Hacer Cuba con la música: La construcción de una identidad nacional cubana a través de la ensayística musical carpenteriana

Bernat Garí Barceló

doi:10.5209/rev_dice.2014.v32.44635

Abstract

The popularization of essays and theories that deal with Carpentier took place throughout the 80's and early 90's. However, after a smooth fever about Carpentier in the recent years of the last century, the number of such interdisciplinary approaches, which have already been made to the general work of the author, is, by far, poor and meagre. With this article we proceed, on one hand, to dissect, analyze and present the capital Carpentier’s essay Music in Cuba , the importance of which as a significant part of the essays by the Cuban author has so far evaded critically, and to examine, on the other hand, the process of making a Latin American – and also national- identity, through the pages of the essay that concerns us. We will proceed, also, to an exercise in intertextuality linking Music in Cuba with various other works by Carpentier, which also develop and connect concepts such as music and nationalism

Highlights

The popularization of essays and theories that deal with Carpentier took place throughout the 80's and early 90's
After a smooth fever about Carpentier in the recent years of the last century, the number of such interdisciplinary approaches, which have already been made to the general work of the author, is, by far, poor and meagre
A través de las páginas de La Música en Cuba, se nos irá descubriendo, a modo de comparsa maravillosa, una gran familia de músicos y demiurgos sonoros que pueden considerarse los verdaderos artífices y fundadores del lenguaje nacional o del folklore cubano: desde el genésico Esteban Salas y Castro –primer compositor cubano ampliamente documentado-, al compositor Samuell – completamente profético en el desarrollo y asimilación de ciertas células rítmicas de marcada africanía-, o, ya en un estadio culminativo, Ignacio Cervantes: el músico más importante del siglo XX cubano según Carpentier que se sitúa “ en el final de una evolución de tipo nacionalista, que cierra su ciclo en el siglo pasado, sobre un género preciso, [...] donde la cubanidad es pura emanación del individuo sometido a una peculiar formación ambiental18”