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Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba

2008; Duke University Press; Volume: 88; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1215/00182168-2008-368

1527-1900

Andrew Grant Wood,

Cuban History and Society

One day during the late 1960s, renowned Cuban musician and nueva trova composer Pablo Milanés is said to have grown so frustrated with state television head Papito Serguera and other revolutionary officials censoring his songs that he exclaimed “to hell with Papito and his television station!” (p. 151). As it turns out, Milanés’s angry outburst came at a particularly low point in the history of the revolution, when state-led ideological initiatives intended to root out “decadent” foreign influences resulted in the detainment of approximately one-third of the adult male population. Nearly everyone jailed, including Milanés, faced stiff sentences that combined manual labor with various “reeducation” programs.As the anecdote about Milanés (whose photo as a young, bespectacled bohemian graces the book’s cover) and many other powerful examples discussed in Robin D. Moore’s fascinating study suggest, the history of popular music in Cuba has nearly always been political. From the early twentieth century, when explicit practices of racial discrimination were commonplace, to present-day visa denials by U.S. officials, Moore assembles an impressive array of personal testimony as well as primary and secondary sources. Fully aware of the political minefield through which he treads, the author neither endorses fully the revolutionary regime nor denies the impressive advances made in Cuban society and the considerable amount of funding made available to the arts over the past decades. Instead, Moore states early on that one of his main investigative concerns was “to explore the ‘slippage,’ or disconnect, between what state socialist societies ostensibly strive for through the arts and what they actually do, using Cuba as a case study” (p. 2). He has achieved this and much more.The book provides a history of music in Cuba from the 1950s to the present, with in-depth commentary on key genres, trends, institutions, and artists. After a brief recounting of earlier twentieth-century developments, Moore ably traces the evolution and politics of dance music, which Cubans continued to enjoy freely after the 1959 triumph. The music offered an upbeat, joyful sound that did not seem out of step with the ideological agenda of the new government during the early years of the revolution. Yet things gradually began to change when officials at the CNC (Consejo Nacional de Cultura), in association with members of the newly organized Cuban Communist Party (PCC) and with the compliance of directors of radio and television stations, increasingly pressured “performers to express their sympathies with socialist issues through their compositions and/or in live verbal segments between songs” (p. 109). Ten years later, party members had codified their rigid, moralizing directives in full. They successfully marginalized dance music and tended only to patronize the popular ensembles — such as Los Van Van and the Charanga Habanera — who played it as an enticement in motivating people to attend rallies, marches, and other official gatherings.As a growing climate of political conformism and fear took hold after the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion and the Cuban Missile Crisis the following year, Fidel Castro and the PCC encouraged what they understood as socially conscious music. In this regard, they approved of traditional sones dealing with economic and labor concerns, or choral compositions that glorified political ideals. At the same time they turned a deaf ear to the island’s rich musical heritage and many talented musicians. So apparently out of tune with Cuban sounds past or present, the revolutionary government promoted only a strict curriculum of European classical music in schools until the late 1980s.In contrast, Moore is a careful listener and insightfully discusses the recent history of Cuban music from the artists’ perspective. He briefly details the career of the hugely popular group Los Van Van to illustrate the ways in which contemporary Cuban ensembles have worked creatively under socialism (and the equally inflexible U.S. trade embargo) to incorporate international influences ranging from the Beatles and early rhythm and blues to rap. Moore describes the particular timba sound developed by Los Van Van and relates how the more jazz-oriented group Irakere (and its various offshoots) strove to maintain control over their material and survive as a relatively independent collective.Well-attuned to political events both on and off the island in relation to the music, Moore discusses what became known as “the salsa controversy.” In this, U.S.-based promoters backed a “new” Latin music termed “salsa,” which in fact drew heavily on Cuban sources and artistic achievement. As Moore relates, “many of the complaints raised by Cuban nationals about salsa were and are legitimate. . .. U.S. firms amassed a fortune in revenues during the 1970s and 1980s by brazenly appropriating songs of Cuban origin” (p. 120). In a related vein, Moore briefly includes commentary on the more recent “Buena Vista phenomenon.” Here, the author shares the perspective of some on the island who feel that contemporary Cuban artists have once again been passed over in favor of satisfying foreign demand for prerevolutionary nostalgia.Of special note is Moore’s treatment of nueva trova. In his discussion of what is otherwise an understudied genre, the author acknowledges important connections between musicians in Cuba (for example, Pablo Milanés, Silvio Rodríguez, Carlos Varela, etc.) and various South American artists (such as Violeta Parra, Atahualpa Yupanqui, and Caetano Veloso). Moore traces changing Cuban attitudes to a music initially scorned by officials, as performers eventually came to be seen as “international symbols of a new socialist culture” (p. 135). Similar transformations are carefully detailed by the author in his chapters on Afro-Cuban folklore and sacred music. By further considering the enduring struggles of people of color on the island after the coming to power of Fidel, Che, and their colleagues, Moore provides a poignant follow-up to his earlier study of afrocubanismo (Nationalizing Blackness: Afrocubanismo and Artistic Revolution in Havana, 1920 – 1940, University of Pittsburgh Press, 1997).