CUBAN TRANSITIONS

“Se puede bailar a cualquier música cubana, pero sobre todo preferimos la salsa.” “You can dance to any Cuban music, but overall we prefer salsa.” -Salsa dancers

“El éxito depende de las posibilidades de trabajo que tengas; hay muchos músicos en Cuba” “Success depends on the job opportunities that you have; there are a lot of musicians in Cuba” –Ariam, pianista

“La Trova y los cantantes viejos o ya muertos siguen teniendo influencia en la música de ahora” “Trova music and the old and dead singers still influence today’s music.” -CD sellers on Obispo St.

These three quotes exemplify the complexities of the Cuban music scene and the melding of genres, time periods, and styles that make up the music of today.

I left for Cuba with the idea that I was going to explore the relationship between the older genres, specifically Trova, Son, Salsa Cubana, and Latin Jazz, and the more modern genres of Timba, Rap, and Reggaeton. I discuss the closure of many nightclubs and cabarets after the Revolution and the depoliticization of music during the Special Period and the role these played in changing the musical atmosphere in Cuba. I wondered if musicians would work less for profit and more for the sake of art. I didn’t come to any definitive conclusions on these topics, but my perceptions and appreciation of Cuban music transformed dramatically over our time there. Two aspects of Cuban music that especially struck me were the abundance of Cuban musicians and the “traditional” nature of the music we were exposed to.

I knew Castro strongly supports the arts and that Cuba has multiple government institutions for training and uniting musicians, but I had no idea how many musicians there were in Cuba. I was stunned there were enough musicians to play for us in anything from a duo to a sextet at breakfast, lunch, dinner, walking down the street, and even in a crocodile preserve. In fact, “Cuba remains one of the countries with the highest percentage of musicians per capita (one professional musician for every 900 inhabitants)” and that’s just professionals (Diaz-Ayala). Many of the musicians I met learned to play “en la calle” (in the streets) as they liked to say. For example, only two members of the five person government sponsored group Hermanazos formally studied music. Needless to say, the Cuban music scene is very competitive.  I had a long conversation with a pianist named Ariam at the Plaza Hotel in La Havana. He studies at the Instituto Superior de Arte, one of the best music schools in Cuba, but he insisted that “es gratis de cierta manera” (“it’s free in a certain way”). He mysteriously stated that “there are ways to know how to do well on the entrance exam”. Furthermore, he indicated that your job prospects greatly depend on the friendships you form through institutes such as his. However, “you have to work very very hard,” he stressed many times during the interview; proof of this was his dedication to playing piano without pay at the hotel 7 hrs/day after school. Apparently the tips in CUCs make it worth the time. I wondered if he was trying to create another useful friendship when he insisted on playing me “Somos Novios” at the end of our conversation. Ariam taught me that being a musician in Cuba is hard. Being well trained/educated, like most other professions in Cuba, by no means guarantees affluence. Cubans are forced to find innovative ways of creating, performing, and making a career out of music. Scarcity in the Special Period pushed this streak of creativity which many attribute to the amazing musical accomplishments in Cuba. Increased pressure from the tourism industry has further incited a need for innovation if you are going to succeed in the Cuban economy. Musicians have to please the tourists by “selling pre-revolution Cuba to a post-revolution population” in the words of Bianca Arias. At the same time, they need to stand out from the plethora of other Cuban musicians trying to do the same. While many of the people involved in the music industry complained, like Ariam, about all the problems with the system in Cuba, I was impressed with Cubans’ perseverance and dedication to “traditional” genres and making them their own through creativity and enthusiasm.

Among many son songs, some salsa, an Orishas song, and a lot of boleros, this is one of the videos I found on YouTube when I typed in “traditional Cuban music”.

I put “traditional” in quotes in the previous paragraph because my idea of this word has been completely altered after our trip. Not only is Cuban music impossible to categorize, but like any art form, each artists brings their own style to the table. A phenomenon of fusion is currently taking place in Cuba in which many distinct Latin American musical forms are combined in various ways that blur the lines of specific genres. For example, our group heard the song Gauntanamera at the Buena Vista Social Club restaurant from a sextet with horns, drums, and an electric keyboard as well as from duos sitting on the sidewalk with one guitar in the Centro Historico. This patriotic song, famed to be written around 1930, is a truly traditional Cuban song. However, another song we heard repeatedly, the Chan Chan, was actually written post-revolution in 1987. This fact surprised me since the Chan Chan had been portrayed to me as the most “traditional” song in Cuba. Clearly traditions can be created within very little time. Although Chan Chan neatly fits into the famous Cuban son genre, many contemporary Cuban musicians incorporate aspects of this style into their own, creating a uniquely Cuban genre. The Hermanazos group told me they identify with the Cuban son, and it influences their art, but doesn’t define it. This ideology can be seen in many artists of the new fusion. However, fusion was a lot more subtle in the music we experienced than it is in what many call the modern Cuban dance music, Timba. Maya Roy attributes this to Cuban musicians being “torn between their training at the schools that have forged very similar musical ideas in them, their audience, and the tendencies of the outside market” (175). Although it’s tempting to solely attribute the abundance of “traditional” music to touristic tastes, the truth is that it’s also deeply embedded in Cuban ideology.

Timba music demonstrates this dance between traditional and modern styles. Timba is a type of fusion based on a development of son that illustrates newer styles and tastes. This popular music is a form of news and expression for many Cubans as each Timba song has an improvisation component that allows musicians to sing about whatever they are passionate about at that time. A lovely painter named Juan that I met in his shop in Cienfuegos swore that the most popular band in Cuba is Los Van Van, the group that popularized Timba as its own genre.  However, as tourists, we heard little to none of this band’s music. Perhaps this was due to the perception that, as one musician told me, “a las turistas no les gusta La Timba…mucho ruido” (“tourists don’t like Tima…very loud”) or maybe we didn’t hear it because as Roy suggests, Los Van Van’s founder, Juan Formell, intended “to counter the fashion—apparently irresistible abroad—of Cuban musical expression from before the Revolution performed in the old style” (181). Regardless of the reasons for our lack of exposure to Timba, I strongly suggest everyone further explore this genre as it reveals the depth of Cuban culture and is joyously danceable.

According to Roy, the official musical goals of the Revolution were:

to safeguard the most authentic cultural roots and national traditions; to promote the movement of amateur musicians and singers in order to discover new talent; to train high-quality professional musicians by providing better musical education; and to create structures allowing for musical experimentation. (Roy, 150)

As I hope this short commentary illustrated, from my experience in Cuba these goals have largely been accomplished accompanied by many other accidental side effects like rigorous competition, fusion, and a dichotomous relationship between tourist and popular Cuban music.

Roy, Maya. Cuban Music. Princeton: Markus Wiener Publishers, 2002. Print.