R. Was there a defining moment that arrived that you knew that your destiny was as a composer?

L. No--necessity, because I could not use the time more effectively than I'm using it now if I had to continue with the piano. I would have to devote hours, practicing and being sure that my technique is impeccable, even though technically I can sit down and play. When I was becoming a pianist, my training was eight hours playing daily. It's something that my fingers haven't forgotten. And I have played. When was the last concert that I did, when I played the Shostakovich Piano Concerto and, from the piano, conducted the orchestra? If I know that I'm going to do that, two or three months before I have to go back and put hours into the piano to do a performance the way I demand a performance now. It's another consciousness, another maturity.

One thing I could tell you is that becoming a composer--not only the aid of those that guide you from the very beginning--one of the things that I always did is study other composers. I feel that I have studied with so many people. I definitely have studied a lot with Stravinsky. For that, Mahler; for that, even Lutoslawski. Now I study a lot of the pieces of Ligeti, Boulez, Messiaen. I study everybody, and that's what I love about conducting because that's why I study. When I study the most is when I'm conducting something because I'm a total detective, and that's when you see technique a lot. I see the technique, I see ways of coloring, I see personalities, shapes, graphics, architecture, space, culture. For me, it's not that people overtly said: "I am going to explore the Spanish culture in this score." Or "I'm nationalistic because I was born in Spain."

What kind of nationality has George Crumb? He was born in America, and he was influenced by Asia and Spain. What kind of nationality is Bizet, if he is able to write Carmen? What is the nationality of the music that is so different from Satie? The term "nationalist"--first of all, I have a lot of trouble with labels. I'm totally anti-label. It's based on training because everybody has called me so many things. What can I tell you? It's a question of identity. What is my identity to other people? How do they see me? Do they see me? Do they hear me? Do they watch me? Every time I read a different article, I have a different category. Now, the latest thing is Afro-Cuban. The first time that I heard that term, I was announced to an audience by a colleague of mine. I was totally surprised that this colleague of mine chose to say something like that. What is this all about?

Cuban music is comprised of many influences--Amerindians, has to do with the indigenous people that were there by the time Mr. Christopher Columbus arrived. Then the entire Spanish conquest and all the Spanish people that come to Cuba from different regions of Spain. You can also say all the Spanish people sound like [singing rhythmically]. No. You have different regional situations, with different rhythmical emphasis, with different melodic contours. You have in the north of Spain all this Moorish type of influence; you can connect that to some part of Egypt. All of that comes to Cuba. Then to Cuba come all these incredible--I'm telling you--the forced labor that is imported from Africa. All of these different people come from different regions of Africa, too, with their different inflections--rhythmical inflections also.

R. --of language or of music?

L. Language, music, traditions. And this is happening already with the Spanish people, remember. So therefore they're coming with all of these, too. This melange, this minestrone begins. Then you have the importation of all this migration that comes from the east part of the hemisphere. I'm talking about the Caribbean, with the migrations of the Haitians that come to Cuba because they're fleeing their own revolutions. These Haitians have been dominated or conquered or whatever you want to call it by the French, so they're coming with a French influence into Cuba.

The last migration that arrived in Cuba at the turn of the century is the Chinese, who are coming with all of these aspects of the five-tone scale. That is the Cuban music. You can find all of that in the music. It's amazing. So therefore, what I feel right now is that in one of the aspects of promotional, commercial appeal to audiences, in order to make it exciting, labels emerge. However, the importance of the contributions of the Africans into the music of Cuba that has to do with the polyrhythmia have been always explored.

Ligeti is studying that polyrhythmia. Berio has studied the polyrhythmia. Steve Reich has studied that polyrhythmia, coming out of a central aspect of Africa--the music of the Pygmies. If you listen to that music, you say: "Oh, my dear!"

R. Don't you feel that rhythm has a stronger cultural association than melody?

L. No, I don't think so. I think they both are there. Otherwise, what are you going to do if we're going to talk about rhythm and cultural associations, what do you do with a waltz? What do you do with a tango? What do you do with the fact that, yes, we use the bandoneon or the accordion or all of these instruments in the tango, which are not from Argentina? They were imported from Austria. What do you do with the Hindus when they need that drone in there? That also comes from another importation.

In other words, we, as cultural people--for me, culture are solutions to life. A group of people start molding what we call culture. But what is the difference between rap and country music? It's a culture in a specific region that molds something, and that something might be actually put together by a lot of different influences that come from way, way, way back.

Therefore, the Cuban phenomenon is that that is Cuban music. But in Cuba they don't separate Afro-Cuban. If you have Afro-Cuban, what is the name of the other one?

R. Cuba-Cuba?

L. What do you do with the bolero? Where does the habañera fit? Tell me, when Bizet put the habañera in the Carmen opera, did he call it Afro-Cuban? It has the same connotation of, let's say--there's a very big difference between Ravel's Bolero and what we think a bolero is nowadays. Where is that exoticism that is in the Bolero? Where is that coming from? Where did he hear it? Is that French? We know it's not French.

In other words, I think there is an incredible confusion, an incredible need for creating a product for the people to digest a product and say: "Ooh, it's exotic." Could you imagine? The Cubans, and you sway your hips, and babaloo. Come on! It's a very interesting situation that as a person that happened to be born there and have dealt with this from the point of view of studying the music and trying to study this the same way that I've studied Schoenberg--

R. Did you go back to study the music? It was something that you were born with, and it was in your ears, but is it something that you find yourself going back to study the folk music or to actually find patterns?

L. Now I have studied it because it supports some of my findings in the music of Beethoven or the music of Bach.

R. In its contrast or in its similarities?

L. It's not about contrast. I'm saying that, from the point of view of Bach, he emerges with his own sounds and his own rhythms; out of also applying dances of his period or dances that are already dead; they are not danced anymore by the time he's writing. So he's using his own popular flavor of folk, of his own culture, in his music. We have distilled the whole thing in such a way that all of a sudden, his music comes from heaven. We don't want to hear those traces in there.

Same thing in the music of Beethoven. There's dance in his music. There's the dance of his period. It's the connotation of whichever harmonic environment he wants to create in there that is a traditional harmonic environment, plus his personality, plus the rhythms that are the rhythms that he knows how to command because that's what he is, that's what he speaks, that's how he moves.

R. And patterns that he knows.

L. Exactly. That is his music. But we don't talk about the folk element or the cultural element in the music of Beethoven or the music of Brahms. Come on!

All of these different things that we are talking about now, at the end of our century, is something that to me is very interesting. Do you know why? Because these are issues that I have been forced to look at because of all those labels and all those things that I have been accused with and try to defend my own identity by establishing: This is what I want to do, this is the way I want to write, and the rest will be history someday. That's the only thing.

But I don't think that whatever I do is all exotic, or that exotic as someone might think it is. It depends. I speak with an accent, so my music might have an accent, which might not be understood by many people. And if the accent has to happen to be roots or folklore or whatever you want to call it at some point, fine. That's okay.

That's how I define this type of situation. I think that labels--going back to the Afro-Cuban thing--is selling short what the whole thing is about.