in addition to its total consecration and improvement.
Recognized figures
Among the most outstanding announcers in Cuba are the singular and charismatic Germán Pinelli and Consuelito Vidal, as well as César Arredondo, Moraima Ruiz, Antonio Pera Quintana and Manolo Ortega. Likewise, on this first of December, it is worth evoking other greats of the locution such as Franco Carbon, Josefa Bracero, Julio Acanda, Julio Alberto Casanova, Laritza Ulloa, Margaret Balboa, Marialina Grau, Marianita Morejon, Marino Luzardo, Miguel Navarro, Nancy Gonzalez , Obelia White, Orlando Castellanos, Rachel Mayedo, Rosalie Arnaez, and Martha Yabor Ballbe.
Recognized and loved by the Cuban people, too, are the figures and voices of Agnes Becerra, Angel Miguel Alea, Rafael Serrano, Teresita Segarra, Yolanda Pujols, Fela Jar, Jose Antonio Naples, Fernando Guardado, Eva Rodriguez, Georgina Almanza, Irma Shelton , Magdiel Perez, Marta Velazco, Nela del Rosario, Talia Gonzalez, Eddy Martin, Jose (Pepe) Mejias, Eduardo Rosillo, Dinorah del Real, Cepero Brito, Barbara Sanchez Novoa, Maurice Lomonte, Asenneh Rodriguez, Alden Knight, Floiran Arencibia, Isabel Fernandez, Irela Bravo, Maria Victoria Gil (Viki), Pedro Martinez Arcos, Maximo Velazquez and Rodovaldo Hernandez, and many others that would make this list interminable. Some of them already deceased and others who have followed the path of success undertaken by those.
Special mention deserves Hugo Rojas Galindo, from CMKW (today Radio Mambí, in Santiago de Cuba), martyr of broadcasting, murdered by Batista’s hitmen.
Subjective obstacles
Of course, in the field of speech in our country there are difficulties, most of them subjective, derived from the insufficient training of some of these professionals who need to work more and better in their practice as a communicator, for which it is not enough to exercise a powerful and striking voice, but to have a vast general culture that allows them to deal with dissimilar topics, especially in modernity when through the Internet people have knowledge of the most varied issues related to culture, science, sports… To It is vitally important for the announcer to be credible, cultured and informed.
The Cuban Chair of Voiceover (CCL) has among its objectives to resolve these problems addressed, on a recurring basis, in its scientific events, an opportunity in which they also analyze issues related to the ethics of the speaker and the dangers associated with their vocal health, oral narration , technologies, training and comprehensive development.
Need to strongly strengthen the work of announcers
Guillermo Pavón, vice president of the ICRT, during the Seventh National Workshop “The art of elocution” and the Fifth Pedagogical Meeting on Training and Improvement of Announcers, emphasized that “the ICRT has to strongly strengthen the work of Cuban announcers and offer them more opportunities professionals”.
During the meeting, which took place between November 29 and December 1, 2018 in the Aula Magna of the Máximo Gómez Báez University, in Ciego de Ávila, Pavón pointed out that his organization “still has many debts to settle with these professionals of the communication; and it is necessary to perfect, together with the academy, the way of training Cuban announcers.
“The life of this professional is one of the most exciting, and that is why we must ensure that the announcer becomes more and more a true communicator. Not much time can pass without a group of speakers meeting to discuss their problems. And we have to return to regular meetings with them, renew work strategies, and never forget the founding essences of Cuban speech,” said Pavón.
Global significance
Despite the deficiencies, Cuban voiceover is a paradigm in Latin America, due to its professional quality that has transcended the world through many of the stations that have international reach, in addition to the prestigious short waves of Radio Havana Cuba.
Speaking, one of the professions that most influences the cultural, educational, ideological and informative formation of Cubans, has the magic of persuasion, the power to encourage feelings and emotions through mastery of the word that has become a filigree for our ears. .
These lines are worth recognizing and congratulating these dedicated communication workers.
Taken from the newspaper Workers
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