The Manchurian Candidate Part II: "Going out on the Limb"

On my last post, Obama "The Manchurian Candidate" I raised a question concerning my analytical comparison to Obama the candidate for the 2008 presidency with the movie "The Manchurian Candidate", the older version. Here in my final assessment and after careful observation, I will be taking an enormous step towards uncertainty, yes, I'm "Going out on the limb". I’m going all-out with an unprecedented and extremely daring declaration. I'm actually going to place the Queen of Diamonds around the neck of the American media, oh yes, they are the culprits here. The brainwashed, ignorant followers who actually sit down in front of a TV screen and glue their eyes to CNN for more than 5 minutes and/or surf the web and spend the same amount of time on all the far-left and ultra liberal websites on the Internet, they are the victums. Don’t worry, Mr. Obama will enter the picture later on, but first let me proceed to explain to the readers here or maybe I should have phrased it this way, let me furnish your minds with my personal observations concerning the American media. I would like to arm you with an invisible sort of gadget, one that you can use to defend yourself from all their rhetoric. Well, let me put it in different terms, I will arm you with a sort of attitude per say, so you could be “totally prepared”. A defense mechanism you might say, so you could see clearly and beyond the barrage of obstacles that will be launched at you when you decide to click on the control to your TV or the mouse that connects you to the virtual world. Once you understand and realize how these conniving media outlets work, then you will be totally safe from them all, psychologically speaking of course.

First of all, you must understand and realize that for a news agency or any media outlet to grab and dominate an audience they first need to identify their weaknesses and believe me, there are many here in America. I will use CNN as my prime example since they are the most manipulative of them all. In the fast-pace world we live in, we need the news now and I mean right now, so that’s the first step they took advantage of. They spent a lot of their money in having beat reporters throughout the United States. Secondly, they concentrated on easier ways for the viewer to access misinformation, so they made deals with large companies, private and state controlled, “Lets’s make a deal”, they said. So now CNN can be seen almost anywhere and all day long, very ingenious. This is why wherever you turn your head you can view CNN, in your local banks while you are waiting on line, in airports, right above the carousels while you wait for your luggage. You can view CNN practically anywhere, in bars, hotel lounges, motor vehicle agencies, the internet and a number of other locations I cannot recall at this precise moment. Finally and now that they have hypnotized the viewers, they can proceed to program their minds and turn them into a one-sided negative paranoid disaster. So be aware of this and use alternative news networks to obtain a second and third opinion, remember there are three sides to any story, not two. There is the factual truth, the absolute lie and the twisted speculative, rumor driven diversion of the truth, accompanied by he said, she said mumble jumbled non-represented statements. This is the media’s tactic, to totally dominate and alter your train of thought. You see, if you let it happen to you and you “drink the cool aid”, as the saying goes, then you will be psychologically doomed, you will be a head case now. The tall-tale proof that will convince you have been victimized, that your mind has been raped of any real self expression, is when you turn your TV and/or your computer off. If you are clueless and have no conclusive closure to what you have seen for the past hour or so. If you are more confused now then when you began to watch the so-called “primaries” and can’t decide to make up your mind at all, then your mind has been literally kidnapped, my friend. Basically, you never get the final result, they just confuse you more and in turn, have you coming back for more, it’s not real news reporting, it’s an ongoing never-ending saga but you know that, I hope?

Now I will bring back Mr. Obama into the picture as I promised. It seems that I have reverted back to Barack, he is officially the ‘The Manchurian Candidate”, well he is now but was not all the while. You see, a small twist I forgot to mention, it was Hillary Clinton in the very beginning, she was the Manchurian Candidate but this lasted only for the first few months, that’s until Obama came on strong and took over the race. But you see the American media, well let’s use CNN again as our model for discussion. When CNN started to realize by the results of, let’s say the “Tenth” debate, they began to lean over to Obama’s camp, he became their vehicle now for total control of voters, he will lead them to their ultimate goal and that is to have a Democrat in office in 2008 but most importantly, one they can totally control. How did they see and recognize it was time to change over and support Obama? Well you see, they have polls, it’s a sort of process, they pose a question to the public, they give them a choice, Obama or Hillary. Although I was never contacted by a national poll agency, this is how it works. They make random phone calls to the American public. From gathering information on the internet there are basically four so-called reliable and ongoing polls that are taken, you have Rasmussen, Gallup, Research 2000 , SurveyUSA. But there are more, it is rather confusing, here, checkout this Website and you will understand exactly where I’m coming from. After researching the poll system, I have come to the conclusion that polls “do not” really make anyone more secure and more assured of who is really winning any race. Also, I have come to the conclusion that this is very beneficial for CNN, now they can “control” the whole process. They have their own predictions, their own projections, yes, their own “Manchurian Candidate” and like I explained on part one, Obama is the perfect choice, he has the credentials. He’s the heartless, non-compassionate, self adorned character; he is the prime candidate for the American media to fully control. My advice to everyone reading this article is, go out and vote, wait until all the votes come in and read the results the next day. This way you will skip all the useless reporting. But now you say, how am I going to learn about all the candidates? Be objective, investigate all you can, look at all the pros, and cons concerning all the candidates, absorb it all and remember to use my “Three Points of View” analogy. So as you see I have gone full circle and have ended back to my original point of view. It’s Obama, he’s “The Manchurian Candidate”, I’m totally sure now but again, this is just my opinion, what’s yours??

Open season on bloggers

Recently a number of sports writers have expressed their disdain for bloggers culminating with Buzz Bissinger's expletive filled tirade on Bob Costas' HBO show. The arguments, which are not confined to the realm of sports blogs are familiar: blogs are filled with lies, bloggers are mean-spirited, there's no fact checking on blogs, blogs value speed over accuracy.

What old guard journalists like Bissinger don't seem to understand is that the reason blogs even exist is because they fill a vacuum. Whether it's a more humorous take on the world of sports or a more serious look at what's going on in Cuba, bloggers fill the vacuum.

What Bissinger and even Costas himself say is true, of course, to some degree about some blogs. There are unscrupulous and inaccurate bloggers. But there are also unscrupulous and inaccurate newspaper reporters, columnists and editors. Jayson Blair had credentials, fact checkers and editors and still he managed to have plagiarized and fictional stories published as news in the New York Times.

There are literally millions of blogs out there. Most are read by only a handful of people, but a precious few have readerships larger than some newspapers. As the target of Bissinger's wrath, Will Leitch of Deadspin said, the blogosphere is a meritocracy. If a blog is widely read it's purely a reflection of a connection the blog's writers have made with their audience. In Miami, if I want to read a newspaper I only have one choice. But if I go on the web I can find opinions and reporting from a variety of sources including blogs.

I was drawn to blogging because I realized in this wild frontier was an opportunity to draw attention to something the mainstream media in America had ignored for far too long, the dictatorship in Cuba. Not only that, the very same media had a hand in the establishment of that dictatorship.

Last year, NBC News produced a two-hour Today Show special, live from Cuba. During 120 minutes Matt Lauer did not name a single political prisoner despite the fact that there are well over 200 of them on the island. In fact, by my count, he only uttered 12 sentences that could be considered mildly critical of the regime. If Buzz Bissinger and his colleagues don't like the influence that blogs have in this day and age of declining newspaper readerships then they should do their jobs.

Blogs are a venue in which individuals can express views that may not be the most popular and share them with others that hold the same views. What is happening on the internet is no different than what is happening on your TV dial. In my business it's called fragmentation. There's a vast amount of content being developed that appeals to many narrow audiences. If you like classic cars, there are collector car auctions, if you like interior design there are home improvement shows.

Bissinger's criticism rings as hollow as a network executive in the 1980s might have sounded if he complained that ESPN was ruining sports.

Recently, the courageous Cuban blogger Yoani Sanchez wrote about being denied an "exit visa" to leave Cuba and accept a journalism award in Spain:

They forget that in cyberspace my voice can travel without limits, leaving and returning without asking for permission… It does not matter if they have kept my passport. Since one year ago I have another, on which, in the section for nationality, appears a short word: “blogger”.
Whether Buzz Bissinger gets it or not, I'm proud to be a member of the same blogging nation as Yoani Sanchez and others who cover unpopular and politically incorrect topics.

Obama "The Manchurian Candidate"

I don't know if you noticed this about Mr. Obama, but I have. I've been observing the three pathetic candidates we have to choose from in the coming presidential election and I have been concentrating on how they display emotions. Although there is a lack of emotion present with all three of them, I have noticed this much more with Mr. Obama. He seems to be in some kind of trance, I don't know maybe I'm just hallucinating here, well maybe because I am strongly biased about his way of thinking but then again, I'm definitely not alone in this observation.

It just seems to me that he doesn't show any real emotions at all. It's rather obvious to me that he has been sort of programmed, just by the way he speaks, how he answers the questions that are thrown at him, he doesn't seem to be human to me. He hardly smiles, his responses are too convincing and too conventional, it's rather weird, I must say. By convincing, I mean his answers are, just what anyone would want to hear but it doesn't seem as if they are coming straight from the heart. The gestures he makes, his physical presence, the way his head rotates, it's like looking at a robot. Everyone already suspects that he's a phony, that's for sure, but I'm kind of going a little further with this.



Perhaps you have seen the movie The Manchurian Candidate, not the remake, the 1962 version with Frank Sinatra. I haven't seen the latest version and really don't care for remakes in general, but anyway, there's a scene where Lawrence Harvey is sitting in a dark room having a drink when all of a sudden this beautiful blond steps into the room from a glass door that leads to the garden outside, she's wearing an oversized queen of diamonds playing card, that was freaky! I wonder, who knows, with all these conspiracy theories going around, could he be the Manchurian Candidate, but with a sort of twist? And who could be controlling him?

That might be a little far fetched but still there's that lack of emotion and especially, that lack of compassion in Obama. This seemingly heartless individual actually has a chance to become president of America. Wait one second, could it be that we are the ones being hypnotized or even programmed? Could it be that all these people who have jumped on his bandwagon are just a bunch of Manchurian Candidates. Maybe this is the twist, maybe Obama is wearing the queen of diamonds? Who Knows? What's your opinion here?

The sudden shock of cold water

My first experience at a swimming pool was with some friends at the YMCA. The water was clear and cold and I was terrified. One kid told me to just jump right in, embrace the cold, and move on. A friend suggested to gradually go in and allow my body to adjust to the environment. I tried the gradual approach first, and I grew frustrated with fear and the cold water reached my knees. Getting out of the pool, I walked over to the deep end and jumped in. The shock drove me out as quickly as I came in. Over time, I learned that the public pool water will always be cold, that I will never like the cold, and that there was no changing this fact. What I later grew to understand is that my temperament and determination to endure the sudden shock of cold water is essential. If I am not open to swimming in a pool at the cost of enduring a bit of cold, then I will not stay in the pool regardless of how I entered it.

Many of us who want a free Cuba want it done gradually and from within. However, Cuba will not change in this way. For whatever motive, Raul Castro’s alleged changes have not been gradual. Fidel’s death will not be gradual. Our high paced post-globalized world won’t wait for an internal, gradual change. No matter how much it is preached and sought for by the UN, change will not come incrementally for Cuba. There is sudden change happening in Cuba right now. No, it is not the immediate strike against a corrupt system, and it is not change that leads to immediate freedom. Rather, it is an empty reform that does nothing but entice the world and Cuba into distraction.

With Raul, there is no real change, only a new method of control. The world wants to see Cuba open up, the Vatican visits Cuba and leads the push for the release of political prisioners, and voila Raul provides reform measures to satisfy the world’s pressure. He sets into motion image based changes while simultaneously demanding the release of his 5 spies and an end to the embargo. Given that the US will do neither, Raul will take advantage and come off looking like a martyr. He is a manipulative force playing the role of a man of reform while sending bolting shocks of pointless change that lead many Cubans to a knee- jerk the response that change may not be so good. What good is to be allowed to enter hotels, own airplanes, etc. and not be given the means to achieve these things? What good is it to be offered a future without a sustainable present? Much like an unprepared individual jumping into a cold pool, the sudden shock of idle and fruitless change can cause society to demand a return to the previous and more familiar status quo.

Forced unattainable change is the issue at hand, and it’s not so much what happens, or how this happens that should be our immediate preoccupation, for these things are beyond our immediate control. Rather, how we handle each change that happens in Cuba as it unfolds makes all the difference.

I have faith that the Cuban peopleon the island will see through the deception and act accordingly. And as a Cuban-American, I urge all others who strive for a free Cuba off the island to be voice against Raul’s sudden and deceptive change. If the US, or any other nation, begins to soften under Raul’s actions, we must be an outspoken reminder that Raul was and is still an assassin. We must be an outspoken reminder that any change is not enough when Cubans are not granted the means to access the change given to them. We must be an outspoken reminder that Raul’s best intention is for his own betterment, and that any future deal made with Cuba will be a deal with and only Raul.

Elections are drawing near. There are politicians who claim that, with Raul in charge, we can now open the doors of negotiation. As citizens of USA we have the ability to voice our demands against Raul to our leaders. As Cuba being part of our heritage, culture, memories, and deep seated pain, we have the duty to strive for the well being of her future. And as one of the most influential nations in this world, we have the voice to rally the free world against Raul and say, “Your change is not enough.” Change void of substance is the mask of future deception.

One can hope that Raul will slip, and in his attempt to attain world sympathy he loses control of some reforms and Cuba finally awakens against the repression it’s been dealt for the past 50 years. Yet, it is foolish to wait for a snow ball to roll and become an avalanche on its own. The current course of resistance must be held firm. The world must know that Cubans need more then hotels and scooters. Cuba needs to be an “independent and sovereign State organized as a unitary and democratic Republic for the enjoyment of political freedom, social justice, individual and collective welfare, and human solidarity.”[1] Until then, a lighter repression must not be applauded, cosmetic change must not be praised, and Raul must not be treated any different than his brother.

How we react lies at the heart of true reform. Change, like a sudden shock of cold water, can be jarring and lead to an immediate reaction without reflection. However, if firmly addressed, patiently pursued, and transparently exposed, then this sudden shock will dissipate, and what we will have is a beacon of light shining towards a true reform and freedom for Cuba.

On Illegal Immigration

So much has been made of the illegal immigration problem in our country but it's a hard issue to understand and easy one to demagogue.

There is no question that securing the borders should be a national priority. It is a concern in this day and age of dirty bombs, suitcase bombs, biological weapons, etc. We should know who is coming into our country and for what purpose. And when those persons have exceeded the length of time they are supposed to be here they should go. But if America is going to remain competitive moving into this century we are going to have to be more open to immigration. I will borrow from former Senator Fred Thompson (R-TN) who says that “America needs to be a country of tall fences and wide gates.”

Certain nativists, such as Lou Dobbs and Tom Tancredo, have made names for themselves by espousing a rhetoric that distorts the real motivations of the vast majority of people that come to this country without permission.

Unlike most of the outspoken nativists I come into contact with such immigrants on a regular basis because of my job. I work at an advertising agency that makes commercials for Spanish language TV, Radio and print outlets. It is estimated that there are about 47 million Hispanics living in the U.S. and, as we all know, the estimates there about 12-15 million undocumented/illegal foreigners living in our country, the vast majority of them from Latin America.

I believe that beyond border security, there are two principal reasons that the nativists have gained some degree of traction in the nation's discourse. The first is the unfounded fear that American culture will somehow be overrun and destroyed by hordes of mongrel invaders and the second is that such immigrants become an instant audience for liberal ideology and the Democrat party. It is my opinion that neither fear is well-founded.

Our country has had to deal with immigrant waves before and always come out of the other end stronger than before. America has had waves of Irish, German, Italian, and other immigrants and the nativists at the time all argued similarly that we risked losing our American identity. One cannot help but wonder what America would be like without a Bratwurst or Polish sausage at the ballgame, or a pizza while watching The Godfather. It would difficult to recognize America without the influence of the waves of European immigrants that came after our nation’s founding.

In a sense, today's nativists ignore the reality that we are a country that has already been influenced by our neighbors south of the border. Florida was a Spanish colony for longer than it has been a U.S. state. Major parts of the American southwest were once Mexico. One cannot drive through those parts of the country with running into people with Spanish surnames that are 5th and 6th generation Americans.

No doubt that one of the biggest barriers to understanding these immigrants is language. Since adult immigrants from Latin America tend to speak only Spanish there is an impression among the nativists that these people do not want to learn English. One need not be a linguist to understand that the younger one attempts to learn a second language the easier that is to accomplish and that the surroundings to which a person is exposed determine the speed at which that second language is learned and mastered.

My grandmother came from Cuba when she was in her 40s. She always worked at home, as a seamstress and raising my sister and I. As a result she never learned English to any degree that would be considered proficient. My mother and father came over as much younger adults and settled in Philadelphia. They had to learn English.

Naturally, if you settle in an area where people speak your language there is some disincentive to learning English. Still, most Hispanics I have come into contact with want to learn English and want their kids to be fully bilingual.

Somehow the fallacy that Hispanics do not want to learn English and want to turn the U.S. into a Spanish speaking country has taken root. I offer one fact to refute that notion. For as long as I can remember one of the top spending advertisers in Spanish language media in the U.S. has been Lexicon Marketing. That company is the marketer of an English language course called Ingles sin Barreras (English without Barriers). In 2006, Lexicon spent $175 million on ads in Spanish to sell its English language courses, more than Procter & Gamble, AT&T, General Motors and McDonalds. Needless to say, they spend that money year after year because people buy their product. Hispanic immigrants, both legal and illegal, want to learn English.

It is important to understand that just because some people want to accommodate those folks that only speak Spanish that it is not a surrender of the English language. Today's Spanish dominant immigrant may be fully or at least functionally bilingual tomorrow but there might be a new arrival taking his place that needs a street sign or application to be in Spanish.

I want to address the political implications of giving amnesty to those who are presently living in America illegally. Many of my Republican colleagues take it as a given that Hispanic equals Democrat just like they take for granted that Black equals Democrat. The latter is not necessarily true and the former is certainly not true, at least not yet.

My profession affords me access to syndicated research studies. These are comprehensive surveys of Americans about a wide variety of subjects. We use the results to plan marketing strategies.

I took the liberty of probing one such syndicated study called "Simmons" which is widely used in my industry. I wanted to compare and contrast foreign-born Hispanics to Non-Hispanic whites. The following is what I discovered.

In terms of party affiliation 67% of those that answered the question said they were Democrats while only 22% said they were Republicans and 10% said they were independent. That seems to give credence to the fears I mentioned earlier but when the question was political outlook 37% of those responding said they were conservative vs. 40% saying they were "middle of the road" and only 23% saying they were liberal.

There is obviously a dissonance between the party identification statistics and those for political outlook. I chalk this up to a failure of the Republican Party to court Hispanics and articulate the fact that the GOP reflects a lot of the values Hispanics hold dear, like a focus on the family, moral values, and economic freedom.

To put a finer point on it, 66% of foreign born Hispanics agree with the statement "my faith is really important to me" vs. 58% for non-Hispanic whites.

Notably, when asked whether they would like to set up their own business 56% of foreign born Hispanics agreed that they would vs. 31% of non-Hispanic whites.

Another telling response was to whether the respondents agreed with the statement that "on the whole, people generally get what they deserve". 45% Foreign born Hispanics agreed while only 30% of non-Hispanic whites agreed. One would think that a party that stands for personal responsibility would appeal to such persons.

Some other interesting responses had to do with how American these Hispanics felt. 61% agreed that they enjoy living the American lifestyle and 68% said they often celebrate U.S. National holidays.

In 1998 George W. Bush carried 49% of the Hispanic vote in the Texas Governor's race. Though it is disputed, some exit polls showed that Bush took 44% of Hispanic votes in his 2004 presidential re-election bid.

The reason it is important for Republicans to understand and court Hispanic voters is simple: the party's future is going to depend on it. It is a clear-cut matter of demographics. The same Simmons study I queried for statistics about political outlook shows that the median age for foreign-born Hispanic adults is 37 while the median age for non-Hispanic white adults is a staggering 49. We are in the midst of a demographic crisis in our country. Our work force is aging, nearing retirement age and has not reproduced enough to replace itself. Is it any wonder that America attracts workers like moths to a flame? This is a good thing. Around the world there are people that want to come to America, be paid a fair wage, and live the American dream.

I understand that it is not all positive. I understand that illegal immigrants create a burden on society. I understand that some of them commit crimes and some of the crimes are heinous. I understand that some will end up on the welfare rolls. But they will be less of burden if we make them legal. They will be less likely to commit crimes if they have a way to make an honest living above the table. Illegal immigrants do not have a monopoly on committing heinous crimes or collecting welfare. In fact the vast majority of criminals and welfare recipients are natural-born American citizens.

I believe that a cogent U.S. policy on illegal immigration must include the following four points:

1. Build the tall fences

2. Obtain for those who came here illegally, and have not committed any serious crimes, a legal path to residency and citizenship.

3. Open the wide gates to allow more legal immigration to meet our economic and demographic needs.

4. Continue establishing free trade agreements with free countries to stop the outward migration pressure at its root.

Our leaders in Washington would be wise to set aside the demagoguery and instead look at this important issue with an open mind. There are many problems in America that seem to have no solution. Illegal immigration does not have to be one of them.

Louis Moreau Gottschalk and the Rise of Cuban Music

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.

Són, 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