Castro Didn’t Steal The Songs

A six-year legal battle over the ownership of a dozen songs made famous by the Buena Vista Social Club has ended without a clear winner.

After hearing evidence in London’s High Court and taking statements in Havana, Judge John Lindsay said he was unwilling to declare anyone the rightful owner of the songs because he feared setting a precedent when so many more songs were potentially at stake.

The litigation was considered a critical test case that could have affected up to 600 of Cuba’s most cherished oldies.

The biggest loser in this extraordinary copyright wrangle looks to be U.S. publisher Peer International Corporation, which had sought a ruling saying that it owned the rights to songs dating back to the 1930s.

It claimed its catalog had been unlawfully taken over by the Cuban government after Fidel Castro came to power in 1959.

Justice Lindsay declined to give such a ruling, pointing out that there was a long period when Peer had no contact with the composers, but had tried to re-establish it after the success of the Buena Vista Social Club album in the 1990s.

Peer Music signed up scores of Cuban artists in the 1930s and ’40s, but the Cuban government canceled the contracts after Castro took power.

For years, the U.S. embargo prevented the music company from paying royalties, and the money sat in bank accounts.

Editora Musical de Cuba (EMC), described by Judge Lindsay as an “emanation” of the Cuban state, said Peer was trying to salvage royalties from songs that had never made a penny for their authors.

EMC argued it had legally assigned the copyright to Termidor Music Publishers, based in Britain and Germany.

In view of the amount of material involved and the likelihood of it being the subject of further legal battles, Judge Lindsay also declined to rule in favor of Termidor and the Cuban government.

He dismissed the claims of Peter Prescott QC, representing Termidor, who had said contracts involving the 600 songs were all invalid because they were “cunningly contrived,” allowing the publishers to get away with paying virtually nothing.

Prescott argued that Peer misled the musicians by getting them to sign unfair deals for “a few pesos and a bottle of rum.” But Judge Lindsay said the contracts were standard for the time, and once the U.S. embargo against Cuba was amended, the company paid US$2.5 million in royalties.

The first phase of the trial determined that Cuba could not unilaterally cancel Peer’s contracts.

Clearly establishing who owns the songs could be difficult, as some of the paperwork and much of the evidence looks to be less than reliable.

According to a court report in the Miami Herald, one witness testified that her signature on a Peer contract must have been copied because it said she was composer Manuel Corona’s widow – even though that would have made her 120 years old. She is actually his niece.

Others said they signed papers they did not read, and one witness said he was a composer’s only heir when in fact there were 10.

Peer’s Cuban representative fled the country in 2002, when she was accused of collaborating with an American company against the interests of the island’s government.

— John Gammon