They Brought the Essence of Africa—Social Memory, Sensational Heritage, and Embodied Practices in Perico and Agramonte, Cuba

Abstract

In the Cuban towns of Perico and Agramonte, the Afro-Cuban religious practices inherently involve dance and music practices that exist in a mutual dialogue of sounding the body and moving the music. But the dialogue between the music and dance are but a part of the embodied sensorium. Stories, narratives, memories, religious objects, and ritual process are as resonant. The embodied-body is contextualized by these conversational sensual forms. Together, they form and mobilize the sensational heritage of these towns. This presentation will narrate the evocative stories and historical narratives of Perico and Agramonte, Cuba—in particular, their African-derived Arará religious practices. Revealed as a fluid and shifting social memory, the narratives tell the stories of the “African” elders and their religious objects and deities that arrived with them “directly” from Africa in Perico and Agramonte. These narratives resonate with imperfect but evocative history and imagination. They inform and imbue religious ritual and community identity. They also wrap around and imbue the dance and musical expressions that ground, move, sound, and evoke social memory, which is at one and the same time—a collective weaving of history and myth, construction, change, reimagining and reweaving. Is this social memory fact or fiction, or both? How does embodied sensational heritage relate to these stories, whether tangibly felt, touched, heard, or danced? And how is this social memory understood as its own creative process?