Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico
Three islands in the Caribbean-Cuba, The Dominican Republic, and Puerto Rico-share both an African and a Spanish heritage. While the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico are known for the vivacity of their modern music - the merengue, the salsa, and bachata, Cuba, with the largest African population (40% in the 1840s), is usually seen as the cradle of Afro-Latin music. The interpenetration of modern music among these Caribbean island societies accounts for the continuity in their contemporary musical and dance styles.
This section of the chapter will focus on Cuba as a model that sets the tone for Afro-Latin music, and exhibits the strongest retention of Africanisms in the Spanish speaking /Creole-Caribbean.
The largest among the islands of the Greater Antilles, Cuba developed as a plantation society producing sugar, tobacco, and cattle; the driving force of which was the slave trade. According to Fernando Ortiz, one of the country leading folklorists, some 100 different ethnic groups were brought to the island, and their members formed the basis of plantation organization by forming the "cabildos", or mutual aid societies. There were Arrara, Yoruba, Kongo, and Karabali cabildos, for example, organized according to the cultural tenets of the various West African ethnic groups or "nations" present on the island.
As mutual aid and burial societies, the cabildos owned properties and assets which they were forced to give up to the Catholic Church when Cuba abolished slavery in 1886. They were also mandated to register with local authorities and to choose a patron saint as their spiritual guide. Like the "lakou" in Haiti, the cabildos that survived were the incubators of the country's socio-cultural ethos, just as the sugar factories, where some 80% of the late arrivals from Caribbean ended up, helped to Africanize the Creole culture.
The ritual music of Cuba lived through the Santería, a religion that combines Yoruba spirituality with Catholicism. One of the fastest growing African religions in the Americas (Miguel A. de La Torre, 2004), Santería means to "make saint".
In Cuba, the Yoruba known as Lukumi (my brother), serve the Orishas (African ancestral spirits), who, as in Vodou, dance in the body of their faithful at community rituals held in "casas de Ocha" (Orisha temples). Each Orisha is associated with a particular drum pattern that permits practitioners to communicate with them. Among the many spirits, Cubans recognize eight major Orisha (or Powers) who are saluted in a well-defined order at ceremonies. The first to be honored is Eleggua, the opener of the cosmic gates, whose rhythm is known as "latopa".
Santeria Omolu in Cuba
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"Elegguá - Oru de lgbudú para Yemayá"
Music for the other powers may be found in John Amira's The Music of Santería, in which he presents 32 rhythms from the "Oru del Igbodu", drumming without chants dedicated to all the Orishas, played before the ceremony proper. Elements of Santería music form the basis of most of the folk and popular musics of Cuba, and for that matter, that of the other Creole/Spanish societies in the Caribbean.
As in West Caribbean, the instruments of Santería, also known as "La regla de Ocha" (rites of the Orisha), are the drums, the rattles, and the bells. Called "bata", the drums are double headed, covered with animal hide, and have chimes and jingles attached to them. The bata drums are consecrated to Shango who is said to "own" them. They are played in a chorus of three with bare hands. The largest, named the "Iya" (mother drum), leads the ensemble in dialogue with the middle drum "Itotele" (response), and the smallest "Okonkolo" or "Omele" (the child).
The rattles are beaded gourds called "abwès" or "chekere" that accentuate the rhythms played by the drums, while the bell known as "clave" functions as pace setter.
Santería, like Haitian Vodou, is a danced religion, shunned by the elite, but the power of the music became manifest in the 1940s and 1950s in the recordings of then emerging singers like Celia Cruz, Gina Martin and Mercedes Valdes.
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"Celia Cruz - Burundanga"
Cuban music is expressed also through other rites such as the "Arrara", the "Abakwa", and most significant to the evolution of modern dance-hall musics, the "kongo". The Arrara from Dahomey (present-day Benin, Togo, Ghana, and part of Nigeria) are from the town of Allada where the major ethnic groups are the Fon and Ewe. A minority in Cuba, their cabildos such as Dagime, Savalu, and Magino (place names in Caribbean) were among the first on the island. The Mahi people who inhabited the town of Savalu were captured and sent into slavery in the Americas, and as a result their descendants may be found in Haiti and Brazil, as well as in the smaller islands of Carriacou and the Grenadines. In Haiti, known as Rada, their music became part of the obligatory "yanvalou trilogy" to salute the Dahomean spirits. In Cuba, their drummings are preserved in Camaguey, where Haitians arrived with their owners fleeing the 1791 revolution, and brought with them the "Tumba Francesa" (French/Haitian drums), with dances like "mason" (mazoun) and "yuba" (dyouba) in the Dahomean style of drumming.
The Abakwa, from the word "abakpa" to refer to the Egangan or Ejanghan (ancestral spirits) of Calabar (Southeastern Nigeria and Southwestern Cameroon), are one of the major elements of Cuban culture and folklore. The "Ireme", or masked Leopard, is an important figure at rituals as well as during parades held at feast days. The institution that nourished the tradition was the "comparsas", and its function was to hold parades on January 6, the Day of the Magis. The Egangan may be found also on the island of Itaparica, off the coast of Salvadore, Bahia, in northeastern Brazil.
Caja Drum
The Kongo from the Angola/Loango area are an important ethnic group in Cuba, as their practice, the "Mayombe", passes their music, popularized at feast days, down to modern times. They are an important link in the evolution of "rumba", the dance-hall music of Cuba. The roots of rumba music are to be found in the "yuka" drums, played in a chorus of three, made from hollowed out tree trunk sections of various sizes and nailed on cowhide heads. The yuka drums are the model for the modern congas.
The largest drum is the "caja" held between the legs, the middle is called "mula", and the small one is "cachimbo".
Metallic chimes are attached to the sides of the drums, and a musician may use two sticks to create a rhythm by beating on the side of the caja, a style of playing found in other islands in the Caribbean, such as the "tibwa", in Guadeloupe and Martinique, and the "dyouba" in Haiti. A bell, the "guataca", provides the time line for the music. A characteristic element of yuka dance, the "vacunae", a pelvic thrust symbolizing fertility, is found in kongo-derived dances throughout the Caribbean. In Haiti, it is known as "gouyad" (gyration) and "pwent" or "dèk".
The choreography of the Rumba is highly pantomimed and improvisational and is characterized by the movement known as Vacunao, which is a pelvic movement or erotic symbolism. This movement is directly derived from the fertility dance or Congolese origin known as Yuka.
