Music of Cuba
The music of Cuba, including its instruments, performance, and dance, comprises a large set of unique traditions influenced mostly by west African and European (especially Spanish) music.[1] Due to the syncretic nature of most of its genres, Cuban music is often considered one of the richest and most influential regional music in the world. For instance, the son cubano merges an adapted Spanish guitar (tres), melody, harmony, and lyrical traditions with Afro-Cuban percussion and rhythms. Almost nothing remains of the original native traditions, since the native population was exterminated in the 16th century.[2]
Since the 19th-century Cuban music has been hugely popular and influential throughout the world. It has been perhaps the most popular form of regional music since the introduction of recording technology. Cuban music has contributed to the development of a wide variety of genres and musical styles around the globe, most notably in Latin America, the Caribbean, West Africa, and Europe. Examples include rhumba, Afro-Cuban jazz, salsa, soukous, many West African re-adaptations of Afro-Cuban music (Orchestra Baobab, Africando), Spanish fusion genres (notably with flamenco), and a wide variety of genres in Latin America.
21st-century classical and art music[edit]
During the last decades of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century a new generation of composers emerged into the Cuban classical music panorama. Most of them received a solid musical education provided by the official arts school system created by the Cuban government and graduated from the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA). Some of those composers are Louis Franz Aguirre,[34] Ileana Pérez Velázquez, Keila María Orozco,[32] Viviana Ruiz,[23] Fernando (Archi) Rodríguez Alpízar,[35] Yalil Guerra, Eduardo Morales Caso,[36] Ailem Carvajal Gómez, Irina Escalante Chernova and Evelin Ramón. All of them have emigrated and currently live and have worked in other countries.
Popular music[edit]
Hispanic heritage[edit]
The first popular music played in Cuba after the Spanish conquest was brought by the Spanish conquerors themselves, and was most likely borrowed from the Spanish popular music in vogue during the 16th century. From the 16th to the 18th century some danceable songs that emerged in Spain were associated with Hispanic America, or considered to have originated in America. Some of these songs with picturesque names such as Sarabande, Chaconne, Zambapalo, Retambico and Gurumbé, among others,[83] shared a common trait, its characteristic rhythm called Hemiola or Sesquiáltera (in Spain).
This rhythm has been described as the alternation or superposition of a duple meter and a triple meter (6/8 + 3/4), and its utilization was widespread in the Spanish territory since at least the 13th century, where it appears in one of the Cantigas de Santa María (Como poden per sas culpas).[84]
Hemiola or Sesquiáltera is also a typical rhythm within the African musical traditions, both from the North of the Continent as from the South.[85] Therefore, it is quite probable that the original song-dances brought by the Spanish to America already included elements from the African culture with which the enslaved Africans that arrived to the Island were familiar; and they further utilized them in order to create new creole genres.[86]
The well known Son de la Ma Teodora, an ancient Cuban song, as well as the first Cuban autochthonous genres, Punto and Zapateo, show the Sesquiáltera rhythm on their accompaniment, which greatly associate those genres to the Spanish song-dances from the 16th to the 18th centuries.[87]
Danza[edit]
This genere, the offspring of the contradanza, was also danced in lines or squares. It was also a brisk form of music and dance in double or triple time. A repeated 8-bar paseo was followed by two 16-bar sections called the primera and segunda. One famous composer of danzas was Ignacio Cervantes, whose forty-one danzas cubanas were a landmark in musical nationalism. This type of dance was eventually replaced by the danzón, which was, like the habanera, much slower and more sedate.[107]
Rumba and guaracha[edit]
Some scholars have pointed out that in reference to the utilization of the terms rumba and guaracha, there is possibly a case of synonymy, or the use of two different words to denominate the same thing. According to María Teresa Linares: "during the first years of the 20th century, there were used at the end of the vernacular (Bufo) theater plays some musical fragments that the authors sang, and that were called closing rumba (rumba final)" and she continues explaining that those (rumbas) "were certainly guarachas."[131] The musical pieces used to close those plays may have been indistinctly called rumbas or guarachas, because those terms did not denote any generic or structural difference between them. Linares also said in reference to this subject: "Some recordings of guarachas and rumbas have been preserved that do not differentiate between them in the guitar parts – when it was a small group, duo or trio, or by the theater orchestra or a piano. The labels of the recordings stated: dialogue and rumba (diálogo y rumba)."[131]
Tropical waltz[edit]
The waltz (El vals) arrived in Cuba by 1814. It was the first dance in which couples were not linked by a communal sequence pattern. It was, and still is, danced in 3/4 time with the accent on the first beat. It was originally thought scandalous because couples faced each other, held each other in the 'closed' hold, and, so to speak, ignored the surrounding community. The waltz entered all countries in the Americas; its relative popularity in 19th-century Cuba is hard to estimate.
Indigenous Cuban dances did not use the closed hold with couples dancing independently until the danzón later in the century, though the guaracha might be an earlier example. The waltz has another characteristic: it is a 'travelling' dance, with couples moving round the arena. In Latin dances, progressive movement of dancers is unusual, but does occur in the conga, the samba and the tango.
The Tropical waltz was performed in a slower tempo and frequently included a sung melody with a text. Those texts usually referred to the beauties of the Cuban countryside, the longing of the Siboneyes (Cuban aboriginee) and other creole themes. With accents on its three beats, its melody was fluid and composed of equal value notes. It was similar to many other songs in which the melody was treated in a syllabic way, where the first beat was not stressed by a brief anacrusis but had a tendency to move toward the second beat like in the peasant (guajiro) song.[173]
Diversification and popularization[edit]
Cuban music enters the United States[edit]
In 1930, Don Azpiazú[192] had the first million-selling record of Cuban music: The Peanut Vendor (El Manisero), with Antonio Machín as the singer.[193] This number had been orchestrated and included in N.Y. theatre by Azpiazú before recording, which no doubt helped with the publicity. The Lecuona Cuban Boys[194] became the best-known Cuban touring ensemble: they were the ones who first used the conga drum in their conjunto, and popularized the conga as a dance. Xavier Cugat at the Waldorf Astoria was highly influential.[195] In 1941 Desi Arnaz popularized the comparsa drum (similar to the conga) in the U.S with his performances of Babalú. There was a real 'rumba craze' at the time.[196] Later, Mario Bauza and Machito set up in New York and Miguelito Valdés also arrived there.
1940s and '50s[edit]
In the 1940s, Chano Pozo[197] formed part of the bebop revolution in jazz, playing conga with Dizzy Gillespie and Machito in New York City. Cuban jazz had started much earlier, in Havana, in the period 1910–1930.
The works below are reliable sources for all aspects of traditional Cuban popular music. Spanish titles indicate those that have not been translated into English.