The Rolling Stones to Play Free Concert in Cuba

Getty Images
Getty Images
Daniel Nussbaum

The Rolling Stones will play a free concert in Havana, Cuba on March 25, becoming the first-ever British rock band to play an open-air concert in the island country.

The free concert will be held at Havana’s 15,000-seat Ciudad Deportiva de la Habana, where the Cuban national volleyball team plays, according to an announcement on the band’s website.

“We have performed in many special places during our long career but this show in Havana is going to be a landmark event for us, and, we hope, for all our friends in Cuba too,” the band said in a statement.

The Stones will visit Cuba just four days after President Obama becomes the first sitting president to visit the country in 88 years. The concert had reportedly been “in the planning stages for several months.”

The announcement comes as the band prepares to kick off a South American tour, dubbed the “America Latina Olé Tour,” on Wednesday in Porto Alegre, Brazil. The Havana concert will serve as the last stop on the tour and will be filmed with the title “Concert for Amity.”

Additionally, the band is heading up a “musician to musician initiative” that will see it partner with a number of musical equipment supplier sponsors, including the Gibson Foundation, Gretsch and Pearl, to deliver instruments and equipment to Cuban musicians.

Entertainers have flocked to Cuba in the months since the Obama administration restored diplomatic relations with the country in July. Conan O’Brien visited the country to shoot a special episode of his late-night TV show, and several upcoming cable shows will be shot there. A number of airlines, including American Airlines, have begun operating charter flights to Cuba from Los Angeles and Miami.

 

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