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Overview
Rebel Dance, Renegade Stanceshows how community music-makers and dancers take in all that is around them socially and globally, and publicly and bodily unfold their memories, sentiments, and raw responses within open spaces designated or commandeered for local popular dance. Umi Vaughan, an African American anthropologist, musician, dancer, and photographer "plantao" in Cuba—planted, living like a Cuban—reveals a rarely discussed perspective on contemporary Cuban society during the 1990s, the peak decade of timba, and beyond, as the Cuban leadership transferred from Fidel Castro to his brother. Simultaneously, the book reveals popular dance music in the context of a young and astutely educated Cuban generation of fierce and creative performers.
By looking at the experiences of black Cubans and exploring the notion of "Afro Cuba," Rebel Dance, Renegade Stanceexplains timba's evolution and achieved significance in the larger context of Cuban culture. Vaughan discusses a maroon aesthetic extended beyond the colonial era to the context of contemporary society; describes the dance spaces of Cuba; and examines the performance of identity and desire through the character of the "especulador." This book will find an audience with musicians, anthropologists, ethnomusicologists, interdisciplinary specialists in performance studies, cultural studies, and Latin American and Caribbean studies, as well as laypeople who are interested in Atlantic/African and African American/Africana studies and/or Cuban culture.
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780472028696 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | University of Michigan Press |
| Publication date: | 10/17/2012 |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 203 |
| Sales rank: | 687,304 |
| File size: | 4 MB |
About the Author
Umi Vaughan is an artist and anthropologist who explores dance, creates photographs and performances, and publishes about African Diaspora culture. He is Associate Professor of Africana Studies at California State University, Monterey Bay, and author of Carlos Aldama's Life in Batá: Cuba, Diaspora, and the Drum. To learn more visit UmiArt.com.
Read an Excerpt
Rebel Dance, Renegade Stance
Timba Music and Black Identity In Cuba
By Umi Vaughan
The University of Michigan Press
Copyright © 2012 Umi VaughanAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-472-11848-9
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: Dancing & Being
It makes sense to study Cuban culture through music and dance because in Cuba they are everywhere; the two are as elemental as water and air. Particularly popular dance music, with contributions from all of Cuba's ethnic components (African, Hispanic, Chinese, indigenous, Haitian, Jamaican, etc.), has penetrated every fiber of the society. By looking at the musical form timba and various dance spaces in Havana where it is performed, Rebel Dance, Renegade Stance recounts social crisis and transformation and the role of music/dance as a mirror, medium for, and an active element in the creation of national culture. During the moment of timba's birth, development, and boom — the 1990s — the Cuban phrase seguimos en combate (we are still at war) was particularly poignant; and a new music/dance developed to express the times. Like other genres and rhythms have been in the past, timba is now the music/dance style that is most cultivated in Cuba (Sarduy 2001, 171; Pérez 2003, 130; Perna 2005).
Its borrowings from Cuban son, and from other national and international genres, make it so that almost everyone can enjoy it. Its popularity in Cuba and abroad has sparked debate among academics and intense media promotion, created new dance spaces, inspired musical creativity and output, and influenced government policy. At the same time, timba faces criticism and rejection from some sectors of the Cuban public (1) because of its identification with marginal black identity and (2) for perceived hedonistic, capitalist tendencies inside its performance. In spite of its detractors, timba is impossible to ignore. Its presence as an important cultural phenomenon is indisputable. My own wish to visit Cuba was inspired by timba, which I discovered through discs of El Médico de la Salsa.
Theoretical Perspectives: Music and Dance are One
As in many cultures of the African Diaspora, music and dance in Cuba are inseparable. Students of Africa and its diaspora, especially the Caribbean and Cuba, consistently describe a zone of "musical ferment where people love to dance ... individuals become passionately attached to the dances they do, [and] assert their identity through movement" (Sloat 2002, ix). Throughout the Black Atlantic we find names that refer to music-dance complexes and/or gatherings that feature music and dance by necessity. In this way, samba from Brazil, zouk from Martinique and Guadeloupe, rumba and timba from Cuba (among countless other genres) reiterate and emphasize the unity of music and dance. Throughout the African Diaspora "music is almost always music for dancing," and "dancing is an intense listening state" (Sublette 2004, 57).
Pioneers in the study of African cultures in the New World, like Fernando Ortiz, have given detailed attention to music and dance for good reason. Their work affirms that music and dance data "make significant contributions to African Diaspora studies" (Daniel 2005, 1). Some, like dance anthropologist Yvonne Daniel, refer to the complex whole as "dance/music" due to particular disciplinary interests; still music and dance are recognized as inseparable. Other scholars approach from the music side but similarly cannot avoid the importance of dance. For example, most of the contributors to the edited volume Music and Black Ethnicity (Béhague 1994) actually examine music and dance in relationship to the efforts of various African Diaspora communities to define and identify themselves. Speaking of Panama, one of them writes, "The core from which energy flows during performance consists of song [music] and dance. ... There is rarely dance without song or song without dance" (Smith 1994, 239). In fact, "there exists a symbiotic relationship between them" (240). More recently, the contributors to Rhythms of the Afro-Atlantic World take as a basic premise that music and dance are inextricably linked. Collectively the essays consider music and dance together as "critical arenas in which Afro-Atlantic subjects have continuously represented and reinvented their multiple bases of identity" (Diouf and Nwankwo 2010, 1).
Rebel Dance, Renegade Stance: Timba Music and Black Identity in Cuba begins with the acceptance that music and dance are one. I sometimes use the term music/dance to emphasize this unity but not always. Still, whenever one of these aspects of performance (music or dance) is described or discussed, it is always with the other in mind. For example, outlining the history and examining the sound and structure of Cuban music are preparations for my arguments about the use and meaning of dance. Music is inspired by dance, as in the case of the famous chachachá rhythm that derived partly from musicians interpreting the sounds made by dancers' feet in 1950s Cuba. Dance in contemporary Cuban spaces is fraught with meaning precisely because of the history of the music that animates it and the people who create that music.
Maroon Aesthetic
Because it taps into the spirit of struggle and creativity, I refer to timba as "timba brava" (García Meralla 1997) and, furthermore, call it "maroon music." The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language defines maroon as "a fugitive black slave in the West Indies in the 17th and 18th centuries; the descendant of such a slave; plantation slaves who had run away to live free in uncultivated parts" (1992). "Brava" — brave, ferocious, wild, splendid — refers to the anger, unpredictability, and excellence in rebellion that are associated with maroons and timba. What might at first seem odd connections allude to continuing systems of racial inequality and the relationship between marginalized communities and the powers that be.
Both timba and maroon life in the Caribbean colonial period are based on "outsider identity," unique language, "raiding," and the use of old principles to improvise new styles in emergent social circumstances, which Amiri Baraka calls "the changing same" (Jones 1967). Maroons "stress individual style and dramatic self-presentation, openness to new ideas, and value innovation and creativity" (Price 1999, 285). Puerto Rican sociologist and salsa authority Ángel Quintero-Rivera offers a definition of the Taíno-Caribbean root word símaran.
Stray or "runaway" arrow ... from there it took on the meaning of "gone," "up in arms," or "mad" used to describe domestic animals that took to the hills, and to men — first Indians then later blacks — who rose up and sought their freedom far from the dominion of their masters. (1998, 265)
Generally, the maroons were enslaved indigenous and African peoples throughout the Americas who escaped from bondage, established viable communities, and fought to maintain their hard-won freedom (Agorsah 1994, 2). As a response to socioeconomic oppression, cultural colonialism, and racism, marooning is a common strategy throughout the Black Atlantic — linking Latin America, the Caribbean, and North America (Depestre 1984, 261). Often we think of Cuba in terms of its uniqueness — called Cuban exceptionalism — as the largest and historically "whitened" Caribbean island, its huge international musical influence, its communist revolution under Fidel Castro, and so on. The maroon aesthetic, however, helps to rightly situate Cuba as part of a region, "a historic family" shaped by similar events and circumstances (Depestre 1984, 260; Mintz and Price 1985; Mintz 1989; Benítez-Rojo 1996).
On Cuba's sister island, Puerto Rico, maroons "sought to live on the margins of the state" (Quintero 1998, 276). This distance was not due to any opposition to the state per se but rather to the maroon aversion to subordination under state regime. To safeguard their positions, maroons sometimes fought on behalf of the colonial masters or signed treaties that pitted them against fugitive slaves. Scholars acknowledge maroons as "frontline fighters in the struggle against slavery in all its forms," but also emphasize maroons' "strong ideas of self-sufficiency, self-help and self-reliance" (Agorsah 1994, xiv; emphasis added). It is this concern with self-preservation that motivated maroon communities to act in ways that compromised the struggles of other oppressed groups under slavery, or indeed aided the colonial system. While socio-cultural "marronage" certainly entails transforming the anguish of the black condition and the status of servitude through "creative explosion" (Depestre 1984, 271, 258), the relationship between maroon communities and the dominant society remains complex and at times contradictory. In fact, the maroons who had been the "chief opponents" of slave society, at times became "its main props" (Bilby 1994, 83). In a similar way, the maroon aesthetic — and timba — exist in conflict and complicity with the state and mainstream culture.
In his book Afro-Creole: Power, Opposition, and Play in the Caribbean, Richard Burton develops an argument that helps explain the contradiction within the maroon aesthetic. Following Michel de Certeau (1980) by eschewing the common use of the word resistance to mean all counteraction against a hegemonic power, Burton explains the relationship between a newly defined "resistance" and what is called "opposition" to describe the liberating cultural explosions of New World blacks. In this conception, "resistance" refers to "those forms of contestation of a given system that are conducted from outside that system, using weapons and concepts derived from a source other than the system in question"; while "opposition" refers to "those forms of contestation of a given system that are conducted within that system, using weapons and concepts derived from the system itself" (Burton 1997, 6).
Burton echoes Foucault (1978, 95–96) stating that instances of true "resistance" are rare in human history, in the case of the Caribbean happening perhaps only in Saint Domingue between 1791 and 1804, and in Cuba in the late 1950s. Burton contends, for example, that in most Caribbean contexts, once island-born slaves began to outnumber those of African origin, contestation took the form of "opposition," because the enslaved and oppressed drew heavily on materials (like language and religion) that were furnished by the dominant culture (Burton 1997, 6). In the process, oppressed peoples not only oppose the dominant group on the latter's own ground but are themselves drawn further into the dominant group's worldview. I apply Burton's concepts to timba as maroon music. Resistance is a word that could express timba as a kind of marronage or cultural counterattack; however, "opposition" (in the sense that de Certeau and Burton use it) is more accurate because it acknowledges the contradictory aims of those acting through timba, as well as the origins of some of their greatest "weapons" (like conservatory musical training or U.S. designer fashion) within dominant Cuban or so-called Western society.
Performance
Black Atlantic performance "[poses] the world as it is against the world as the racially subordinated would like it to be" (Gilroy 1993, 36). In order to study "the power of music in developing black struggles by communicating information, organizing consciousness, and testing out or developing the forms of subjectivity required by political agency, whether individual or collective, defensive or transformational," it is necessary to consider both the formal attributes of performance and the moral bases of expressive culture (36). "Comprehending them necessitates an analysis of the lyrical content and the forms of musical expression [which I discuss in chapter 2] as well as the oft hidden social relations [which I decipher in chapters 3 and 4] in which these deeply encoded oppositional practices are created and consumed" (37). Paul Gilroy is talking about Erving Goffman's "linguistic and expressive" messages in the service of social transformation: "Politics ... [is] played, danced, and acted, as well as sung because words can't express [an] unsayable claim to truth" (37). The struggle for justice inspires the music, so naturally its messages and delivery are hotly contested.
In Rebel Dance, Renegade Stance, I interpret "politics ... [as it is] played, danced, and acted, as well as sung" in the context of Black Atlantic cultural expressions (Gilroy 1993, 37). I take special note of distinct patterns of language, dramaturgy, enunciation, and gesture. I read the contours of an ongoing performative call-and-response that encompasses the intimate relationship of performer and crowd and all other possible trajectories of communication within the dance space. That is to say, I examine many kinds of interaction in the dance space, not only in the form of dance but also in other kinds of encounters. For example, signification by drinking at a table with friends is readable too. Dance spaces are important espacios de sociabilidad that contribute to the elevation of one or more national cultures; they are situated where diverse and particular identities are constructed, imagined, and interact (Marful 2002, 12).
I kept copious field notes mostly every day, moving between Spanish and English, using various text strategies: narrative, poetry, quotations from news and conversation, personal reflections, anthropological theory. Lyrics to songs from studio-recorded and live performances were transcribed by myself and analyzed by myself. I studied dance as symbolic and representative body expression that highlights and encourages individual achievement, reaffirms "conventional behavior" or "established patterns" (Dunham 1983, xvi), and allows humanity to momentarily transcend the mundane and access infinite possibility.
My efforts to insert myself in these spaces — dance, academic, and others — where I conducted my investigations entailed "ethnographic high jinx," which reveals a lot about my various identities and the perceptions of me in Cuba. Cubans are accustomed to being studied by anthropologists due to their rich culture, which is so characteristic of the process of transculturation that marks the meeting of cultures everywhere. Even still, swallowing an investigator like me seemed to be a challenge. When I arrived at the José Martí International Airport in Havana on my first trip in 1998, I already spoke Spanish, but not Cuban Spanish, and so I fumbled to understand when Cubans communicated to me as if to another Cuban, "Hey, citizen, you're in the wrong [customs] line!" Awkward familiarity and distance were to come up time and again as I got to know Cuba better and as I moved through different kinds of spaces on the island.
A Note on Photographs Included in the Text
As an artist as well as an anthropologist, making photographs is part of the way I go about understanding the world. If it is true that the eyes are the windows to the soul, then when gazes meet and hold one another the result is sublime and totally human. The images included in this book capture the embrace of the eyes, the expanse of space, the swinging release of dance — allowing images to speak along with the text. In doing so, they enrich the description of music and of the Afro-Cuban experience, which are my foci.
Using a simple, all-manual Nikon FM2 camera I developed a relationship with my surroundings. At first the camera seemed too large, too intrusive. I felt that this appendage, this eye, made me a permanent outsider, an unwelcome voyeur. As time went on, however, the camera seemed to shrink and disappear among my community consultants. Eventually not only was I able to capture delicate moments without disturbing them, I was also able to act through photography and dialogue with Cubans about Cuba, especially about issues of race and color. The series of photographs included in chapter 3, "Afro Cuba," is a prime example. In this approach I talked with people about names used to refer to various racial classifications, wrote those words out on the city itself (walls, staircases, doors, etc.), and then juxtaposed the same people with the words/ideas they had used to explain complex issues to me. The result was several beautiful images that dramatize race — identity, terminology, and relations — in Cuba. When I returned to Havana several years later, many of the graphs and drawings remained on the walls where people continued to comment on and discuss them.
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