______________________________________________________________________________________________________ 1 © 2011-16 RaceBridges Studio. This lesson plan is part of an initiative for educators called RaceBridges Studio. It is a project that seeks to provide free tools for teachers and students to motivate them to build stronger and more inclusive communities. This transcript may be freely used, reproduced and distributed for educational purposes as long as this copyright information is displayed intact. The transcript included in this unit is copyrighted by Antonio Sacre. Used with permission: www.antoniosacre.com

MUSIC TO DREAM OF CUBA BY

By: Storyteller Antonio Sacre

www.AntonioSacre.com

Link to YouTube Video:

https://youtu.be/ziEh6WA0Y9Q

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Note : The following is a transcription of a spoken story performance and

may not reflect textbook perfect English. It will guide you as you listen (or read) along.

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My father used to have a special alarm clock and I feel old describing it to you. It had a little magic button

called the sleep button that when you pressed it, it would play music for 29 minutes and then automatically

shut off. It was endlessly fascinating for me, for some reason. To watch him hit that button, to hear the music play and to wait until it turned off by itself. Now the problem is you had to wait the whole 29 minutes until

the magic worked its trick. But that didn’t matter to me because in the meantime, I could watch the numbers

on the clock actually change. And I mean, actually change. There were each little minute and every hour in that

clock with its own little plastic tab that would flip forward or fold forward. Time marching forward with a little

audible click, illuminated by a little light right above it. It was fascinating to watch the time moving and hear the

music until the music would cut out.

Now my father would listen to WJBR - just beautiful music. It was a classical music station that my father and

mother could agree on. My father’s Cuban from Cuba and my mother’s family’s from Ireland. And so they had

lots of differences but they love to listen to classical music just before sleep. And my dad would hit that button

and listen to that beautiful music and he would be transported into another place. And he would say, “Mi hijo,

can you hear that? Can you listen to that?” And I would listen and I would hear the music. He said, “Mi hijo,

like the piccolo over the strings, you know, it reminds me of thunder coming over the hills in Cuba. Can you

hear it, Mi hijo?” Mi hijo means my son, my boy. I never could hear what he listened to but I loved to see him

transported to that place where thunder rolled over the hills of his land. The only time he talked about Cuba

was when we listened to classical music. Other times the memories of leaving that beautiful, tropical island

were too hard for him to share. And so he rarely talked about it.

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When I was a little bit older, about seven years old, he gave me that clock radio because he got a new one.

One that had a timer that you could set from 0 to 59 minutes and it didn’t have little plastic tabs that counted

time. It had green numbers that floated in space like little green fireflies. You couldn’t hear the time moving

forward if you weren’t looking at it. But I got the old alarm clock. And I said, “Pa, what do I listen to?” He said,

“Mi hijo, lo que quieras.” (Whatever you want.) And so I would. I’d hit the little sleep button, I listened to 29

minutes of music at a time, every station on the dial. I listened to pop and rock and talk. I listened to baseball

broadcasts from faraway places that I’d never heard of. But the station that drew my attention the most was

that classical music station. The one that transported my dad back to Cuba. And even though I could never

hear what it was that he heard in that music, I pretended like I could. Pretending like I was one of the adults

and listening to secret things unlocked by that music.

WJBR doesn’t place classical music anymore in my hometown. But where I live now in Los Angeles, there’s

one station left that plays music all the time. And when I listen to the music now, I can hear the piccolo over

the strings and the drums in the distance and it reminds me of the canoe trip I took with my wife a few years

ago. And whenever I hear music like that it reminds me of egrets landing in shallow water. And now I have a

young son and maybe someday we’ll look at the radio, or whatever music listening device we’ll have then, and

I’ll say, “Mi hijo, can you hear that? That piccolo over the strings? Can you hear it like egrets landing in shallow

water? Can you hear the strength of your ancestors coming from Cuba, an island, to make a new life in this

place? No, when you get older you will.”