Latin Jazz Research Articles

Movimiento: La cubanización del Hip Hop

Movimiento:La cubanización del Hip Hop Alejandro Vallellanes Cauthorn Short Radiography of Hip Hop in Cuba. Dirigido y producido por Ricardo Bacallao. Bacallao en Puerto Film, 2004. Aprox. 21 min. Uno de los fenómenos más interesantes dentro del rap del mundo de habla hispana es la escena de hip hop subterráneo en Cuba. Quizás por el aura de lo desconocido y lo prohibido, el rap cubano se ha convertido en el blanco de un sinnúmero de documentales, ensayos y estudios sociológicos, tanto de propios cubanos como de extranjeros. Aún no he conocido escena de hip hop nacional (de habla hispana) con tantos documentales como lo es la de Cuba, como por ejemplo Inventos (2005) y Calle Real 70 (2008). Uno de ellos es la modesta producción [End Page 244] independiente que es el objeto de la presente reseña: A Short Radiography of Hip Hop in Cuba, por Ricardo Bacallao. Este documental explora las maneras en la que los jóvenes afro-cubanos se apropian del imaginario transnacional del hip hop para encuadrar demandas y estrategias políticas locales. Las redes trasnacionales del rap constituyen un vehículo por el cual la juventud afro-cubana negocia con el estado y construye estrategias para la supervivencia en las circunstancias difíciles del llamado período especial de los últimos 18 años. Atraídos por la política nacionalista negra de ciertos raperos afro-americanos que han acuñado el término de rap conciente o alternativo, los raperos cubanos ofrecen críticas fuertes a la globalización neoliberal y proponen la noción de Cuba como una nación negra que lucha para la justicia en un orden mundial desigual. Sin embargo, los raperos también destacan causas para la justicia racial dentro de Cuba y hacen demandas para la inclusión de los sectores marginados en los procesos de cambio económico y político en la isla. Además, dadas las oportunidades presentadas por el aumento del turismo y una economía de mercado limitada, algunos grupos de rap sugieren estrategias tales como las ventas ilegales de materiales y el consumerismo que constituyen opciones alternativas para la juventud negra en un período de crisis. En el presente documental, aunque corto (aproximadamente 22 minutos), se analiza la relación entre los hilos diversos, el del movimiento hip hop cubano y el del estado socialista, haciendo énfasis en cómo los flujos globales de la cultura proporcionan un medio para la reacción y contestación sobre los discursos locales del poder y raza. Lo más evidente desde el principio del documental es la discrepancia que existe entre el gobierno cubano y los "raperos". Aunque el conflicto entre raperos y estado ha existido desde el nacimiento del hip hop en Nueva York (como lo fue con los grupos Boogie Down Productions, X-Clan y Public Enemy), el caso cubano es único pues posee unas características inigualables. El gobierno, atento a la popularidad creciente de la cultura hip hop, decidió crear en el 2002 la Agencia Cubana del Rap para, según ellos, "ayudar" a los raperos cubanos en el desarrollo de sus carreras a través de contratos de grabación, promoción y tiempo de radio. La Agencia, junto a la Asociación Hermanos Saiz (AHS, brazo artístico del Partido Comunista de Cuba y de la Unión de Jóvenes Comunistas), son las organizaciones oficiales envueltas en "promover" el rap en Cuba. Sin embargo, la realidad para la mayoría de los raperos es otra. La Agencia y la AHS operan como formas de control de parte del gobierno para censurar o filtrar todo discurso que no posea una línea de pensamiento similar a la del Partido. Parte de las entrevistas que se llevan [End Page 245] a cabo en el documental señalan cómo el Festival de Rap en Cuba (la actividad musical más importante para el rap cubano) fue tomado por la AHS en el 2001 excluyendo a los propios fundadores, Valeci y Rensoli entre otros, de participar en la organización del mismo. Tanto el director como los entrevistados...

From Afro-Cuban Rhythms to Latin Jazz

From Afro-Cuban Rhythms to Latin Jazz

Legends of Jazz with Ramsey Lewis, Season One, Vol. One, and: Legends of Jazz with Ramsey Lewis, Season One, Vol. Two, and: Legends of Jazz with Ramsey Lewis, Showcase (review)

Reviewed by: Legends of Jazz with Ramsey Lewis, Season One, Vol. One, and: Legends of Jazz with Ramsey Lewis, Season One, Vol. Two, and: Legends of Jazz with Ramsey Lewis, Showcase Robert Iannapollo Legends of Jazz with Ramsey Lewis, Season One, Vol. One. DVD + CD. Chicago, IL: LRS Media, 2006. 090001. $24.98. Legends of Jazz with Ramsey Lewis, Season One, Vol. Two. DVD + CD. Chicago, IL: LRS Media, 2006. 090003. $24.98. Legends of Jazz with Ramsey Lewis, Showcase. DVD + CD. Chicago, IL: LRS Media, 2006. 968701. $19.98. The production of Legends of Jazz was trumpeted with great fanfare when it was announced. And when the completed product was ready to air on PBS, the media publicity machine was churned out to full crank with articles in all major media ( jazz journals, major metropolitan newspapers). The end result is now with us. Under consideration are the first two volumes of the first season, eight episodes of the full run of thirteen plus a showcase collection that contains "highlight performances." Each package comes with a DVD of four individual episodes as well as an accompanying CD that excerpts the musical performances of those episodes. Was the hype worth it? On the basis of these DVDs, the answer is a regrettable no. The end result is unambitious, unadventurous, underwhelming, and, frankly, dull. Each episode has a theme (alto saxes, Latin jazz, singers, etc.) and a schematic. It opens with a brief, superficial history of the particular theme in question. It usually takes less than a minute and covers only the surface aspects of the topic. It is also quite a slanted viewpoint of the genre. If one were to go by these histories, the only innovation to occur after the bebop revolution was fusion, which evolved into contemporary jazz, which happens to have its own episode. The inclusion of a contemporary jazz episode is questionable since most committed jazz fans find that music to be a significantly watered down version of the original. We will only mention that one of the producers of the show is Larry Rosen who was the "R" in GRP Records, one of the premier labels hawking contemporary jazz. The innovators of the '60s are barely mentioned. When talking of the evolution of the alto sax, the names of both Ornette Coleman and Anthony Braxton are not even mentioned, despite the fact that both made major contributions to the alto sax vocabulary. I could list countless examples of this type of egregious omission but will spare the reader. While one could excuse the producers of the show for exhibiting a little bias toward their own product, it should not be at the expense of writing more significant contributors to the music out of the mix. The history is followed by a sequence where host Ramsey Lewis introduces and interviews the guests. Lewis is a genial host but to say that these interviews sound scripted would be an understatement. In most cases, the banter is so stilted, the questions so inane, and the stories so overtold, that spontaneity seems precluded. After the interview, each guest gives a musical performance, usually a three-to five-minute sequence. After all the guests have performed, they are united for a group jam, another three- to five-minute segment, and then invited to play the show's theme song along with Ramsey Lewis over the closing credits. And then it is over. To quote the old Peggy Lee song, "is that all there is?" And therein lies the major problem with this show. At a half hour, it is barely enough time to scratch the surface. The performances barely have enough time to breathe. Most solos are rote, at best. And sometimes the inclusion of a performance is mind-boggling. During the Golden Horns episode, trumpeter Clark Terry (an elder statesman on the horn), winds up performing his most commercially-viable piece, Mumbles, a mock-scat vocal tune that is an inconsequential bit of fluff. He barely plays any trumpet on it at all! Considering this was an episode about the horn, and that a Terry trumpet solo would have been worthy of inclusion, the selection of this...

From Afro-Cuban rhythms to Latin jazz

Fernandez, Raul A. From Afro-Cuban Rhythms to Latin Jazz, Berkeley, CA: U of California P, 2006. 199 pp. Much of research behind Raul A. Fernandez's From Afro-Cuban Rhythms to Latin Jazz comes from author's participation as a consultant to Smithsonian Institution's Jazz Oral History Program from 1994 to 2000. While working in this capacity, Fernandez interviewed Afro-Cuban musicians in United States and throughout world. His access to these musicians-Celia Cruz, Mongo Santamaria, and Israel Cachao Lopez, to name just a few-is both greatest asset to his short book and, unfortunately, underscores its most significant weakness. While study tries to assess influence of Afro-Cuban over course of twentieth century, and Cuban son in particular, result is an unevenly divided introduction to Cuban dance music: one third historical and theoretical analysis, two thirds biographical sketches with rich anecdotal testimony. As Fernandez organizes book, chapters one, two, and three are devoted to roots of Cuban son, undeniably, and unquestionably, foundation of Cuban popular in twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Fernandez seems to feel it necessary to prove this point, along with others like importance of dancing in Cuban music, as if there were ever a debate over subject. Nonetheless, historical information provided is accurate, if not new, and does offer a concise overview of genealogy of Cuban dance from African drumming traditions through rumba, culminating in son of early 1900s. What is presented, however, has already been explored in greater detail in works by Cristobal Diaz Ayala, Helio Orovio, Natalio Galan, Leonardo Acosta, Peter Manuel and John Storm Roberts. This shortfall could be mitigated significantly if book were clearly geared toward a popular, that is, non-academic, audience. Unfortunately, Fernandez embraces terminology such as transculturation, and imagined communities without explanation or even acknowledgment of Fernando Ortiz or Benedict Anderson, a move that likely alienates popular reader. After historical background of son, remainder of first part focuses on what Fernandez calls, following lead of Willie Colon, the salsa concept. While there is room for such a discussion-one that distinguishes a unique attitude and point of view identifiable with salsa-the author never really gets there, instead referring vaguely to ethnic identity and Latino pan-ethnic music without coming any closer to a definition of salsa than his predecessors (17). Salsa has always been a slippery term, and for good reasons that at least initially were more political and economic than aesthetic. In fact, cornerstone of any attempt at a definition of salsa must begin with its development in United States in late 1960s and 1970s, a period after Cuban Revolution when this permutation of Cuban son, performed by Cuban, Dominican, and Puerto Rican emigres, was distanced from its Cuban roots and guilt-by-association with Fidel Castro in order to sell records during Cold War. An argument can be made that two unique strands of dance based in Cuban son developed soon after 1959. One remained on island and is typified by Los Van Van, Irakere, and, recently, NG la Banda. Likewise, another strand developed in exile, mostly in United States, and is performed by Cubans and Cuban-Americans, as well as other Latin American immigrants and their children. This music, saka, is represented by Celia Cruz, Tito Puente, Mongo Santamarfa, Willie Colon, Ruben Blades, Johnny Pacheco, and many others associated with Fania record label. Fernandez, however, elects not to address this important historical and cultural development. Except for a few cursory references, book barely mentions 1959 revolution and its impact on Cuban dance on and off island. …

‘Una Escuela Rara’: Havana Meets Harlem in Montmartre

This article analyzes the work of Graciela Pérez, best known as the vocalist for the New York based band Machito and His Afro-Cubans, a founding group for what comes to be known as ‘Cubop’ or Latin Jazz. Her overall oeuvre, however, spans from the early 1930s to 2004, travels through several continents, and by default, genres. I pay particular attention to an oral history Pérez recorded with the Smithsonian museum in 1998. I argue that the recording is a musical one that disrupts in-place approaches used in the writing and archiving of popular music. My analysis of Pérez is not undertaken to simply rectify the masculinist and nationalist tenor in discussions of genre. Instead, I'm more interested in the work that her oral history does, especially the ways in which it theorizes what I call the “methodological wanderlust” encountered when tracing the performance circuits of Cuban women musicians.

Cuban Music: A Review Essay

CUBAN MUSIC: A REVIEW ESSAY Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo. By Ned Sublette. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2004. [xv, 672 p. ISBN 1-55652-516-8. $36.00.] Illustrations, index, bibliography. Cuban Music from A to Z. By Helio Orovio. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004. [xi, 235 p. ISBN 0-8223-3212-4. $24.95.] Illustrations, appendices, bibliography. Cubano Be, Cubano Bop: One Hundred Years of Jazz in Cuba. By Leonardo Acosta. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 2003. [xvi, 288 p. ISBN 158834147X. $29.95.] Index. Divine Utterances: The Performance of Afro-Cuban Santeria. By Katherine J. Hagedorn. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001. [xvi, 296 p. ISBN 1-56098-947-5. $24.95.] Illustrations, index, bibliography, discography, glossary, compact disc. The Buena Vista Social Club phenomenon, which continues to thrive with every new solo release, has marked the latest Cuban music craze in the United States and internationally. In fact, for well over a century now Cuban music has continued to attain widespread dissemination and popularity, first through sheet music in the nineteenth century and then touring musicians and recordings beginning in the early twentieth century. The genres and styles that Cubans and others have popularized internationally have included the habanera (mid-nineteenth century), son (beginning in the 1920s), mambo (late 1940s through the 1950s), cha cha cha (1950s), charanga-based son music (1950s through the 1960s), and timba (1990s). These repertories, while firmly rooted in Cuba's musical landscape, also became transnational musics, contributing significantly to the formation of related musical styles such as salsa, soukous, and mbalax in other parts of the world. Given the tremendous impact that Cuban music has had internationally and, in particular, on popular music of the United States (e.g., Latin jazz), it is important to note that before the 1990s scholarly, let alone general books on Cuban popular music, were not readily available in English. Cuban historians, anthropologists, and others, of course, wrote extensively on Cuban music throughout the twentieth century. Alejo Carpentier's La musica en Cuba (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Economica), originally published in 1946, continues to be an important historical source for mostly pre-twentieth-century Cuban popular and art music. It was translated into English by Alan West-Duran and published as Music in Cuba in 2001 by the University of Minnesota Press. Cuban ethnologist and anthropologist Fernando Ortiz produced numerous works on Afro-Cuban music and culture throughout the first half of the twentieth century, yet his extremely important works remain untranslated. It was not until the early 1990s that North American ethnomusicologists and anthropologists began to research and publish critical and scholarly work on Cuban popular and folkloric music and dance. Peter Manuel's Essays on Cuban Music: North American and Cuban Perspectives (Lanham: University Press of America, 1991) is particularly notable for bringing together the work and theoretical perspectives of Cuban and North American musicologists and ethnomusicologists. Robin Moore's Nationalizing Blackness: Afrocubanismo and Artistic Revolution in Havana, 1920-1940 (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997) studies issues of race, national identity, music, and the arts in pre-Revolutionary Cuba, while Yvonne Daniel's Rumba: Dance and Social Change in Contemporary Cuba (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995) traces the development and social transformations of rumba music and dance in Cuba. In the last four years several more books on Cuban music have been published for scholarly and general audiences. Accordingly, the four works reviewed in this essay represent an increasing interest among North American publishers in providing translated editions of previously published Cuban books as well as historical and ethnomusicological work by North American writers. …

Cuban Fire: The Story of Salsa and Latin Jazz (review)

Cuban Fire: The Story of Salsa and Latin Jazz (review)

Awakening spaces: French Caribbean popular songs, music, and culture

The fast-paced zouk of Kassav', the romantic biguine of Malavoi, the jazz of Fal Frett, the ballads of Mona, and reggae of Kali and Poglo are all part of the burgeoning popular music scene in the French Caribbean. In this lively book, Brenda F. Berrian chronicles the rise of this music, which has captivated the minds and bodies of the Francophone world and elsewhere. Based on personal interviews and discussions of song texts, Berrian shows how these musicians express their feelings about current and past events, about themselves, their islands and the French. Through their lyrical themes, these songs create metaphorical that evoke narratives of desire, exile, subversion and Creole identity and experiences. Berrian opens up these spaces to reveal how the artists not only engage their listeners and effect social change, but also empower and identify themselves. She also explores the music as it relates to the art of drumming, and the genres such as African American and Latin jazz and reggae. With Awakening Spaces, Berrian adds fresh insight into the historical struggles and arts of the French Caribbean.

Tito Puente and the making of Latin music

He is known as El Rey - the king - and has come to epitomize the Latin experience in music, not just to Latinos throughout the United States and Latin America but to a worldwide audience of all backgrounds. Tito Puente and the Making of Latin Music is the first in-depth historical, musical, and cultural look at the career and the influence of this giant of Latin music. In this seminal work, Steven Loza brings the man and his music vividly to life through exclusive interviews with Puente and a number of his close associates, including Hilton Ruiz, Ray Santos, Jerry Gonzlez, Poncho Sanchez, and Joe Conzo, as well as music journalist Max Salazar and former DJ/producer Chico Sesma. Loza shows how Puente's music evolved in tandem with the crystallization of Latin music into its current compelling mix of Afro-Cuban music, salsa, and Latin jazz. Tracing Puente's innovations as a drummer and a bandleader, Loza defines his influence over the course of half a century on Latin music as well as on other musicians and musical genres. Loza also delineates the social and cultural history of Latin music, exploring questions of nationalism and ethnic expression, the play between musical creation and commercial competition, and the politics of so-called multiculturalism as they bear on Latin music and musicians. The book includes detailed musical analyses and a discography of more than a hundred recordings. Celebrating a dynamic performer and a genre that is deeply rooted in America's rich ethnic diversity, Tito Puente and the Making of Latin Music traces a significant current in twentieth-century culture and reveals all the vibrancy and color of a consummate artist's life, work, and world.

Latin jazz: the first of the fusions, 1880s to today

Latin jazz: the first of the fusions, 1880s to today

The Jazz Tinge in Dominican Music: A Black Atlantic Perspective

its inception, jazz has developed in dialogue with Afro-Latin musics; as Jelly Roll Morton affirmed, were integral to early jazz in quintessentially Caribbean city of New Orleans (quoted in Lomax 1973, 63). The two world wars spread North American popular culture along with U.S. hegemony, and jazz was subsequently domesticated worldwide. Especially fertile fusions of jazz and local musics developed in African-influenced music cultures (see Averill 1989; Coplan 1985; Pickney 1989). Afro-Cuban jazz became internationally known in 1940s under influence of Cuban musicians Machito, Mario Bauza, and Chano Pozo and of bebopper Dizzy Gillespie. Gillespie once wrote about his rapport with Pozo: Since Chano couldn't speak English, people always asked, `Well, how do you communicate?' `Deehee no peek pani, me no peek Angli, bo peek African,' Chano would answer [Dizzy no speak Spanish, I no speak English, but we both speak African] (Gillespie and Fraser 1979, 318). Similarly, Machito once said that merging of jazz with the rhythms of Cuban music was not a conventional union--it was a marriage of love (quoted in Waxer 1994, 154). But black Atlantic musics are a variegated constellation not a uniform soundscape; as Paul Gilroy (1993a, 109) affirms, Race carries with it no corona of fixed absolute meanings. The study of music in African diaspora thus involves struggling with one question in particular. It is puzzle of what analytic status should be given to variation ... between black cultures which their musical habits reveal (Gilroy 1993b, 79-80). While Latin jazz developed into a full-fleged genre in New York City (see Roberts 1979), jazz tinges became important in Dominican popular music. This article critically considers history of jazz tinge in Dominican music, tracing its reception and stylistic development. The Dominican Republic's population is estimated at 80 percent mixed African and European, 15 percent black, and 5 percent white; Dominican sociologist Pedro Perez Cabral (1967, 75) aptly calls his country a comunidad mulata, or mixed-race community. The African element in this mix is cardinal; as Martha Ellen Davis (1976, 2) attests, Dominican Republic without doubt, should be considered an Afro-American nation--that is, a New World nation in which African cultural influence figures prominently, if not predominantly. Unlike Africans and British, however, Africans and Iberians were not strangers when they met in Americas; two groups had shared lifeways for over seven hundred years during Moorish occupation of Iberian peninsula. The occupying forces in Spain came from as far away as Timbuktu (Ortiz 1952-1955, 3:64), and many of those who came to Caribbean from Spain were free settlers of partial African descent (Curtin 1969, 31). By end of eighteenth century, black and mixed-race freedmen outnumbered both whites and slaves in colonial Santo Domingo. The Spanish colony of Santo Domingo was founded in 1493 by Christopher Columbus. Its western third was ceded to France in 1697, and Republic of Haiti was founded there in 1804 as result of a successful slave uprising. With ideal of ridding entire island of colonialism and slavery, Haiti invaded Spanish Santo Domingo, unifying island in 1822. Although Dominican slaves welcomed Haitians, Eurocentric ruling classes looked disfavorably on Haitian occupation, repelling invaders and proclaiming independence of Dominican Republic--from Haiti and not from Spain--in 1844. then, Dominican upper classes have consistently propagated a Eurocentric notion of national identity that stands in stark contrast to highly African-influenced culture of their country's majority. The ensuing racial and cultural ambivalence is, as Frantz Fanon puts it, inherent to the colonial situation (1967, 83; see also Herskovits 1937, 295-296; Bourguignon 1951, 1969; Wilcken 1992; Austerlitz 1997, 7). …

The Blackwell guide to recorded jazz

Contents. Contributors. Preface and Acknowledgements to the Second Edition. Preface and Acknowledgements to the First Edition. Principal Selections. 1. The First Hot Bands. 2. Solo Stride and Swing Piano. 3. Big Bands to the Mid-1950s. 4. Swing-era Combos. 5. We Called it Music: Dixieland and Swing. 6. The New Orleans Revival. 7. The First Bop Bands. 8. The First Cool Jazz and West Coast Jazz Bands. 9. The First Hard Bop Bands. 10. Swing-Bop Combos. 11. Singers since the 1950s. 12. Latin Jazz. 13. Leaving Hard Bop. 14. Big Bands since the Late 1950s. 15. Soul Jazz and Jazz-Soul Fusion. 16. The Bop Revival. 17. Free Jazz. 18. Fusion. 19. Avant-garde Jazz, Freebop, World Music and other Eclecticisms.