My FIrst Year in London

Omar Puente : Violinist, arrived in 1997 from Cuba

Omar I saw my future wife Debbie at a gig I was playing in Singapore and thought, 'I want that.' She had a gorgeous, huge, massive bottom. She had come to interview me that day for a music magazine and was all dressed up for the gig. It was great at the very beginning because my English and her Spanish were zero, so we couldn't fight. We could only say, 'I love you,' because we didn't know how to say, 'I hate you.'

She had to go back to England for tests and phoned me one day from there, crying, and saying she had MS. I said, 'Everything will be OK. We'll live in England, it's your own country, your culture.'

All I heard on the flight from Heathrow to Leeds was, 'I'm sorry, excuse me, do you want a cup of tea, please, I'm sorry, are you all right?' Debbie used to say the same kind of thing and I thought it was just her, but I realised it was all the English. I was thinking. 'What am I going to do here, it's crazy?' The first thing Debbie asked me when I got to the house was. 'Are you all right?' and of course I wasn't all right. It was freezing cold, I had no friends, no family, a girlfriend in a wheelchair, and there wasn't very much work for Latin violinists in Bradford.

The main thing was I had to play, but I had hardly any connections. I got some invitations to sit in on gigs, which means you play one or two numbers for no money. I used to drive 600 miles just to go and sit in. My weeks were spent going to London, sitting in. playing, going back to Bradford. I had a sore bottom from sitting in the car, but I couldn't afford not to. I once got a gig where they wanted me to play reggae. I kept telling them, 'I'm not Jamaican,' but they said, You're black, aren't you? Play reggae or you don't get paid'. So I got on the phone to Debbie. screaming, 'Help me!' and she typed out all the Bob Marley lyrics and faxed them to me. I ended up singing 'Buffalo Soldier' all night.

At the end of the first year, though, we got together a band with all the immigrants, called Raices Cubanas, and Kirsty MacColl volunteered to front us, because she wanted to support Cuba. I had never heard of her. But she was brilliant. I had to sleep in the car when I came down to London, but she gave me the key to her house so I could stay in the spare room any time I wanted. Staying in Kirsty's spare room wasn't a bad way to end my first year in freezing Britain.

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My FIrst Year in London

Omar Puente : Violinist, arrived in 1997 from Cuba

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