Biography
Ernesto Juan Castellanos is a Cuban freelance author, translator, educator, journalist, producer, filmmaker, and researcher who currently lives and works in Miami. Before moving to Florida in late 2011, Ernesto was a fixture in the Havana cultural scene, serving as the Cuban producer for concerts by the Manic Street Preachers, Asian Dub Foundation, Audioslave, Simply Red, and Kool & the Gang, in addition to production work with Peter Frampton, Mick Fleetwood, Gladys Knight, Bonnie Raitt and other US artists who traveled to Cuba as part of the Music Bridges songwriting workshop in 1999.
In the mid 1990s, Ernesto Juan led an effort to rehabilitate The Beatles in Cuba, following a 1960s ban on their music by the Fidel Castro communist government. He was the main organizer of a series of Beatles conventions held in Cuba between 1996 and 1999, which culminated in December 2000 with the dedication of a life-size bronze statue of John Lennon in Havana’s John Lennon Park during a ceremony led...