Quinteto Rebelde

The now elderly musicians from the ``Quinteto Rebelde'' (Rebel Quintet) -- a band that played on Castro's clandestine ``Radio Rebelde'' (''Rebel Radio'') -- offer one of the liveliest first-hand accounts of the Sierra Maestra war. The group accompanied the rebels in the mountains, writing special songs to satirize the enemy like ``Go away, monkey!'' and others to extoll Castro, Argentine-born guerrilla Ernesto ``Che'' Guevara and the rest of the guerrillas like ``Let's protect Fidel'', ``I'm a Fidelista'' or ``Respect 'Che' Guevara''. ``We encouraged the rebels and demoralized Batista's army ... creating allegoric songs offending the tyrant's soldiers,'' said singer and guitar player Alejandro Medina Munoz, who is now in his sixties. Those songs, and other Radio Rebelde news bulletins and propaganda, played a crucial part in the conflict, as the station was heard across Cuba and as far away as Venezuela and Central America due to its high position on the mountains. Hidden in a tunnel, the Radio Rebelde equipment was sometimes taken out for use in battle, with music and slogans blaring out as the rebels attacked the Batista soldiers. ``Imagine what it's like during combat to hear music come back at you as you fire shots?'' Medina said. ``Many of them, when we took them prisoner, said they couldn't tell where they were, at home, in a party or whatever!'' Medina, one of 10 children of a peasant farmer in the Sierra, and four other members, have revived the Quinteto Rebelde to play for tourists at a small hotel in the village of Santo Domingo.