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Cuba and its Music
The
Caribbean island of Cuba has been influential in the development
of multiple musical styles in the 19th and 20th centuries. The
roots of most Cuban musical forms lie in the cabildos, a form
of social club among African slaves brought to the island. The
cabildos were formed from the Araras, Bantu, Carabalies, Yorubas,
and other civilizations/tribes. Cabildos preserved African cultural
traditions, even after the Emancipation in 1886 forced them to
unite with the Roman Catholic church. At the same time, a religion
called Santería was developing and had soon spread throughout
Cuba, Haiti and other nearby islands. Santería influenced
Cuba's music, as percussion is an inherent part of the religion.
Each orisha, or deity, is associated with colors, emotions, Roman
Catholic saints and drum patterns called toques. By the 20th century,
elements of Santería music had appeared in popular and
folk forms.
Cuban music has its principal roots
in Spain and West Africa, but over time has been influenced by
diverse genres from different countries. Most important among
these are France, the United States, and Jamaica. Reciprocally,
Cuban music has been immensely influential in other countries,
contributing not only to the development of jazz and salsa, but
also to Argentinian tango, Ghanaian high-life, West African Afrobeat,
and Spanish "nuevo flamenco". Cuban music of high quality
includes "classical" music, some with predominantly
European influences, and much of it inspired by both Afro-Cuban
and Spanish music. Several Cuban-born composers of "serious"
music have recently received a much-deserved revival. Within Cuba,
there are many popular musicians working in the rock and reggaeton
idioms.
Folk Music
The natives of Cuba were the Taíno, Arawak and Ciboney
people, known for a style of music called areito. Large numbers
of African slaves and European immigrants brought their own forms
of music to the island. European dances and folk musics included
zapateo, fandango, zampado, retambico and canción. Later,
northern European forms like waltz, minuet, gavotte and mazurka
appeared among urban whites. Fernando Ortíz, a Cuban folklorist,
described Cuba's musical innovations as arising from the interplay
between African slaves settled on large sugar plantations and
Spanish or Canary Islanders who grew tobacco on small farms. The
African slaves and their descendants reconstructed large numbers
of percussive instruments and corresponding rhythms, the most
important instruments being the clave, the congas and batá
drums. Chinese immigrants have contributed the cornetín
chino ("Chinese cornet"), a Chinese wind instrument
still played in the comparsas, or carnival groups, of Santiago
de Cuba.
Hernando de la Parra's archives give
many of our earliest available information on Cuban music. He
reported instruments including the clarinet, violon and vihuela.
There were few professional musicians at the time, and fewer still
of their songs survive. One of the earliest is "La Ma-Teodore",
which is similar to ecclesiastic European forms and 16th century
folk songs.
Guajira
The original guajira was earthy, strident rural acoustic music,
possibly related to Puerto Rican jibaro. It appeared in the early
20th century, and is led by a 6-string guitar called a tres, known
for a distinctive tuning
Musica Campesina
Música campesina is a rural form of improvised music derived
from a local form of décima and verso called punto. It
has been popularized by artists like Celina González, and
has become an important influence on modern son.
While remaining mainly unchanged
in its forms (thus provoking a steady decline in interest among
the Cuban youth), some artists have tried to renew música
campesina with new styles, lyrics, themes and arrangements.
Classical Music
Among internationally heralded composers of the "serious"
genre can be counted the Baroque composer Esteban Salas, whose
music recently has been released on a number of CD's. Some consider
him the most advanced composer in the New World at the close of
the Eighteenth Century. In the 19th century, several major composers
came from Cuba. These included Robredo Manuel, who helped transform
contradanza into a litany of future styles, Laureano Fuentes,
who wrote an opera, Selia, that is still well-remembered, and
Gaspar Villete, who was respected across the Atlantic in Europe.
Jose White, a mulatto of half-Haitian origin, was a violinist
of international merit, much praised in Paris, who also composed
a Violin Concerto reminiscent of Mendelssohn.
It was Ignacio Cervantes, however,
who did the most to assert a sense of Cuban musical nationalism,
using Afro-Cuban and guajiro techniques. Aaron Copeland once referred
to him as a "Cuban Chopin" because of his Chopinesque
piano compositions. Cervantes' nationalistic followers, who espoused
a philosophy called Afrocubanismo, included Alejandro Caturla,
whose music is sometimes redolent of Bartok-mixed-with-Delius,
and the percussion stylist Amadeo Roldán. Caturla and Roldán's
music would be performed in the U.S. and Europe at concerts of
Henry Cowell's Pan-American Association of Composers.
Probably the greatest Cuban musical
mind of the Twentieth Century and of all time was Ernesto Lecuona,
whose serious works have earned him the title "the Cuban
Gershwin," and he recently underwent a revival with the release
of at least five CD's covering all of his piano works. Lecuona
started as a child prodigy who later on could compose in his head
a la Mozart. His most famous work is the "Malagueña",
part of his "Spanish Suite" of piano pieces, often erroneously
identified as music of a Spanish composer.
Other significant composers in need
of a revival include Joaquin Nin (often misindentified as "Spanish")
and Gonzalo Roig, who specialized in orchestrating national themes.
After the Cuban Revolution in 1959, a new crop of classical musicians
came onto the scene. The most important of these is guitarrist
Leo Brouwer, who made significant innovations in classical guitar,
and is currently the director of the Havana Symphonic Orchestra.
His directorship in the early 1970s of the Cuban Instititute of
Instrumental and Cinematographic Arts (ICAIC) was instrumental
in the formation and consolidation of the nueva trova movement.
Cuban-born classical pianists include
many who have recorded with the world's greatest symphonies, including
Jorge Bolet (friend of Rachmaninoff and Liszt specialist), Horacio
Gutierrez (former Tchaikovsky Competition silver medalist), and
prize-winning pianist and owner of the "Elan" classical
CD company, Santiago Rodriguez, a Russian-music specialist. A
number of Cuban concert pianists still living in Cuba have been
recorded on various major music record labels. Guitarist Manuel
Barrueco is considered by some to be the world's greatest classical
guitarist.
Danzón
The European influence on Cuba's later musical development is
most influentially represented by danzón, which is an elegant
dance that became established in Cuba before being exported to
popular acclaim throughout Latin America, especially Mexico. Its
roots lay in European social dances like the English country dance,
French contredanse and Spanish contradanza. Danzon developed in
the 1870s in the region of Matanzas, where African culture remained
strong. It had developed in full by 1879. Played by orquesta tipica,
an informal military marching band, danzóns evolved from
the habanera by incorporating African elements, and were played
by artists like Miguel Failde. Failde added elements from the
French contredanse, and laid the way for future artists like José
Urfe, Enrique Jorrín and Antonio María Romeu
Haitians in Cuba: Charanga
Other forms of Cuban folk music include the bolero ballads from
Santiago, and small French creole bands called charangas. Charangas
come from Haitian refugees during the Haitian Revolution (1791),
who settled in the Oriente and established their own style of
danzón, forming a kind of cabildo called the tumba francesa
and became known for comparsa, mambo, chachachá and other
kinds of folk music.
Changuí
Changuí is a rapid form of son from the eastern provinces
(Santiago and Guantánamo, known together as Oriente), and
is best exemplified by Elio Revé. It is unclear how the
changuí originated, and whether it is a precursor to the
classical son, but it seems that the two developed along parallel
lines. Changuí is characterised by its strong emphasis
on the downbeat, as well as being fast and very percussive. While
it was Elio Revé who modernised the changuí, musicians
such as Cándido Fabré and more recently Los Dan
Den gave it the contemporary feel it has today. Most importantly
Los Van Van, led by Juan Formell, drew on changuí, adding
trombones, synthesizers and more percussion, to create the songo.
Son
Son is a major genre of Cuban music, and has helped lay the foundation
for most of what came after. It arose in the eastern part of the
island, among Spanish-descended farmers, and is thought to have
been derived from changui, which also merged the Spanish guitar
and African rhythms and to which son is closely related.
Son's characteristics vary widely
today, with the defining characteristic a bass pulse that comes
before the downbeat, giving son and its derivatives (including
salsa) its distinctive rhythm; this is known as the anticipated
bass.
Son traditionally concerns itself
with themes like love and patriotism, though more modern artists
are socially or politically-oriented. Son lyrics are typically
decima (ten line), octosyllabic verse, and it is performed in
2/4 time. The son clave has both a reverse and forward clave,
which differ in that a forward clave has a three note bar (tresillo),
followed by a two note bar, while the reverse is the opposite.
Batá and yuka
One of the most vibrant cabildos was the Lukumí, which
became known for batá drums, played traditionally at initiation
ceremonies, and gourd ensembles called abwe. In the 1950s, a collection
of Havana-area batá drummers called Santero helped bring
Lucumí styles into mainstream Cuban music, while artists
like Mezcla and Lázaro Ros melded the style with other
forms, including zouk.
The Kongo cabildo is known for its
use of yuka drums, as well as gallos (a form of song contest),
makuta and mani dances, the latter being closely related to the
Brazilian martial dance capoeira. Yuka drum music eventually evolved
into what is known as rumba, which has become internationally
popular. Rumba bands traditionally use several drums, palitos,
claves and call and response vocals.
Rumba
Abroad, rumba is primarily thought of as a glitzy ballroom dance,
but its origins are spontaneous, improvised and lively, coming
from the dockworkers of Havana and Matanzas. Percussion (including
quinto and tumbadoras drums and "palitos", or sticks,
to play a cáscara rhythm) and vocal parts (including a
leader and a chorus -- see call and response (music)) are combined
to make a danceable and popular form of music.
The word rumba is believed to stem
from the verb rumbear, which means something like to have a good
time, party. The rhythm is the most important part of rumba, which
is always music primarily meant for dancing.
There are three basic rumba forms,
with accompanying dances: columbia, guaguanco and yambú.
The columbia, played in 6/8 time, is generally danced only by
men, often as a solo dance, and is very swift, with aggressive
and acrobatic moves. The guagancó, played in 2/4, is danced
with one man and one woman, and is slower. The dance simulates
the man's pursuit of the woman, and is thus sexually charged.
The yambú, known as "the old people's rumba",
is a precursor to the guaguancó and is played more slowly.
Yambú has almost died-out and is played almost exclusively
by folkloric ensembles.
Diversification
and Popularization
1920s and '30s
Son music came to Havana in 1920 (see 1920 in music) due to the
efforts of legendary groups like Trío Matamoros. Son was
urbanized, with trumpets and other new instruments, leading to
its tremendous influence on most later forms of Cuban music. In
Havana, influences such as American popular music and jazz via
the radio were adopted.
The son trios gave way to the septets,
including guitar or tres, marímbulas or double bass, bongos,
claves and maracas. The trumpet was introduced in 1926. Lead singers
improvised lyrics and embellished melody lines while the claves
laid down the basic son clave beat.
As time passed, musicians began "whitening
up" son for the growing tourist traffic in the Havana nightclubs
who did not understand the complex African rhythms.
Cuban music enters the United
States
In the 1930s, the Lecuona Cuban Boys and Desi Arnaz popularized
the conga in the US and Don Aspiazu did the same with son montuno,
while Arsenio Rodriguez developed the conjunto band and rumba's
popularity grew. Conjunto son, mambo, chachachá, rumba
and conga became the most important influences on the invention
of salsa.
Habanera
In the late 19th century, the habanera developed out of the contradanza
which had arrived from Haiti after the Haitian revolution. The
main innovation from the contradanza was rhythmic, as the habanera
incorporated Spanish and African influences into its repertoire.
In the 1930s, habanera performer
Arcaño y sus Maravillas incorporated influences from conga
and added a montuno (as in son), paving the way for the mixing
of Latin musical forms, including guaracha, played by a charanga
orchestra. Guaracha (sometimes simply called charanga) also drew
from Haitian musical forms, has been extremely popular and continues
to entertain audiences.
It was not, however, until 1995 that
a Cuban artist first recorded a complete disc in the Habanera
genre, when singer/songwriter Liuba Maria Hevia recorded some
songs researched by musicologist Maria Teresa Linares, then director
of the Cuban Museum of Music. Even then, the original intention
was to supply the Cuban Museum of Music with some sound references
of the genre. It is worth mentioning that the same artist, unhappy
with the technical conditions at the time (Cuba was in the middle
of the so-called Periodo Especial), re-recorded most of the songs
on the 2005 CD Angel y habanera.
The fact that the above-mentioned
CD Habaneras en el tiempo (1995) was mainly distributed in Barcelona
underlines the fading interest on this kind of music in the island,
specially when compared to the vigorous popularity of the Habanera
in the Mediterranean coast of Spain.
1940s and '50s
Arsenio Rodriguez, one of Cuba's most famous soneros, is considered
to have brought son back to its African roots in the 1940s by
adapting the guaguanco style to son, and by adding a cowbell and
conga to the rhythm section. He also expanded the role of the
tres as a solo instrument. Rodriguez introduced the montuno (or
mambo section) for melodic solos and his style became known as
son montuno.
In the 1940s, Chano Pozo formed part
of the bebop revolution in jazz, playing conga and other Afro-Cuban
drums. Conga was integral part of what became known as Latin jazz,
which began in the 1940s among Cubans in New York City.
Benny Moré, considered by
many fans of Cuban music as the greatest Cuban singer of all time,
was at his heyday in the 1950s. He was gifted with an innate musicality
and fluid tenor voice which he colored and phrased with great
expressivity. Moré was a master all the genres of Cuban
music, including son montuno, mambo, guaracha, guajira, cha cha
cha, afro, canción, guaguancó, and bolero.
Cuban music in the US
A charanga group called Orquesta America, led by violinist Enrique
Jorrín, helped invent chachachá, which became an
international fad in the 1950s. Chachachá was popularized
by bands led by Tito Puente, Perez Prado and other superstars.
Many of these same performers also updated mambo for modern audiences.
The mambo first entered the United
States in the early 1940s. The first mambo, "Mambo"
by Orestes "Cachao" Lopez, was written in 1938. Five
years later, Perez Prado introduced the dance to the audience
at La Tropicana, a nightclub in Havana. Mambo was distinguished
from its immediate predecessor, danzon, by elements of son montuno
and jazz. By 1947, mambo was wildly popular in the US, but the
craze lasted only a few years.
Other influential musicians prior
to the revolution were Ernesto Lecuona, Chano Pozo, Bola de Nieve,
who lived in Mexico, and Mario Bauza, who, along with such "Nuyoricans"
Ray Barreto and Tito Puente made innovation in mambo which gradually
would produce Latin jazz and later salsa. A large number of musicians
left Cuba between 1966 and 1968, after the Cuban government nationalised
the remaining nightclubs and the recording industry. Among these
was Celia Cruz, a guaracha singer, who gave strong impulses to
the development of salsa. In later years Cubans were very active
in Latin jazz and early salsa, such as percussionist Patato Valdés
of the Cuban-oriented "Tipíca '73", linked to
the Fania All-Stars. Several former members of Irakere have also
become highly successful in the USA, among them Paquito D'Rivera
and Arturo Sandoval.
1960s and '70s
Modern Cuban music is known for its relentless mixing
of genres. For example, the 1970s saw Los Irakere use batá
in a big band setting; this became known as son-batá or
batá-rock. Later artists created the mozambique, which
mixed conga and mambo, and batá-rumba, which mixed rumba
and batá drum music. Mixtures including elements of hip
hop, jazz and rock and roll are also common, like in Habana Abierta's
rockoson.
Castro and Cuban exiles
The arrival to power of Fidel Castro in 1959 signified on one
side mass exile to Puerto Rico, Florida and New York, and the
protection of artist by the Communist state, reflected in state-owned
record labels like EGREM. In Cuba, the Nueva Trova movement (including
Pablo Milanés) reflected the new leftist ideals. Young
musicians learned in music school. The state-run cabaret Tropicana
was a popular attraction for foreign tourists, though more well-informed
tourists sought out local casas de la Trova. Musicians were full-time
and paid by the state after graduating from a conservatory, but
as much as 90% of their income was taken by the Ministry of Culture.
Castro's government eventually forced even early supporters like
Arturo Sandoval and Paquito D'Rivera into exile. The fall of the
Soviet Union in the 1990s eventually changed the situation quite
a bit, and musicians were then allowed to tour abroad and earn
a living outside the state-run system.
Famous artists from the Cuban exile
are Celia Cruz, Cachao, La Lupe, Willy Chirino and Gloria Estefan.
Many of these musicians, especially Cruz, became closely associated
with the anti-Castro movement.
Salsa
In the 1970s and onwards, son montuno was combined with other
Latin musical forms, such as the mambo and the rumba, to form
contemporary salsa music, currently immensely popular throughout
Latin America and the Hispanic world.
Nueva trova
Paralleling nueva canción in Chile and Argentina, Cuba's
political and social turmoil in the 1960s and '70s produced a
socially aware form of new music called nueva trova. Silvio Rodríguez
and Pablo Milanés became the most important exponents of
this style. It arose from travelling trovadores in the early 20th
century, including popular musicians like Sindo Garay (best-known
for "La Bayamesa"), Nico Saquito, Carlos Puebla and
Joseíto Fernández (best-known for "Guantanamera").
Nueva trova was always intimately connected with Castro's revolution,
but its lyrics frequently expressed personal rather than social
issues, focusing on intense emotional issues.
Nueva Trova began to evolve after
the fall of the Soviet Union, adapting to the new times. Examples
of a new, non-political line in the Nueva Trova movement could
be Liuba María Hevia, whose lyrics are focused on other
subjects like love and solitude, sharing with the rest a highly
poetical style. On the other side of the spectrum, Carlos Varela
is famous in Cuba for his open criticism of some aspects of Castro's
revolution, while at the same time being included in the Nueva
Trova genre.
The term Novísima Trova (literally
'Newest song') is often used to describe a new generation of songwriters
whose main references are Silvio Rodriguez and Pablo Milanés.
1980s, 1990s and 2000
Son and nueva trova remain the most popular forms of modern Cuban
music, and virtually all Cuban artists play music derived from
one of these two genres. Son is best represented by long-standing
groups like Septeto Nacional, which was re-established in 1985,
Orquesta Aragón, Orquesta Ritmo Oriental and Orquesta Original
de Manzanillo. Septeto Nacional, alongside groups like Sierra
Maestra, have sparked a revival in traditional son. Meanwhile,
Irakere fused traditional Cuban music with jazz, and groups like
NG La Banda, Orishas and Son 14 continued to add new elements
to son, especially hip hop and funk, to form timba music; this
process was aided by the acquisition of imported electronic equipment.
There are still many practitioners
of traditional son montuno, such as Eliades Ochoa, who have recorded
and toured widely as a result of the upturn in interest in son
montuno since the mid-1990s.
In the 1990s, increased interest
in world music brought Cuban music, especially traditional styles
like son montuno, again into the limelight. This development went
hand-in-hand with the post-Soviet Union periodo especial in Cuba,
during which the economy began opening up to tourism.
Orquesta Aragon, Charanga Habanera
and Cándido Fabré y su Banda have been long-time
players in the charanga scene, and helped form the popular timba
scene of the late 1990s.
Europe based female singer Addys
D'Mercedes fuses her Cuban heritage with elements of rock , hip
hop, house and RnB.
Last few years reggaeton has made
a big increase in Cuba, and lots of singers and bands exists,
one of the most famous band is Eddy K.
The biggest award in modern Cuban
music is the Beny Moré Award. The antagonism between Cuban
politicians in Florida and on the island forced the celebration
of the Latin Grammy Awards awards in Los Angeles instead of Miami.
Timba
Since its appearance in the early 1990s timba has become the most
popular dance music in Cuba, rivalled only lately by Reggaetón,
the Cuban version of Jamaican ragga and dancehall music. Though
related to salsa, timba has its own characteristics and history,
and is intimately tied to the life and culture of Cuba, and especially
Havana. Timba is to Havana what tango is to Buenos Aires, or samba
to Rio de Janeiro.
Buena Vista Social Club
The watershed event was the release of Buena Vista Social Club
(1997), a recording of veteran Cuban musicians organized by the
American musician and producer, Ry Cooder. Buena Vista Social
Club became an immense worldwide hit, selling millions of copies,
and made stars of octogenarian Cuban musicians such Ibrahim Ferrer,
Joseíto Fernández, and Compay Segundo, whose careers
had stagnated in the 1950s.
Buena Vista resulted in several followup
recordings and spawned a film of the same name, as well as tremendous
interest in other Cuban groups. In subsequent years, dozens of
singers and conjuntos made recordings for foreign labels and toured
internationally. The interest of world audiences in exile and
pre-revolutionary musicians has stirred some resentment among
younger musicians that feel that their work and evolution of forty
years is being ignored.
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