Cuban Culture Regains Its Cool In U.S. Suddenly, The Island Nation’s Music, Cigars And Food Are Hot

Henry and Barbara Jordan of Cleveland rifle through antique Cuban postcards at South Beach’s Ba-balu, boutique of Cuban Chic, a place that sells cans of La Lechonera black beans like they’re cultural jewels.

After a long browse, the Jordans pick up a couple of cans of beans, some postcards of Old Havana in its heyday, a T-shirt with Cuba’s red-white-and-blue flag emblazoned on the front.

They have come to Miami in search of Cuba. Not that they’re Cuban. They don’t even know anybody Cuban. Still, they’re smitten.

“We love Cuban music and Cuban culture,” says Barbara Jordan, 31, a bookkeeper for a Cleveland law firm. “There’s so much of it in the news and on the radio and in the movies these days - you know, Andy Garcia and Gloria Estefan and everybody. Last year when we were in New York, we went to this place named Victor’s, where we discovered Cuban food. Now we can’t get enough.”

More than 40 years after Cuba sparked as the hotbed of international high life, mainstream America and other parts of the world are rediscovering its culture. “Cuban” is reclaiming its cool.

It’s about Marisa Tomei dancing the rumba in “The Perez Family” and Sandra Bernhard singing to the memory of the ferocious La Lupe on her last CD.

It’s about Cuban pianist Gonzalo Rubalcaba blowing away this year’s Grammy audience with his performance and the Cuban film “Strawberry and Chocolate” nabbing an Oscar nomination.

It’s about the cigar craze (cigar smuggling from the island is reportedly up), and restaurants elevating Cuban food to stylish cuisine.

It’s even about major law firms, banks and corporations paying close attention to Cuba and getting positioned for the inevitable land rush, should Castro fall.

A California designer of hip streetwear has even come up with a grunge guayabera - gray gabardine with the classic pockets and embroidery for $60. It’s a big seller among teens and 20somethings nationwide.

Third Rail calls it the Chips & Salsa shirt.

“No, I had no idea chips and salsa were not Cuban, but then again, I had no idea the shirt was Cuban,” says Third Rail spokeswoman Leah Jones. “I just know the shirt is selling very well.”

AT&T tapped Jon Secada to sing its true voice on national TV, Cachao stopped traffic in Paris while strolling down the street earlier this year, and Gloria Estefan records are making a killing in Holland. Albita is striking poses for Newsweek, Elle and a stack of other glossy magazines.

In Havana, the stately Hotel Nacional is basking in the international spotlight again as a glam spot for jet-setters.

In Little Havana, standing-roomonly crowds gather to hear old Cuban music at the new Cafe Nostalgia.

The same is true at the 6-month-old Ron y Son club in Madrid, and the new “Basilon del Jueves” (Thursday Cuban Jam) night at La Belle Epoque private club in New York.

“I have students from NYU calling all the time asking if we give Cuban dancing lessons,” says Lauren Bass, owner of Belle Epoque in Greenwich Village. “There’s something that’s kind of hip about Cuban culture right now. I’m not sure what it is, but it is.”

Nobody is more taken by the culture than Indian-born Mira Nair, director of “The Perez Family,” who visited Miami and Havana to lovingly research the culture and the people to make her movie.

“Cuba was always chic,” Nair said from New York. “Havana was the Paris of Latin America in the 1940s and ‘50s.

“So it would make sense that Cuban culture would be fashionable again. It has a big power. In spite of America discovering it long ago, it has always remained itself.

“There is such a ferocity of passion. … There is nothing else quite like it.”

Cuban culture is growing more popular as Hispanic culture in general becomes more visible in the United States, says Gustavo Perez Firmat, professor of Spanish at Duke University in Durham, N.C., and author of the yet-to-be-released book “Next Year in Cuba” (Doubleday, $21.95).

“Cuban culture has always been a part of American culture, but it takes a few talented individuals like Gloria Estefan and (television producer) Nely Galan who all happen to come along at the same time for the whole thing to gel,” says Perez Firmat, whose book draws on his own coming of age as a Cuban-American.

“To some extent it has to do with the ‘90s being the decade of Hispanic culture in the U.S. For example, we have seen a great explosion of Latino authors, Cuban and otherwise.”

The same is true for Latin artists.

Andrea Meza, owner of Meza Fine Arts gallery in Coral Gables, Fla., says that lately buyers are especially interested in local Cuban artists.

“I have never seen a people as impassioned as the Cubans,” said the Colombian-born Meza. “They are so full of contradictions. They are so dichotomized.

“They can believe in this religion and that at the same time and still carry a rabbit’s foot just in case. It is extremely appealing and sometimes nerve-racking.

“It creates a great tension that is very attractive when it manifests itself artistically.”

Galan, the Los Angeles television producer, says she plans to seize on the rising popularity of Cuban culture with two projects.

She recently acquired the rights to Cristina Garcia Bell’s book, “Dreaming in Cuban,” and plans to make it into a feature film, and she is creating a sitcom about a “Cuban Mary Tyler Moore” to pitch to English-language networks.

“Cachao plays in L.A., and the house comes down,” says Galan, a Cuban-American. “There are a lot of Cuban things coming together and reaching a point of critical mass in our popular culture.

“African-Americans have done a great job in the last 20 years of making white America think what they do is cool. And I think Cubans are beginning to do the same thing.”