HAVANA, (Reuters) – The Rolling Stones will perform a free outdoor concert in Havana on March 25, the band announced yesterday, a milestone event in a country where the communist government once banned the group’s music as an “ideological deviation.”
The band added the Concert for Amity show – likely to be the biggest rock concert ever staged in Cuba – to a Latin American tour that had been due to end on March 17 in Mexico City.
The performance will come three days after U.S. President Barack Obama is due to conclude a visit to Cuba, the first by an American president since 1928. Obama and Cuban President Raul Castro announced in December 2014 they would seek to normalize relations after more than half a century of Cold War animosity.
The concert, which will be filmed, is set to take place on fields surrounding Havana’s Ciudad Deportiva, a 26-hectare (64-acre) sports complex. It will mark the first open-air concert in Cuba by a British rock band, the group said.