Mode, Melody, and Harmony in Traditional Afro-Cuban Music: From Africa to Cuba.
2007; University of Illinois Press; Volume: 27; Issue: 1 Linguagem: Inglês
ISSN
1946-1615
Autores Tópico(s)Music History and Culture
ResumoAfro-Cuban traditional music constitutes one of the richest musical heritages of the Americas and has received a commensurate amount of scholarly attention. Published research on Afro-Cuban music has tended to focus on drumming (Amira and Cornelius 1992), biography (Velez 2000), relations to issues of national identity formation (Moore 1997), folkloricization under the Cuban Revolution (Hagedorn 2001), and general ethnography and religion (Ortiz 1975, 1985). Surprisingly, none of these studies makes more than passing mention of the modal and melodic aspects of Afro-Cuban music. (1) Study of these features is overdue. The melodic practices of Afro-Cuban music constitute a rich and in many ways internally consistent style system. Rather than simple reciting tones or ditties borrowed from Western music, melodies of the extensive corpus of songs are typically distinctive in style, with dramatic leaps, bold contours, coherent modal features, and expressive and appealing characteristics. Their study can be significant not only for its own sake but also for broader implications it may suggest for discovering relationships of Cuban music to African sources, as well as for a better understanding of the extent and nature of creativity and, alternately, conservatism in Afro-Cuban music culture. In this article, we present a preliminary overview of melodic and modal aspects of traditional Afro-Cuban music, focusing on those genres that might be called neo-African in the sense that they have tended to retain African-derived stylistic features and have, in most respects, largely resisted overt Western influence. These genres, for purposes of this article, comprise in particular the corpus of songs associated with the syncretic religions or sects of Santeria (also known as Regla de Ocha and Regla Lucumi), Palo, Iyesa, and Arara, as well as the secular genre rumba columbia. After making various observations about melodic conventions, modality, and tonicity, we explore harmonization techniques and make tentative comments about relationships to related genres and practices in Africa and about the nature of the musical transculturation and consolidation that occurred in Cuba as different African-derived music traditions interacted with each other and with European music. The analysis of Afro-Cuban melodic style involves certain challenges that, although hardly unique to this subject, remain significant. No traditional emic terminology for modal or melodic features exists, nor are there extant conventions of articulating principles of such technical features. Such practices as harmonization of melodies are far from standardized, and even ascertaining the tonal center of a given melody (or the sense to which that tonicity is important) may be difficult. Conventions and aesthetics have to be gleaned primarily from practice and from informal emic discourse, while taking care not to impose inappropriate musicological conceptions. However, increasing numbers of performers of traditional Afro-Cuban music have some sort of formal training in or knowledge of Western music, as is the case with Orlando Fiol and such people as David Oquendo, who is both a virtuoso jazz guitarist and a director of a folkloric ensemble. Of course, as Oquendo (2006) points out, singers lacking such technical knowledge may nevertheless be expert musicians: They may not be able to tell you what the tonic of a song is, but they know the repertoire perfectly and will tell you if you sing incorrectly or out of clave. In this regard, the authors' backgrounds may merit brief mention. Orlando Fiol, born in New York to Puerto Rican parents, has an extensive background in Afro-Cuban music and may be considered an effective insider to this tradition. As a bata drummer initiated to the sacred, consecrated bata fundamento of Cuban master Pancho Quinto, he has performed in the New York and Philadelphia areas regularly and professionally for over twenty years. …
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