Some people march to protest their government. Gorki Luis Aguila Carrasco, the lead singer of a Cuban punk rock group called Porno para Ricardo ("Porn for Ricardo"), vents his discontent by gyrating at a microphone, clutching an electric guitar and spewing out some of the most off-color, ear-splitting lyrics around.

Amid the string of expletives that he bellows in underground concerts are slams of Fidel and Raul Castro, the past and present leaders of the communist island. So outspoken has he become that the authorities recently charged him with "social dangerousness" and put him in jail.

Turns out, though, he will sing again. After his detention drew international outrage, including a condemnation from the Bush administration, the Cuban authorities dropped the charge. Instead, they convicted him of public disorder and fined him about $28 – more than a month's salary in Cuba.

"I feel even more hate for this tyranny," Gorki, as he is universally known, said to reporters after he was freed. He then likened his release to walking from a small jail cell into a larger one.

Gorki is by no means the only outspoken artist in Cuba. But where others are relatively discreet, Gorki screams.

"The Comandante holds elections, which he's invented to keep power," he says of Fidel Castro in "El Comandante," one of his signature songs. "The Comandante wants me to go vote so he can keep ... [expletive] my life."

The Cuban government has remained quiet about Gorki's recent legal troubles. Some supporters have spoken up, though. Walter Lippmann, an American who runs an e-mail news service that collects material critical of Washington's embargo on Cuba, recently wrote, "He helps clarify the precise meaning of the word 'punk' in the term 'punk rock.' "

A self-taught musician and the father of a preteen girl, Gorki named his band for a friend who loved pornography but could not get enough of it because of a government ban.

Gorki, 39, once told an interviewer that he grew up listening to American and British rock, particularly Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin and the Clash.

"My dad never liked rock 'n' roll," he said, "and since he knew that this type of music brought me problems, he used to advise me to listen to other bands."

Marc Lacey,

The New York Times