CUBAN MUSIC HISTORY

  When people, in general, think or speak about Cuban music, they mostly refer to the music generally known as Afro-Cuban music. While it is true that Cuban music has a strong African element, there is a fundamental difference between the two: the Cuban sound has a strong melodic element that comes from Spanish roots. 

 A marriage of traditional European music, flamenco (which in itself is a combination of traditional European folk and Arabian music) and Yoruba drums have given Cuban music the power to sweep the world.  

    Danzon, Habanera, Son, Rumba, Mambo, Cha cha cha, Conga and Salsa are the main players in this impressive international lineup. Other genres of Cuban music, such as Guaguanco, Son, guaracha, Son Montuno and Guajira are less known outside of Cuba, but just as important in the Cuban scheme of things.

  The Cuban sound has influenced the way music was played throughout the world in the 20th century and continuing right into the foreseeable future. Even flamenco has been impregnated with Cuban drums and this gave birth to the rumba flamenco! 

 There are salsa orchestras in Japan with Japanese vocalists singing in flawless Spanish to the rhythms of the timbales and the conga drums. You can hear Cuban riffs in the middle 20th century's popular Vietnamese music. 

 Salsa is wildly popular not only in Asia and Latin America, but also in Europe and North America. Only American rock 'n' roll can vie with Cuban music for the title of the world's most popular music. All this happened as the music evolved in the last century, but the roots go far beyond.

  When the Spanish arrived in Cubanacan, as the aboriginal inhabitants called the island, they found it populated by the Tainos, Guanatabeyes and Siboneyes, people of Arawak origin who had emigrated from the Orinoco region of present-day Colombia and Venezuela. 

 These people started arriving in the island possibly about 900 A.D. (estimates vary) and were established throughout the island.

  The Taino lived an agricultural lifestyle and spent their days hunting and gathering. They were mostly colonists from the neighboring island of Quisquella (present-day Haiti and the Dominican Republic), where the Tainos had a highly developed form of political organization based on the exploitation of rich maritime resources as well as agriculture.

 In the central portion of the island, constantly being pushed westward by the more sophisticated Tainos lived another Arawak people ­ the Siboney ­ a hunting and gathering tribe. Totally marginated to the Pinar del Rio area on the westernmost tip of Cuba, lived the earliest arrivals in Cubanacan; the Guanatabeyes.

  The Spanish with their firearms and superior technology easily conquered these tribes and tried to organize them in "Encomiendas," large plantations dedicated to the cultivation of tobacco, coffee and sugar cane. 

 The Amerindians were not used to such hard labor and did not adapt well to the conditions of virtual slavery.

 The same scourges that plagued most of the Americas, European diseases, greatly decimated their numbers. The Taino rose in revolt against their new masters and were brutally put down. The harsh conditions of slavery, plus disease and repression, took their toll on the natives and in less than one hundred years, these people were virtually extinct.

 By the late 1500s, West African slaves were brought to the plantations and with them arrived the African rhythms and the wooden drum. The Taino people used gourds as rhythm instruments and it is believed that the African arrivals adopted them as well, although that is a debatable point as the West Africans also had knowledge of the use of gourds as rhythm instruments.

  It is of interest to note that from the 1930s, Cuban music had begun to be heard in Africa and the Africans found in the Cuban music elements of their own musical heritage.

  This influence grew after World War II, when the record label EMI started the GV series of Latin music. It is curious that this series contained music accumulated during the three previous decades. 

 The most popular number was "The Manisero" by the orchestra Apiazu. It soon became a staple of the repertoire of all the orchestras in West Africa where the influence of Cuban music was greater.      The series comprised some 200 numbers, many as different as the Sextet Habanero, or the orchestra of Xavier Cugat. With the advent of recorded Latin, particularly Cuban, music, Afro-Cuban instruments began to be used in African orchestras and the old genres were adapted to the modern African taste. This influence was greater in the French and Belgian colonies of Guinea, Mali, Senegal and the Congo." Diaz Ayala, 1999

 Meanwhile, back in the beginning of Cuba as a Spanish colony, the Spaniards had also brought their own music with them to the island of Cuba. 

 Most of the early Spanish émigrés were from the Spanish provinces of Extremadura and Andalusia. The folk music played there was of the flamenco style, with the use of vihuelas (an early stringed instrument) and castanets as rhythm instruments. There was also much clapping of hands and stomping of feet in the "tablao" of flamenco dancing. This Spanish sound has a heavy rhythm component, so by the time the Africans arrived with their drums, it was not a totally foreign sound to the Spanish ears, but rather a natural extension of their own music, as we shall see in subsequent sections.

  The first Cuban musicians were named Alonso Moron, Porras and Ortis. They came with Diego de Velazquez in the expedition that conquered Cuba in 1511. Porras was a cantor (singer), Alonso Moron played the vihuela (a lute-like instrument, much like the early guitar) and Ortis played the viola and the vihuela as well. It is also said that Ortis was a dance instructor.    

   These three musicians, as well as later military musician arrivals, gave Cuba her early legacy of Spanish music.

  In the 16th century, attacks by corsairs, pirates and hostile nations forced the Spanish to send the riches of the New World back to the homeland in fleets. Havana was the staging port where all the ships of the colonies came together before the voyage back to Spain. 

 Every year, two fleets left Spain for the new World. One went to Mexico and Central America, the other to South America.

   Both fleets would rendezvous during the winter in Havana for the trip back to Spain in March. The idle time spent in Havana by the sailors of those fleets was often spent in parties and recreational activities, many of them musical.

 The music of the Spanish soldiers and sailors mixed with the African music that was heard in Havana and other Spanish ports and the native Inca and Aztec musical constructions. When the fleet went back to Seville, new hybrid sounds came back with them, which rapidly became popular.  

   These "cantes" or "cantos" (songs) went back and forth with the sailors, hence their denominations as "cantos de ida y vuelta" (songs of back and forth).

 Alejo Carpentier points out that new musical forms were born which were named by the great Spanish writers of the period of "El Siglo de Oro" (the Golden Century).

  The Gayumba was mentioned as a dance from the Indies. Lope de Vega mentioned the Chacona.     

  The Charambeque mentioned by Villaviciosa. Many other dances have been attributed to the Americas with names such as Zarabanda, Zambapalo and fandango.

  Many were probably put together and perfected in the long winters in Havana while waiting for the fleet to assemble and the weather to clear enough to return to Seville.

  There is a specific case in which you can prove that the origin (of a dance) was Havana. In 1776, a fleet arrived in the Mexican port of Vera Cruz, a fleet from Havana with immigrants of 'color quebrado.' (Literally, broken color or mulattoes) who brought with them a dance called El Chuchumbe which became very scandalous due to its suggestive steps and verses and it was condemned by the Mexican Holy Inquisition" Diaz Ayala 1999.

 a- African influences.

 At this point, we must look into the difference in the treatment of the millions of Africans brought as slaves to the continent of America.

  There was a fundamental difference in their treatment depending on the national identity of the masters; Dutch and English on one side or Spanish-Portuguese on the other.

  The Dutch and the English had no history or experience with slavery and did not know how to deal with it.    They viewed the slaves as creatures that had to be stripped of all their cultural accoutrements, such as language, religion, and customs. They thought the slaves should be trained immediately in European ways. In other words, they had to be culturally neutered. 

 As their economic system in the beginning consisted mostly of small plantations, the master could keep his eye on the slave and force a quick conversion.

  On the other hand, the Spanish and Portuguese knew about slavery. There had been African slaves on the Iberian Peninsula before Columbus and their dances and customs were known to the Spaniards and the Portuguese masters. They had learned that the slaves were happier and worked better if they were allowed to keep their own music and dances. 

 Also, the great plantation systems of the Spanish and Portuguese leaders needed huge concentrations of slaves and it was difficult to enforce individual control on each one.

 Religion also made a significant difference. The Dutch and English settlers, being Protestant and very fundamentalist, demanded that the slaves be stripped of their beliefs and trained totally in the faith of their masters. The Spanish and Portuguese, and to a certain extent the French, were more tolerant of the slave's belief system and allowed them to keep a considerable part of their own customs and religions.

  When the slaves finished their daily labor and during their half-day off on Sundays, they were locked in their common barracks and there, through oral tradition, kept alive their customs and beliefs. While in the English and Dutch colonies, the slaves were literally stripped of their language and memories in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies, the slaves reconstructed a great part of their culture through oral communications.

  Africans from different regions played an important role and contributed to the development of Cuban music. Some of the most influential included the Yoruba from Nigeria, the Mandinga from Sudan, and the Bantu from the Congo, the Ewe-Fon and the Fanti-Ashanti of present-day Dahomey.

  Although African drums were not brought with the slaves when they were transported, the Africans recreated these instruments with materials found on the island, making adjustments along the way. With slight differences, they were similar to their African counterparts.  These consisted mainly of drums, shakers and bells.

 Some of the African musical traditions that survive and flourish to this day in Cuban music are: 1) call and response singing in which a voice is followed by another voice or a choral response, 2) polymeter in which different meters are played simultaneously, 3) polyrhythms in which different parts are superimposed and, 4) pentatonic and non-western scales, especially with improvised vocal lines.

b- Out of Africa

 At the beginning of the XVI century, when the Spanish started importing African slaves into Cuba, the Yorubas of West Africa had a very elaborate religious liturgy and a religious culture older than Christianity. The center of Yoruba religion was music itself. They had a complex liturgy of songs, dances and chants dedicated to a pantheon of several dozen gods and saints or "orishas." The Yorubas for use in their religious rituals developed many instruments. For example, the making of a batá or a religious drum, begins with a ceremony performed before the cutting down of the tree.

  As mentioned before, because of the nature of the extensive plantations that existed primarily in Cuba and Brazil where there were large number of slaves and minimal supervision in the "barrancón,' the compounds were the slaves were kept after their labors, the African traditions were kept alive. 

 Another factor was that the catholic church had a policy that conversion of non-believers should be a gradual thing and native beliefs be incorporated into the peoples liturgy, as opposed to the protestant ethic of Anglo America where the goal was to obliterate the original culture and replace it with the master's version of Christianity. 

 Thus in Cuba the original orishas were transformed and blended with Spanish saints. Thus Chango became St. Barbara, Obatalá became The Virgin of Mercy (La Virgen de la Caridad, Patron Saint of Cuba), and Babalú Allé became St. Lazarus and so on.

 So it came to pass that the African religions were conserved in Cuba: not only that of the Yoruba but also the Congo and Carabalí. Throughout the centuries in the 'barrancones" and "cabildos" a complex religion consisting of ritual, songs and dances were kept alive. 

 Meanwhile, colonizing agents, mainly English and French were busy taking over the African continent and destroying their cultural heritage and their way of life. Thus it is interesting to note that much of the ancient African religions are better preserved in Cuba and Brazil than in Africa itself!

c- The French Connection

 In 1791, an event occurred in Haiti that would forever change the course of Cuban music history: the overthrow of the French masters by African slaves. The French colonists fled Haiti with some of their slaves and established themselves in what was then known as the province of Oriente on the easternmost part of the island of Cuba.

  There they built huge coffee plantations and in a short time, by virtue of their economic power, became a force in local affairs. Santiago de Cuba was then, and is now, the second largest city in the country. The French masters became a part of its high society.

 The French also brought with them dances such as the gavotte and saraband, the contradanza or danza Francesa, a salon dance based on French country dancing which had found considerable popularity among the French middle class. This dance was played with European musical instruments, but often the musicians they used were blacks or mulattoes.

 Of course, drums were not used at these dances at this time, as they were thought to be a "lower" kind of musical instrument reserved for African slaves and not for European or upper class ears. It is interesting to note that even though the drums became the center of Afro-Ciban music in the 20th century, as late as the 1950s drummers and percussionists were still the lowest paid musicians in the Cuban orchestras! It is a good example of lingering cultural attitudes and prejudices.

 The black and mulatto musicians in the French orchestras that played the danza Francesa, often plucked the violins like a percussion instrument with plenty of pizzicato in their playing. The resultant rhythm owes its vitality to the "cinquillo," a rhythm element clearly of African origin. The cinquillo can be found in the bata-rhythms of the Santeria cults as well as in Haitian voodoo.

 As an interesting footnote, two of the most famous black violin players of the 19th century, Brindis de Sala and Joseito White, became internationally famous violinists.

 White, born in 1837, was the composer of the fine dance called "La Bella Cubana," a masterpiece of early Cuban music and it is still played today. De Salas was called "the Cuban Paganini." He became a musician of the German court , was even made a baron and decorated with the Legion of Honor! He played all the European courts from St. Petersburg to Paris and was admired wherever he went.

 He had a life of great contrasts, however, and died cold, hungry and penniless in Buenos Aires in 1911. That city, just a few years before, had been filled with admirers and presented De Salas with a Stradivarius violin.