Wed. Nov. 18th – Cuban Music Research
Hill, Donald R. West African and Haitian Influences on the Ritual and Popular Music of Carriacou, Trinidad, and Cuba. Black Music Research Journal, Vol. 18, No. 1/2 (Spring – Autumn, 1998), pp. 183-201.
Gonzalez, Fernando. Players: Cha-Cha-Cha with the Times. Down Beat – Jazz, Blues & Beyond,69:12 December 2002, p. 50-51.
Rumba - (Ideas – Appropriateness)
Rumba developed in the in the late 1800′s in Cuba as an energetic Afro-Cuban dance. Rumba was considered lewd, dangerous, and inappropriate and was often suppressed and restricted.
Guaracha – (Ideas – appropriateness)
Guarcha has a rapid tempo and with lyrics. It originated in a Bufo comic theater in the late 1800′s. In the early 1900′s it was commonly heard in the brothels of Havana. The songs used slang and discussed within the lyrics politics and people and events popular in the news of the times.
Afro-Cuban Music in Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Vol. 3, Ed. by Ellen Koskoff (Routledge, 2000). 1390pp.
Santería (Activities – Rituals)
A ritual religious music that involves song, drumming, and dancing. This type of music acts as a “doorway” to religious deities (orishas) so they can be praised and “invoked through the phenomenon of possession trance.”
Bembé (Material Culture – Instruments used)
Bembe’ consists of an ensemble of an iron bell (or guataca – hoe blade), which is said to provide a timeline within the music; one to three gourds (“known as güiros or shekeres“), which give rhythmic support to a song; and one to three conga drums, which function to support or lead the other instruments and the song.
Jazz (Social Organization – Who plays and listens to the music)
Cuban influence on Jazz in New Orleans can be clearly traced back to the 1880s, when the habanera first became popular.
Traceable elements within Jazz go back to Afro-Cuban flutist Alberto Socarras in the 1920′s and Machito and his Afro-Cubans. ” Machito’s orchestra, which was formed in 1940, combined traditional Cuban elements with jazz.” The rhythm section of this band consisted of the piano, bass, bongo, and timbale (played by the young Tito Puente).
The audience of Afro-Cuban jazz grew in 1946 when Dizzy Gillespie, worked briefly with a Cuban drummer, rumbero.
Charanga (Material Culture – Instruments used)
Charanga goes back to the 1800′s in the Cuban form danzón. The instrumentation of the charanga francesa was made up of wooden flute, strings, double bass, timbales, and güiro. Later, the strings were often replaced by brass, but the original, general combination remains similar today (with the addition of a vocalist, cowbell, and conga drum).
Cuba in Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Volume 2: South America, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean, Ed. by Dale A. Olson and Daniel E. Sheehy (Routledge, 1998). 1082pp
(Ideas – spirituality, rituals)
African traditions were allowed to continue in Cuba because the Spanish masters allowed slaves to keep their traditions of drumming and dance to worship as they did in Africa. The allowance of a society of sorts for the African slaves often had a king, a queen, and a complex social hierarchy. This relative leniency, combined with compulsory baptism into Roman Catholicism, resulted in the combination of West African deities with Christian saints. Other names for this religion are Regla de Ochá (Doctrine of the deity Ochá) and Lucumí.
