In a review of books on Latin American music published in 1947 the musicologist and historian Gilbert Chase wrote that Cuba was a country “whose musical influence has been in indirect ratio to its size.”[1] From the nineteenth century, and indeed even since 1947 when Chase wrote those words, Cuban music, with its almost countless unique rhythms, instruments, melodies and forms, has become a worldwide phenomenon. It has influenced classical music, jazz, film music, Broadway, popular and dance music, and has inspired legions of fans in countries around the world as far-flung as Japan.
In great measure the beginning of the world’s fascination with Cuban music can be traced to one very talented young man who went to the island as pianist and composer almost one hundred fifty years ago: Louis Moreau Gottschalk.
Gottschalk was the first composer of importance from the United States to be lionized in the capitals of Europe. He is also the most unique and under-appreciated—and the most variable—of the great American composers. His enthusiastic encouragement of Cuban composers and musicians, coupled with his promotion of native rhythms, helped make Cuban music respectable throughout the Americas and Europe. He provided the catalyst that would push Cuban music headlong into the mainstream cultures of the New and Old Worlds.
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Gottschalk was born on May 8, 1829 in New Orleans, Louisiana. His father was a Jewish émigré from Great Britain, his mother a refugee from Saint-Domingue.[2] Twenty-six years after the Louisiana Purchase, New Orleans was a cornucopia of cultural and musical influences. Its culture was a mix of American, French, African, Cuban, Haitian, and native Creole. The music Gottschalk heard as he was growing up would provide a fertile breeding ground for his musical development and would have a lasting effect. Native music and its rhythms would be the dominant theme in his compositions until his untimely death in 1869 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, at the age of 40.
Gottschalk, or Moreau, as his family called him, was one of the first composers to write down these characteristic native rhythms.[3] He incorporated native and folk music elements in his compositions well before the pioneering efforts of composers Béla Bartók and Ralph Vaughan Williams in the twentieth century. His use of “Negro” music in his piano compositions in the 1840s—compositions that were squarely in the mainstream of the European classical music tradition—was prescient, to the say the least, and truly radical for its time.
Gottschalk was recognized as a spectacular pianistic talent very early on. At the age of 12 he departed for Paris to be trained by the best teachers his father’s wealth could afford. After his training, he toured the great musical capitals of Europe and achieved spectacular successes in Madrid, Geneva, and especially, Paris.[4] Gottschalk was so successful in conquering the music world of Paris that Camille Pleyel[5] praised the twenty-year old pianist at Chopin’s funeral in 1849 as “the only one who [could] fill [his] place.”[6]
He established his fame as a composer with a series of four “Negro” compositions:
Bamboula–Danse de Negres, based on Creole songs Gottschalk had heard as a child, was the first and, arguably, the most famous of these pieces. The others were
La Savanne–Ballade Creole, Le Bananier–Chanson Negre, and
Le Mancenillier. These compositions were his early experiments in the use of native rhythms and melodies. He composed most of these works while in Paris and audiences there could not get enough of them.[7] At the first performance of
Bamboula the audience went wild, applauding for ten minutes.[8]
Gottschalk returned to America in 1853. Fresh from his successes in Europe, Gottschalk almost immediately began trips to Latin America and the West Indies. These voyages would be the most productive periods of his short life.[9] Gottschalk visited Cuba in 1854, 1857, and 1860 and would stay on the island for extended periods during those visits.
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Havana, the capital of Cuba, was in many ways, a parallel culture to New Orleans. Like New Orleans, it was a major port of entry for the slave trade. At the time of Moreau’s arrival in February of 1854, Havana was “probably the richest city in the world.”[10] Santiago de Cuba, the capital of Oriente and the easternmost province on the island, was not as “sophisticated” as Havana, but it had musical gold waiting to be mined—Santiago was the birthplace of many of the native Cuban rhythms.
After the Spanish colonizers arrived in the early sixteenth century the island developed a rich musical tradition grounded in the traditional liturgical styles of Europe and, primarily, Spain. Churches were established in Havana and Santiago and the religious and musical activity was brisk.[11] By the end of the eighteenth century Cuba had produced a great composer, Esteban Salas y Castro (1725–1803), who wrote beautiful liturgical music. His compositions, however, did not contain any native musical influences.[12]
The influx of Africans began in the early seventeenth century. Moors from North Africa, the
Yorubas and
Lucumí from Central Africa, and others from all over Africa, were taken to Cuba as slaves. They brought a rich religious and musical heritage that would be passed down generation to generation. They participated in much of the life of the island as workers, but were proscribed from many activities.
Drum music—music of great religious and social significance to the Blacks—was very much an underground music, and very much alive. It was heard only during Black celebrations and only in certain cities where the authorities permitted it; in Havana, it was rarely heard. “Black” music was considered
déclassé by the White, Spanish ruling class. The Royal Spanish authorities and the Roman Catholic Church frowned upon it for political, economic, and social reasons. To avoid slave revolts and discontent, the music was tolerated for certain religious and celebratory activities, but was not encouraged in any way.[13]
By the nineteenth century Cuba’s Blacks were a mixture of slaves and free men and had started to participate more fully in community activities, including music. In Havana in 1854, for example, Black musicians outnumbered White musicians by a ratio of three to one.[14]
The original rhythmic patterns and cells, created and nurtured over many generations would become the heartbeat of practically all of Cuban music. The original instruments, created (or recreated) in Cuba, would become the backbone. There would be no escaping the influence of African music; when it emerged from the shadows, it would bring about the birth of the “Cuban” musical style.
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Havana seemed a perfect match for Moreau. It had a rich musical culture rooted in the European, and specifically, French, tradition.[15] There were a large group of virtuoso pianists that lived there: the famous brothers Edelmann, pianists, publishers, impresarios, and organizers of all things musical in Havana; the composer Espadero; Fernando Aristi; and Pablo Desvernine, who would later be the teacher of another great American composer, Edward MacDowell.[16]
As Gottschalk had done with the music of his native New Orleans, the Cuban-born composers he met on the island were incorporating the native
clave,
cinquillo cubano[17], and the more sedate
habanera rhythms freely in their compositions. On his first trip in 1854 Gottschalk met and befriended Manuel Saumell Robredo (1817–1870) and Nicolás Ruiz Espadero (1832–1890). It was a tremendously beneficial relationship for all of them, each influencing the other in many ways.[18] Gottschalk, the successful pianist and composer, fresh from successes in Paris and Madrid, helped the two Cuban pioneers promote their new musical style in Cuba and inspired them to further success; the two Cubans demonstrated the wealth of native Afro-Cuban rhythms that Gottschalk would soon begin to exploit and promote.
Saumell, arguably, is the most important Cuban composer in that he was the pioneer in the use of native rhythms in serious music. Saumell “was the first Cuban composer to lend dignity to native music and to elevate it into an acceptable style.”[19] He began using the African rhythms prevalent on the island in his compositions and has the distinction of being the first composer to use the
cinquillo cubano rhythm in concert music.[20] Like Johann Sebastian Bach, who was both the apex and culmination of the Baroque era, Saumell reinvented the musical forms of the day and infused them with lasting importance.[21]
Saumell composed
contradanzas, a variation of the popular musical form, the French
contredanse that was derived from the English “country dance.” These piano pieces were extremely popular and became a growth industry on the island. They were composed for all occasions: Saumell even dedicated one to Gottschalk.[22] In his biography of Gottschalk,
Bamboula!, S. Frederick Starr describes Saumell as the “absolute master of the ...
contradanza” and “the Schubert of Cuba” because of his prolific output of these little gems.[23] The form was so compelling that Gottschalk composed at least seven of them dedicated to fellow pianists.[24]
Saumell can rightly be called the father of Cuban musical nationalism.[25] In 1839 he “conceived a Romantic national opera based on J. A. Echevarría’s novel
Antonelli, set in Havana in 1590. Indians and black slaves were to sing and take part in the action.”[26] He was as contemporary—and as revolutionary—as the great Russian composer, Mikhail Glinka, who wrote the Russian “nationalist” operas
A Life for the Czar in 1836 and
Russlan and Ludmilla in 1842. Sadly, Saumell never completed the opera because “critics found the idea absurd and rejected [it].”[27]
Saumell’s legacy, the
contradanza, became the “fountainhead” of all subsequent musical styles in Cuba that used native rhythms.[28] All of modern Cuban music, from the
danzón forward, owes a great debt to Saumell’s
contradanzas.[29]
Espadero was another composer and pianist that Gottschalk met while in Cuba. He and Espadero, both superlative pianists, developed a great friendship and correspondence that lasted until Gottschalk’s death.[30] Espadero, because of his extremely introverted nature, was the only “first-rank [Cuban] pianist who [had never] studied abroad.”[31] He and Gottschalk performed frequently in concerts in 1854 and 1857.[32] Primarily a teacher, he encouraged his small, but select, circle of students toward a nationalist musical ideal. Shamefully, his compositions are all but unknown to the present day. Three years after Gottschalk’s death, Espadero “transcribed and edited a number of Gottschalk’s works. He contributed a foreword ... in which he explained some of the stylistic and aesthetic theories he had shared with Gottschalk, and their support of nationalistic expression in music.”[33] This was quite an accomplishment for a Cuban composer.
A prime example of Gottschalk’s direct support of a Cuban musician was Jose White Lafitte (1835–1918). Known as the “the Cuban Paganini,” White was a violin virtuoso of the first order, living in virtual obscurity in the port city of Matanzas, fifty miles east of Havana. Gottschalk engaged him for a concert in 1854 and was so impressed with this young, Black musician that he arranged for White to study at the
Paris Conservatoire where he subsequently won first prize.[34] He was a
protégé of the great opera composer Gioacchino Rossini and had a great career in Paris championing many contemporary French composers.[35],[36] White composed many works, including a violin concerto, and
La Bella Cubana [
The Beautiful Cuban Woman], a “Cuban national air based on the rhythms of the old Haitian
guaracha and the Dominican
merengue.”[37] He was appointed head of the Imperial Conservatory in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, and was able to thank his mentor personally when he arrived there on his ill-fated tour in 1869.[38]
During his last visit to Cuba in 1860, Gottschalk taught the thirteen-year old Ignacio Cervantes (1847–1905), “the most important Cuban composer of his generation.”[39] Already a student of Espadero, this young man greatly impressed Gottschalk with his talents.[40] Cervantes, who could justifiably call himself Gottschalk’s
protégé, eventually studied in Paris with Gottschalk’s teacher, Antoine François Marmontel, and with the legendary virtuoso, Charles Valentin Alkan.[41] He achieved great recognition in Europe as a pianist and as a serious composer.
Cervantes, along with Saumell, Espadero and Laureano Fuentes Matons (1825–1898), was one of the pioneers “of native Cuban concert music ... [He] was strongly influenced by Gottschalk’s piano style and musical ideas.”[42] There is little doubt that Gottschalk’s compositions “provided an impetus to [his] exquisite piano works.”[43] Although he was a European composer in the romantic tradition through and through, Cervantes nevertheless continued and elevated the nationalist school of Cuban composition by integrating Cuban themes and rhythms in his works as a matter of course.[44]
Of Cervantes’s many compositions, his
Danzas Cubanas [
Cuban Dances] for piano are the most famous. In the tradition begun by Saumell, many of the works are
contradanzas and combine “folk music elements of both [the] Afro-Cuban and
guajiro traditions in a Romantic virtuoso piano style. [They] are the most original contribution to nineteenth century Cuban art music.”[45] Three years before his death he was named ‘Ambassador of Cuban Music’ to the Exposition in Charleston, South Carolina.
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Cuba, and specifically, the city of Santiago, Starr writes, “was the very heart of the musical culture that had inspired Gottschalk’s compositions from childhood on.”[46] Santiago, like New Orleans, was home to many late eighteenth and early nineteenth century exiles from Saint-Domingue. These exiles became an important part of the already bustling musical life that existed in Santiago.[47] Gottschalk clearly felt at home in this environment.
Gottschalk was the first major composer in the European musical tradition to recognize the “richness of Cuban, Puerto Rican, and African-American rhythms.”[48] He composed many works that contained the rhythmic elements of native Cuban music. His Cuban dances,
Ojos Criollos [
Country Eyes] and
Dime que sí [
Tell me yes], are the first compositions written by an American composer that were “influenced by Latin American music.”[49] His one-act Cuban opera,
Escenas Campestres [
Cuban Country Scenes],
El Cocoyé, a piano composition using a wildly popular song of the day as its base[50], and his Symphony No.1
La Nuit de Tropiques [
A Night in the Tropics], are wonderful examples of his use of Cuban rhythms.
Gottschalk was constantly touring throughout Cuba during his visits. He performed in Havana, Cárdenas, Matanzas, and Santiago to great acclaim—and occasionally derision. He organized many of what can only be called “monster concerts,” utilizing huge orchestral and pianistic forces with the best local musicians he could find. The concerts were generally very well received, though sometimes less financially successful than Gottschalk would have hoped.[51] He holds the distinction of being the first musician to use Afro-Cuban drums in a symphony concert. Held in Havana in 1861, the concert featured the “King” of a
cabildo de negros[52] playing the
tumba[53] on stage; Gottschalk placed the drum—and the “King”—front and center.[54] Not surprisingly, there were no Afro-Cuban drums in Havana for the “King” to play; he and his drums were brought all the way from Santiago de Cuba, 600 miles away, just for that concert.[55] Gottschalk clearly demonstrated to the public that “serious” music could integrate native rhythms and instruments without diminishing it. By legitimizing the Afro-Cuban drum as an “orchestral” instrument, Gottschalk opened the floodgates to future musical innovations with native instruments and rhythms.
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The cultural and musical amity affirmed by Gottschalk while on his visits to Cuba, the innovative compositions of Saumell, Espadero, Cervantes, and the other pioneering Cuban composers and musicians, the almost ubiquitous use of the
clave,
cinquillo cubano and
habanera rhythms, the development of the
contradanza and, finally, Cuban nationalism, all fueled the explosion of Cuban music that was to come in the last decades of the nineteenth century and the first decades of the twentieth. Concurrent with, and, to an extent, influenced by, the success of “serious” music that incorporated native rhythms
, the Blacks on the island continued to play and develop their own music and musical forms using those same Afro-Cuban rhythms. Although discrimination would persist through the first decades of the twentieth century, native music began to be viewed as somewhat more “respectable” than before.[56] The fusion of the “popular,” native styles with the “serious,” classical styles would come about with the introduction of the
danzón.The
danzón, a modification of the classical dance suite that was popular in Europe in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, is the root of the popular musical forms that dominate Cuban music to the present day. It was the single most important musical form developed in Cuba in the nineteenth century. There is a direct line of descent from the
contradanza to the
danzón to
són, the most influential and popular force in Cuban popular music in the twentieth century. Miguel Failde introduced the first
danzón,[57]
Las Alturas de Simpson, at the
Liceo Artistico y Literario in Matanzas on
January 1, 1879.[58] Failde’s innovation was to change the traditional five- (ABACA) and seven-part suites (ABACADA) to a six-part suite (ABACAD). This modified form allowed the dance orchestras and ensembles the luxury of composing (A) one basic theme to be repeated three times, (B) a second, different theme that was slower, (C) a set of theme and variations that could be quickly “composed” by taking bits and pieces from popular classical, and operatic tunes of the day, and finally, (D) a set where the musicians would be allowed to improvise until the dancing had to be stopped. All of the sections used native rhythms—principally, the
cinquillo cubano.[59]
By the 1870s, compositions using Cuban rhythms had become very popular in Europe. The composer Georges Bizet used an
habanera in his masterpiece, the opera
Carmen, in 1873; other composers used them as well, albeit sparingly. This was the first instance where Cuba was the exporter of a musical style and not the recipient.
During the last two decades of the nineteenth century musicians from New Orleans converged on Havana to perform while musicians from Havana were reciprocally invited to New Orleans.[60] Brass bands in New Orleans—similar to the bands that played
danzones outdoors in Cuban cities—played the extremely popular
habaneras and
rumbas.[61],[62], Musicians in New Orleans incorporated the African rhythms from their native music, as well as the Afro-Cuban rhythms they had heard, in their compositions. In classic ragtime—that American invention
par excellence—one can clearly hear the syncopated
cinquillo rhythm. Ragtime would have a significant impact on Cuban music, as well. Its rich harmonies would become evident in Cuban music in the twentieth century.
Cuba became a republic in 1902 at the end of the Cuban War for Independence. It was one of the most popular destinations in the Caribbean for United States and European visitors. The cultural exchanges in those early years of the century fed the hunger for music from around the world. In addition to ragtime and jazz, musical influences as varied as Wagner, Stravinsky’s neo-classicism, Schönberg’s twelve-tone compositions, and American dance band music, would filter in and directly affect Cuban musical development.
This dazzling array of influences, in addition to the homegrown creativity that had been unleashed—though still not completely accepted for racial reasons—finally opened the door all the way for Cuba’s musical development. From the early 1920s until the Communist revolution in 1959, Cuban music would have the greatest period of its worldwide impact. New York, and the other capitals of musical Europe and America, would soon fall in love with the astounding variety of new music coming from the island.
The great composers Amadeo Roldán (1900–1939) and Alejandro Garcia Caturla (1906–1940) used Afro-Cuban rhythms and instruments as an integral part of their very “European” compositions. In 1925 Roldán (like Gottschalk in 1861) used Afro-Cuban drums in his symphonic work
Obertura sobre temas Cubanos [
Overture on Cuban Themes].[63] The internationally renowned composer, piano virtuoso and band leader, Ernesto Lecuona (1896–1963), the “Cuban Gershwin,” wrote hugely popular operettas, art songs, popular songs, piano music, and music for Hollywood musicals,[64] and was at the peak of his popularity and fame.
S
ón, the bedrock of Cuban popular music in the twentieth century, which had started so modestly with the
sexteto and
septeto ensembles,[65] came to maturity with Beny Moré and his
Banda Gigante.[66] Israel “Cachao” Lopez, the legendary bassist called the “Cuban Mingus,” and his brother, Orestes, invented the
mambo, the wildly popular dance rhythm. The international
mambo craze of the 1950s was fueled by the big bands of Perez Prado and Xavier Cugat. Enrique Jorrín invented the
cha-cha-cha and
La Orquesta Aragon made it famous.[67] Popular
guaracha bands like
La Sonora Matancera featuring Celia Cruz, and
charanga orchestras and
conjuntos, each with different instrumentation, played the great Cuban music of the day
. The
rumba and the
guaguanco were revitalized.
New York City became the second American city to become a locus of Cuban and American musical interchange. Cuban musicians would become major players in jazz and in the burgeoning bebop movement. Mario Bauzá, Cuba’s jazz pioneer, arrived in New York in the 1930s to play with, and arrange for, American big bands. “Afro-Cuban Jazz”[68] was born in 1947, when Chano Pozo and Dizzy Gillespie recorded
Manteca, one of Dizzy’s biggest hits after
A Night in Tunisia. The trend continued through the 1950s propelled by musicians like Frank Grillo (“Machito”), who recorded with jazz giants Charlie Parker, Flip Phillips and Buddy Rich, and Chico O’Farrill, who, wrote Afro-Cuban jazz charts for Benny Goodman and Stan Kenton, and composed the famous
Afro-Cuban Jazz Suite.[69] The musicians in New York and Havana “created a phenomenon no doubt far greater than any of [them had] envisioned.”[70] And, of course, there was “Ricky Ricardo.”[71]
This truly was the golden age of Cuban music.
Currently, the heir to the great developments of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries hides behind the label “
salsa.” This misnomer of traditional Cuban dance music by a disc jockey in the post-Revolution era has, unfortunately, stuck.[72] Central and South American dance music forms, whether they use Afro-Caribbean or native, non-African rhythms, are grouped together with the traditional Cuban dance music made famous in our time by Celia Cruz, Willy Chirino, and others. The soul of
“salsa” remains the same, however: Afro-Cuban rhythms in an almost infinite variety.
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The world’s fiery love affair with Cuban music, enthusiastically kindled by Louis Moreau Gottschalk with his indefatigable support of Cuba and its musicians, has yet to cool. Cuba is unique in the world, except possibly the United States, for the variety and richness of its music. It is a testament to the culture of this small island that all of these talented musicians, serendipitously in the right place at the right time, utilized all of the innovations and inventions in just the right way, to bring about the creative explosion that was, and is, Cuban music.
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Notes[1] Gilbert Chase, “Some Latin American Publications,” Notes, 2nd Ser., Vol. 5, No. 1 (December, 1947): 61–64, JSTOR, November 8, 2003, http://www.jstor.org/search.
[2] Modern Haiti on the island of Hispaniola.
[3] Lawrence Gushee, “The Nineteenth-Century Origins of Jazz,” Black Music Research Journal, Vol. 14, No. 1, Selected Papers from the 1993 National Conference on Black Music Research (Spring, 1994): 8, JSTOR, November 8, 2003, http://www.jstor.org/search.
[4] S. Frederick Starr, Bamboula!: The Life and Times of Louis Moreau Gottschalk (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995) 45–117.
[5] Pleyel was the famous piano manufacturer. Chopin preferred playing on Pleyel pianos.
[6] Starr 80.
[7] Starr 70-77.
[8] Vernon Loggins, Where the world ends; the life of Louis Moreau Gottschalk (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1958) 71–73.
[9] Starr 118.
[10] Libby Antarsh Rubin, Gottschalk in Cuba, Ph.D. Diss., Columbia University, 1974 (Ann Arbor: University Microfilm Incorporated, 1974) 16.
[11] Alejo Carpentier, Music In Cuba, Ed. Timothy Brennan, Trans. Alan West-Durán (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001) 65-88.
[12] Carpentier 106–118.
[13] Carpentier 258.
[14] Rubin 27.
[15] Starr 174.
[16] Starr 174–177.
[17] Aurelio De La Vega, “Manuel Saumell Robredo,” Grove Music Online, Ed. L. Macy , November 1, 2003. http://www.grovemusic.com. The cinquillo cubano appeared in Cuban popular music from Oriente province around 1802.
[18] Elena Pérez Sanjurjo, Historia de la Música Cubana (Miami: La Moderna Poesía, 1986) 436.
[19] Rubin 30.
[20] De La Vega “Manuel Saumell Robredo”; Fernández 126. El somatén.
[21] Nohema Fernández, “La Contradanza Cubana y Manuel Saumell,” Latin American Music Review / Revista de Música Latinoamericana, Vol. 10, No. 1 (Spring–Summer, 1989): 120, JSTOR, November 8, 2003, http://www.jstor.org/search.
[22] Fernandez 125. La Luisiana.
[23] Starr 183-184.
[24] Starr 184.
[25] Carpentier 193.
[26] De La Vega “Manuel Saumell Robredo.”
[27] Carpentier 189; Rubin 30.
[28] Rubin 30–31.
[29] Carpentier 222.
[30] Carpentier 195–197; Rubin 34.
[31] Rubin 35.
[32] Rubin 35.
[33] Victoria Eli Rodríguez, “Nicolás Ruiz Espadero,” Grove Music Online, Ed. L. Macy, November 1, 2003, http://www.grovemusic.com.
[34] Rubin 38; Starr 182.
[35] Rubin 38.
[36] Josephine Wright, “Violinist Jose White in Paris, 1855–1875,” Black Music Research Journal, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Autumn, 1990): 217–224, JSTOR, November 8, 2003. http://www.jstor.org/search.
[37] Aurelio De La Vega, “Jose White Lafitte,” Grove Music Online, Ed. L. Macy, November 1, 2003, http://www.grovemusic.com.
[38] Starr 182.
[39] Gerard Béhague, “Republic of Cuba: I. Art Music,” Grove Music Online. Ed. L. Macy, November 1, 2003, http://www.grovemusic.com.
[40] Sanjurjo 389.
[41] Starr 290.
[42] Aurelio De La Vega, “Ignacio Cervantes,” Grove Music Online, Ed. L. Macy, November 1, 2003, http://www.grovemusic.com.
[43] Louis Moreau Gottschalk, Notes of a Pianist, Ed. Jeanne Behrend (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1964) xxxi.
[44] De La Vega “Ignacio Cervantes.”
[45] Béhague “Republic of Cuba: I. Art Music.”
[46] Starr 189.
[47] Robert Stevenson and Robin Moore, “Santiago de Cuba,” Grove Music Online , Ed. L. Macy, November 1, 2003, http://www.grovemusic.com.
[48] Carpentier 198.
[49] Aurelio De La Vega, “Latin American Composers in the United States,” Latin American Music Review / Revista de Música Latinoamericana, Vol. 1, No. 2 (Autumn–Winter, 1980): 163, JSTOR, November 8, 2003, http://www.jstor.org/search.
[50] Starr 184.
[51] Starr 170–194; 289–309.
[52] Carpentier 198. A black self-help association.
[53] One of the many native Afro-Cuban drums.
[54] Carpentier 198–199; Starr 291.
[55] Starr 291.
[56] Carpentier 214–234.
[57] Carpentier 222–223. The author writes that while other danzones had been composed and performed in Cuba prior to Las Alturas de Simpson, this event was different in that it was the first public performance sanctioned by provincial officials.
[58] Sanjurjo 402.
[59] Raul Murciano, Ph.D., Introduction to Cuban Music, MCY-333, Class Lectures, University of Miami, August–December 2003.
[60] Thomas Fiehrer, “From quadrille to stomp: the Creole origins of jazz,” Popular Music, Vol. 10, No. 1, The 1890s (January, 1991): 26, JSTOR, December 4, 2003, http://www.jstor.org/search.
[61] Christopher Washburne, “The Clave of Jazz: A Caribbean Contribution to the Rhythmic Foundation of an African-American Music,” Black Music Research Journal, Vol. 17, No. 1 (Spring, 1997): 64-65, JSTOR, December 4, 2003, http://www.jstor.org/search.
[62] Fiehrer 26.
[63] Carpentier 199, 265–266.
[64] Lecuona earned an Academy Award nomination for Best Song for the eponymous movie With a Song in My Heart.
[65] The sexteto [sextet] and the septeto [septet] were modifications of danzón ensembles. The septeto added a trumpet to the sexteto’s ensemble and thereby began the path towards the conjuntos and big bands.
[66] Moré, a towering figure in Cuban popular music, is the Cuban equivalent of American legends Frank Sinatra and Nat King Cole.
[67] Scott Yanow, Afro-Cuban Jazz (San Francisco: Miller Freeman, 2000) 1–5.
[68] It was also called “Cubop.” By the 1970s the term “Latin Jazz” was being used to encompass the myriad influences and nationalities involved in the scene in New York City.
[69] Yanow 3.
[70] Lise Waxer, “Of Mambo Kings and Songs of Love: Dance Music in Havana and New York from the 1930s to the 1950s,” Latin American Music Review / Revista de Música Latinoamericana, Vol. 15, No. 2 (Autumn–Winter, 1994): 168, JSTOR, November 8, 2003, http://www.jstor.org/search.
[71] The character “Ricky Ricardo,” brilliantly played by Cuban émigré Desi Arnaz on the television show I Love Lucy, is mentioned only to the extent that it was, despite its inaccuracy, the stereotypical image of the Cuban musician for many in the United States. The popularity of Cuban music increased greatly during its original run on American television.
[72] Murciano.
(c) Copyright 2003-2008 George L. Moneo
