A National Humor Award that everyone applauds and no one discusses
14ymedio, Jorge Fernández Era, Havana, 6 April 2025 — For those of us who, in one way or another, participated in the young humor movement that emerged in Cuba in the 1980s, the Matanzas group La Seña del Humor represented that high point we always strived to reach, no matter if we actually got there or at least were close. Those older people we saw in the members of La Seña were our paradigm, proof that, among us, cultured figures could be popular without the need for banal mockery or the costumbrismo — the traditional heritage — that looked to the past and shunned the present.
Few forget that festival they organized in Matanzas, which, based on camping, helped steer our work with the vitality provided by confronting multiple forms of humor, almost all of them questioning a reality that seemed unquestionable. From that event at the Teatro Sauto, I remember seeing Pepe Pelayo and his group live, at their peak, and forever recording two unique moments: the monologue of the guy cutting his nails, delivered by Pelayo himself and Aramís Quintero, and the epic son performance of the aptly named cultured music performed by these cultured Matanzas natives.
He played a unique character: that of a musician who barely participated in the presentation, and who therefore spent his time reading a newspaper.
Moisés Rodríguez, one of the few remaining members of the legendary group in Cuba, played a unique character: a musician who barely participated in the performance, spending his time reading a newspaper. I mentioned this to the editor of La Seña a few days ago, and here is his reply:
“The act that closed our shows was Roberto Roberto and his group Bakán. That’s where Moisés el Roberto came from when he worked with his friend Lázaro Hernández, since they were both named Roberto. It was a typical orchestra with two guitars, bass, keyboard, violin, drums-timpani, conga drum, harpsichord and güiro, and minor percussion. We all worked together because Aramís interviewed Roberto Roberto (that was me), but Moisés was left out, as he was incapable of playing a musical instrument. So I had the idea for him to sit to the side of the group playing a huge band bass drum. Since he only did this once or twice in each act—when a gag was over or there was a change of rhythm—Moisés had nothing to do. He himself had the idea of opening a newspaper and starting to read. He would take out a banana and eat it, or start brushing his teeth with a toothbrush, or put on deodorant… The group played classic songs, for example, Fur Elise by Beethoven, and it changed to Cuban son, or Ravel’s Bolero, which changed to a typical bolero, or a Brahms-merengue… and so on.”
I had written to the director of La Seña upon learning that Moisés Rodríguez had been awarded the 2025 National Humor Award for compelling reasons given by the jury: “For the significance of his work as part of the iconic group La Seña del Humor de Matanzas, for many the genesis of an entire movement in the 1980s later called ’new type of humor,’ and considering that La Seña marks a before and after in group work on the Cuban humor scene, defined by many as tropical Les Luthiers for the quality and versatility of their work, being a national reference for an entire generation of stage comedians in the 1980s and early 1990s, based on his work as a soloist, his presence on radio and television as an art curator, writer, and pedagogue.”
“For many, he is also the literature professor who brought his wisdom mixed with humor to the classroom, with his unforgettable lectures, which were short humorous scenes.”
Ulises Rodríguez Febles, a playwright and researcher from Matanzas, spoke in the White Room of Matanzas about Moisés and what he represented and represents for the national comedy scene, about “his body and gesture work, the work of his voice: playing with the phrase to support the joke, and sharply bringing his stories to laughter, from the deepest part of their essence: irony, absurdity, Creole cheekiness, playfulness, unexpected twists, the relationship between the body—the hands, the fingers, the hair…—and the delivery of the text. A sure shot to the spectator, to unleash laughter.”
He also said: “For many, he is also the literature professor who brought his wisdom mixed with humor to the classroom, with his unforgettable classes, which were short humorous sketches. He is the art critic, the curator, and the painter of abstract works, with whom he seems to be another Moses without ceasing to be one; the heir to a Martí and Christian tradition that is in his family roots, of which he is proud and which continues to beat within him. When we pay tribute to Moisés Rodríguez Cabrera, we are paying tribute to La Seña del Humor de Matanzas, the group that transformed Cuban stage humor and offered it a contemporary perspective, the group that became a symbol of the city and offered Cuban humor a different aesthetic connotation, a fusion of Creole and universal legitimacy, which served and serves as a reference in the history of contemporary humor, embracing tradition and modernity, the Cuban humorous heritage, and the confluences of our identity in music, literature, the visual, and the stage. And in that synthesis of intellect and grace, there is Moses.”
Pelayo, from Chile, congratulated him with a video. “We have been friends, partners, accomplices, henchmen, allies, colleagues, teammates, brothers for almost sixty years. I am one of the people alive, outside of your immediate family, who knows and loves you the most, and also, like you, I dedicated my life to humor. Therefore, I dare to affirm, with great certainty, that you were born a comedian, grew up a comedian, developed as a comedian, and reached the pinnacle of acting. You are the man with the greatest comedic talent I have ever known, and I have known too much. This award was a debt that Cuba owed you, that Cuban culture owed you, and not to mention Matanzas. In addition to being an excellent comedian, you are one of the most noble, sincere, humble, and helpful people in the entire universe.”
To me, who did not want to miss that moment, and was able to embrace him like no one else, among so many colleagues from the eighties who accompanied him in the evening, it occurs to me to think that Moisés, in that anthological issue with the newspaper, was simply reading that one day a tribute would be paid to his modesty and to the wisdom of those who accompanied him in that Matanzas monument that was and is La Seña.
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