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Rhythms of Race: Cuban Musicians and the Making of Latino New York City and Miami, 1940-1960, written by Christina D. Abreu

2017; Brill; Volume: 91; Issue: 3-4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1163/22134360-09103053

2213-4360

Cary Peñate,

Latin American and Latino Studies

Most Cuban Americans tend to view the making of Latino culture in New York City and Miami as a product of the Cuban Revolution.Although an influx of Cuban immigrants did arrive to these two cities following 1959, prior historical events were equally fundamental in shaping their musical culture.Christina Abreu does a wonderful job of shedding light on the musical scenes there in the 1940s and 1950s among Cuban musicians and entertainers, showing how social clubs, music festivals, Spanish-language newspapers, the New York Palladium, and films and television broadcasts with Cuban entertainers served as important platforms for fostering the image of Cuban culture (and by extension Latin culture) in the United States.More specifically she discusses the influence of race on the musical atmospheres of both New York and Miami.By narrating the careers of musician immigrants, she draws interesting parallels between black and white race discourses in Cuba and the United States and explains how these different identities merged.The book would be ideal for any graduate student, professor, or researcher focusing on race discourses among Cuban musicians in the United States.Most scholarship of this period focuses on particular genres and styles-see, for example, Latin Jazz: The Perfect Combination (2002) by Raúl A. Fernández and Mambo Montage: The Latinization of New York (2001), edited by Agustín Laó Montes and Arlene Dávila.Abreu instead examines Cuban musicians who influenced Latin American music making.Through their stories, she evaluates how race played an important role in the way that white, mainstream America accepted popular Cuban culture in the United States.Her research framework revolves around the construction of Cubanidad, Hispanidad, and Latinidad through Cuban and Afro-Cuban performances.She argues, for instance, that charismatic light-skinned musicians such as Desi Arnaz, Xavier Cugat, Marco Rizo, and José Curbelo portrayed Cubanness as "nonblackness, tropical escape, and sanitized exoticism" (p. 1).She also analyzes the construction of black Cuban identities as performed by Celia Cruz, Mario Bauzá, Machito, and Arsenio Rodríguez and shows how performances of Cubanness became defined as "Latin" when performed by white Cubans, but "Afro-Cuban" when performed by Afro-Cubans.These negotiations of race and identity were important in defining "Cuban ethnic and broader Hispano/a and Latino/a identity in the United States" (p.3).