At dawn I found him looking for some little bird in the leafy trees of the Pernik Hotel, like every lover of nature and the sound of birds.
And although the guest at the XXXIV National Festival of Cuban Radio did not find the birds, I started a pleasant and learning dialogue with Dr. Felipe Vera Martinez, president of the National Association of Broadcasting in Yucatan, Merida, Mexico.
Doctor, is this your first visit or did you know the city of Holguin, what do you think of it?
-It is a great emotion to visit this city of Holguin. I wanted to come here years ago and for several reasons it had not been possible. We went to the Loma de la Cruz. It is a wonderful spectacle, it is beautiful to see the city illuminated”.
“I also appreciated the sones that musicians were playing. That boy, Norberto Leyva, is a good artist, I congratulated him”, he said very happy.
What is your opinion about the Cuban Radio Festival?
-The Festival is one of the most important ones in the country. It is one of the incentives to support the new generations of radio broadcasters, as they say here to scriptwriters, producers, announcers and directors…”
“In Radio you can’t improvise. You have to be very well trained and know what is the topic to be addressed to make it reach the people,” he said.
Today there is talk of Internet Radio, the Radio of the future, in your opinion, can Radio disappear?
-The Radio of the future has been around for a long time. They say it is going to die and I say no. I own Veramar FM Radio, dedicated to Mexican music. And I tell you Radio is not going to die, because it doesn’t need the Internet,” he said smilingly.
“The A.M. frequency is disappearing “… it was not a good sound. Radio is being transformed and in the new platforms that came out when the Covid-19 pandemic hit.
Now a station from Holguín can be heard all over the world and in any ranch. I click on a balloon in Google and the stations in Cuba appear, and I can listen to them from my ranch in Mérida”.
Do you consider that young people are addicted to the Internet?
-And yes, there is a phenomenon that we are left without Internet for four hours and they look like crazy ants, I say that we have become idiotized. Young people are hypnotized, they look like zombies with their phones in the streets and they don’t look at anyone, because they are there”.
You are a broadcaster, scriptwriter, program director with national and international recognition, what are the conditions to be an excellent broadcaster?
-We don’t use big voices anymore. The main thing is to have good breathing, to have good diction, voice modulation and pronunciation, which must be very precise and clear. Without these four elements, it is difficult to be called a speaker, because there are people who speak very fast, you can’t understand anything. And you can feel that they are gasping for air.
I tell my kids. When you open your mouth you have to connect with your brain. What am I going to tell them, to whom, who is my audience, how am I going to tell them”.
I believe that the person who speaks in the media, the one who does journalism, speech, must be in constant improvement and sensitization. It is not the same to give the news that someone died or won an award, because we can damage the sensitivity of that person,” he stressed.
“Take care of the vocabulary, you must have culture. And do not use high-flown phrases. You have to respect the audience, the listener,” he said from a prolific 51-year career in radio and television in Mexico.
With a smile, a sincere embrace to the people of Holguin, Cuba and the great news that he will be distinguished in the next few days with the National Award of the Locution, in recognition of his entire artistic career in Mexico, ended a deep dialogue of learning.
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