9781422279793

Cuban Music, dance, and Celebrations

CUBA

DOMINICAN REPUBLIC

HAITI

PUERTO RICO (U.S.)

JAMAICA

Exploring Cuba Arts and Literature of Cuba

Cuba Under the Castros Cuba: Facts and Figures Cuban Music, Dance, and Celebrations The Culture and People of Cuba The Opening of Cuba, 2008-Present

Cuban Music, dance, and Celebrations

John Ziff

Mason Crest Philadelphia

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Broomall, PA 19008 www.masoncrest.com ©2018 by Mason Crest, an imprint of National Highlights, Inc.

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ISBN: 978-1-4222-7979-3 (ebook) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-4222-3337-5 (hc) ISBN 978-1-4222-8622-7 (ebook)

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Table of Contents 1: Roots of Cuban Music and Dance ..........................7 2: Son: The Foundation ............................................21 3: Hitting the World Stage ........................................33 4: The Music Will Be Heard........................................49 5: A Love of Dance ....................................................65 Series Glossary of Key Terms....................................74 Further Reading ........................................................76 Internet Resources ....................................................77 Index ..........................................................................78 Photo Credits/About the Author..............................80

Words to understand: These words with their easy-to-understand definitions will increase the reader’s understanding of the text while building vocabulary skills.

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Research projects: Readers are pointed toward areas of further inquiry connected to each chapter. Suggestions are provided for projects that encourage deeper research and analysis. Series glossary of key terms: This back-of-the-book glossary contains terminology used throughout this series. Words found here increase the reader’s ability to read and comprehend higher-level books and articles in this field.

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The Orquesta Buena Vista Social Club on stage during its 2015 farewell tour. For nearly two decades the group—composed of a changing lineup of veteran Cuban musicians— enthralled audiences across the globe.

Words to Understand in This Chapter

bebop— a style of jazz that emphasizes complexity, speed, and unusual or uncon- ventional phrasing. clave— a rhythmic pattern common in Afro-Cuban music. genre— a category of music or dance (or other kind of art). percussion— musical instruments (such as the drums, tambourine, or bells) that are played by striking, shaking, or scraping. polyrhythm— the use of two or more sharply contrasting rhythms at the same time. syncopation— the accenting of a musical beat that would normally not be stressed.

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Roots of Cuban Music and Dance W hen it comes to music, Cuba is one of the richest places on earth. The Caribbean island nation is only slightly larger than Tennessee, but it has spawned a profusion of styles whose influence extends well beyond Cuban shores. From Mexico in the north to Argentina in the south, much of the music heard throughout Latin America is rooted in Cuban music. Cuba’s contributions to popular music in the United States may be less wide ranging, but they’re still significant. Students of jazz history know that American masters like Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker blended elements of Cuban music (including distinctive rhythms and percussion instruments) into bebop . A trained ear can discern an Afro-Cuban rhythmic pattern known as the clave (pronounced CLAH-vay) in Buddy

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Cuban musicians and musical influences have been making a mark in the United States for decades. Shown here, at the 2016 American Music Awards, are the members of the pop group Fifth Harmony. From left to right: Dinah Jane Hansen, Lauren Jauregui, Normani Hamilton, Ally Brooke, and Camila Cabello. Jauregui is the daughter of Cuban immi- grants, while Cabello was born in Havana.

Holly’s rock-and-roll classic “Not Fade Away” or in the punk rock anthem “I Fought the Law” by the Clash. Led Zeppelin’s “Kashmir” employs Afro-Cuban–style polyrhythms . “Louie, Louie”—which was a huge hit for the Kingsmen in the early 1960s and which may be the most recorded rock song ever— borrows from a Cuban musical genre called the cha-cha-cha (or

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Cuban Music, Dance, and Celebrations

simply cha-cha). “Lady” by Styx incorporates elements of Cuban bolero music. Cuban dance styles have likewise made their mark interna- tionally. If you’ve been to a wedding reception and seen a conga line snaking around the room, you’ve witnessed a dance that came straight out of Cuba. The sultry moves of salsa dancing owe much to Cuban dance styles like the mambo and cha-cha- cha. None of this is to suggest that the influences run in one direction only. Contributions from other countries and cul- tures have been absorbed into, and have helped shape, the music and dance forms popular in Cuba. That process of cul- tural exchange continues today. A Brief History of Spanish Cuba In 1492, during his first voyage to the New World, Christopher Columbus laid claim to Cuba on behalf of the king and queen of Spain. The island would remain a Spanish possession for four centuries. For much of that time, Cuba’s main importance to Spain lay in its strategic location. Havana, the island’s capital, served as the staging ground for Spain’s “treasure fleets.” Each year, ships laden with gold, silver, pearls, emeralds, and other prized goods from Spain’s New World colonies gathered in Havana’s harbor for the voyage back to Spain. By traveling in large con- voys, the ships would be less vulnerable to piracy. Havana prospered by catering to the needs of ships and their crews. Though Spanish colonists settled elsewhere on the island, Havana was far and away the largest population center.

Roots of Cuban Music and Dance 9

The eastern part of the island had significant deposits of cop- per. Other than that, however, Cuba had little Spain coveted. During the first decades of colonization, the Spanish forced the island’s indigenous population—mostly a people called the Taíno—to grow crops and work in mines. But mistreatment, violence, and disease decimated the Taíno population. So the colonists turned to enslaved blacks taken from West Africa. Until the late 1700s, though, the scope of slavery in Cuba remained relatively limited, as the island had no need for a vast supply of labor. That changed when a variety of factors made large-scale sugarcane cultivation in Cuba highly profitable. Huge plantations were established, and large numbers of enslaved Africans were needed to work them. Between 1800 and 1867, when the slave trade to Cuba finally ended, more than a million captive Africans were brought to Cuba in chains. Slavery itself wasn’t completely abolished on the island until 1886. By that time, Spanish forces had put down several Cuban attempts to gain independence. Spain finally lost its Cuba colony in 1898, as a result of its defeat at the hands of the United States in the Spanish-American War. In 1902, after a U.S. military occupation, the independent Republic of Cuba was officially proclaimed. Diverse Roots Cuba’s colonial culture had deep roots in both Europe and Africa. And while there was a significant degree of racial inter- mixing on the island, for a long time the white and black com- munities maintained separate music and dance traditions.

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Cuban Music, Dance, and Celebrations

Early Spanish colonists enjoyed folk music and dances from Spain, whether they’d immigrated to Cuba or been born on the island to parents of Spanish descent. Various genres were popular. By the late 1700s and early 1800s, more highbrow music and dance styles from across Europe had become popular among Cuba’s whites, especially well-to-do urban residents.

This illustration from 1595 shows African slaves processing sugarcane on a Caribbean plantation. Beginning in the 16th century, the Spanish imported millions of slaves from West Africa to work in Cuba and their other Caribbean colonies. Today, it is estimated that approximately 35 percent of Cubans are descended from African slaves.

Roots of Cuban Music and Dance 11

A European drew this illustration of Afro-Caribbean slaves dancing in 1833. The slaves are accompanied by various percussion instruments, including drums and gourd rattles. Modern Cuban music and dance incorporates many traditional West African influences.

European opera companies toured in Havana—which by the turn of the 19th century was the third-largest city in the Western Hemisphere, behind only Mexico City and New York. White Cubans also enjoyed such fashionable European music and dance exports as the quadrille and the waltz. For the island’s blacks, known now as Afro-Cubans, drum- ming was at the center of music and dance. That had been true in the West African cultures from which most of the enslaved Afro-Cubans had come. Those cultures had developed percus- sion-based rhythms of startling variety and intricacy. Afro- Cubans kept alive this inheritance from their ancestral homes.

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Cuban Music, Dance, and Celebrations

It wasn’t simply a matter of entertainment or recreation. Drums and dance played an integral part in the religious ritu- als of Afro-Cubans. They helped believers commune with the divine realm. Although the Spanish tried to force enslaved Afro-Cubans to convert to Catholicism, at best that effort met with partial success. African religious beliefs survived, in some cases by incorporating elements of Catholicism. For example, many Afro-Cubans of Yoruba ethnic origin practiced a faith called Santeria. From a Spanish word that roughly translates as “the way of the saints,” Santeria identifies specific Catholic saints with Yoruba deities known as orishas . In any case, Afro-Cuban religious rituals helped preserve the unique rhythms and percussion sounds of West Africa. Eventually, those elements would combine with elements of European music and dance to create distinctly Cuban genres.

A Santeria shrine in the historic town of Trinidad, Cuba. Santeria is a belief system that originated in Cuba. It blended elements of the West African Yoruba religion—including spirit worship, ritual drumming and dancing, traditional healing, and animal

sacrifice—with Roman Catholic practices.

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From the Contredanse to Danzón A small hint of what the fusion of Afro-Cuban and European influences would look like had emerged by 1800. The European contribution came not from Spain, however, but from France, via the French colony of Saint-Domingue. Located on the western side of the island of Hispaniola, Saint- Domingue was only about 50 miles (80 km) from Cuba at its closest point. A slave rebellion in the colony erupted in 1791, touching off a bloody revolution that lasted more than a dozen years before the independent Republic of Haiti was established. To escape the violence, thousands fled to eastern Cuba. There

French colonists flee from rebellious slaves in the colony of Saint-Domingue, 1790s. The African slave uprising against the French colonial government resulted in turmoil, and thousands of people from Saint-Domingue—including both white plantation owners fleeing the violence and blacks who had escaped slavery—left the island looking for safer places to settle. Some went to other French colonies in the region, such as the city of New Orleans in Louisiana. Others went to the Spanish colony in Cuba, bringing with them French music and dance forms that would soon be integrated into Cuban culture.

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Cuban Music, Dance, and Celebrations