Experimental fusion (<i>fusión</i>), ritual <i>batá</i>, and gendered interventions

Abstract

Cuba constitutes a site of immense importance for the history of jazz (and Latin jazz) in the United States, and attention to the contributions of Cuban women artists contributes to a broader understanding of the gendered histories of global jazz. This article explores women jazz artists in Cuba and its diaspora, excavating how women instrumentalists and vocalists have transformed the landscape of Cuban, Latin, and global jazz through groundbreaking and experimental performances. I attend to how the fusion-centered approaches of Cuban women unearth an emic orientation towards collaborative experimentalism that builds upon specific, local histories of jazz performance on the island. These performances draw upon histories of revolutionary-era musical experimentalism and fusion (fusión) that have emerged since the late 1960s and 1970s in Cuba and which repeatedly tie jazz experimentalism closely—though not categorically—to dance forms (both popular and ritual). Amid Cuba’s intensifying economic crises, I additionally engage how women regularly pursue careers—and, in an overwhelming number of cases, emigration—to Spain, Canada, the continental United States, Puerto Rico, and other international locales, in turn impacting local and translocal jazz scenes.