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Otra visión de la música popular cubana (review)

2007; University of Texas Press; Volume: 28; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/lat.2007.0031

1536-0199

Alejandro L. Madrid-González, Liliana González Moreno,

Spanish Literature and Culture Studies

Reviewed by: Otra visión de la música popular cubana Alejandro L. Madrid and Liliana González Moreno Leonardo Acosta . Otra visión de la música popular cubana. La Habana: Letras Cubanas, 2004. 275 pp., notes, index. Paper $10.00. ISBN: 9591008678/ 978-9591008671. A recent recipient of the Cuban National Literature Prize, music critic and saxophonist Leonardo Acosta offers Otra visión de la música popular cubana as a challenge to the histories of music written "in response to diverse nationalisms, foreign interests, anachronistic creeds, or on the contrary, trendy ideological configurations" (10). The book, foremost a collection of previously published articles, is divided in three sections. The first part consists of nine essays devoted to issues of genre in the production of Cuban popular music on the island. The second section is comprised by four chapters that analyze the relationship of Cuban popular music with different American and Caribbean music traditions. The third part is an annex formed by three essays that bear no thematic relation to each other, ranging from the kitsch and melodramatic aspects [End Page 303] of bolero, to the role of Israel López "Cachao" in the development of mambo and descarga, to a brief homage to Ernesto Lecuona. From the outset, Acosta's book comes across as a necessary addition to the recent body of music scholarship dealing with the critical revision of the ideologies that informed Latin American music historiography throughout the twentieth century. Acosta's book is particularly significant as it engages the positivistic, scientist, and nationalist projects that still shape Cuban music academia at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Instead of providing a chapter-by-chapter description of the book, this review summarizes its main ideas and calls attention to its accomplishments and shortcomings. One of the main contributions of Acosta's book is found in his critique of the way in which contemporary Cuban music historiography has perpetuated myths about the development of Cuban popular music. Although the author constantly refers to the work of classic Cuban scholars like Alejo Carpentier, Fernando Ortiz, and Argeliers León, his real concern is to question how contemporary scholars have (mis)read them rather than to deconstruct the essentialist rhetoric that characterized these writings. He is particularly interested in the deconstruction of myths that have been perpetuated generation after generation. As part of his argument, Acosta problematizes the work of contemporary Cuban music scholars such as Gloria Antolitia, Yarelis Domínguez, Martha Esquenazi, Danilo Orozco, and Rolando Pérez Fernández (although Pérez Fernández's name is never actually mentioned, his well-known work on the "binarization" of ternary rhythms is referenced), and puts them in critical dialogue with Carpentier, Ortiz, and León. This initial revision reveals an author interested in, among other things, the reevaluation of indigenous cultures as part of the development of a national Cuban culture (in opposition to a discourse that emphasizes a mestizaje between African and European cultures that neglects indigenous traditions). Particularly insightful is Acosta's discussion of "generic complexes," a well-established theoretical notion among Cuban scholars. Frequently attributed to Argeliers León (even though throughout his writings León prefers to use the concept of "cancionero," borrowed from Carlos Vega as Acosta comments), the notion of "generic complexes" became the foundation for the development of an almost evolutionist theory of musical genres among Cuban scholars. In Otra visión, the author is remarkably lucid in exposing the essentialist character of this classification and in exposing the problems it generates among contemporary Cuban musicologists.1 In the rest of the first section of the book, Acosta "sets the record straight" regarding the "myth of origin" of traditional genres such as danzón, bolero, mambo, and cha cha, and even offers an especially clear [End Page 304] explanation of the epistemological differences between critical and cultural theories within the context of Cuban popular music. In the second section of the book, taking the histories of jazz, Latin jazz, and salsa as points of departure, Acosta explores the transnational convergence and the rich musical exchanges between Cuba and the United States. His reflection provides a window into the "other...