Abstract
This chapter provides a historical contextualization of the process of negotiation of narratives of Cubanness since the emergence of the Cuban nation in the nineteenth century. The author critically examines some relevant theoretical debates about nationalism, Cubanness and transnationalism within and outside the island. That review is complemented by an analysis of some key moments in the relationship between culture and politics and its impact on the Cuban cultural production after 1959. The manuscript also provides a theoretical and historical background of moments of transnationalism in Cuban music since the nineteenth century, which contextualizes the subsequent analysis of alternative and transnational explosion of narratives of Cubanness in music at the turn of the twenty-first century provided in Chap. 3.
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Notes
- 1.
For more detailed accounts on the relationship between the global condition and narratives of nations and nationalism, see Levitt; Fukuyama; Huntington and Appadurai.
- 2.
For a more detailed discussion about transnationalism from sociological and migrant studies perspectives see Glick Schiller et al.; Portes and deWind; and Duany (Reconstructing).
- 3.
See Palabras a los Intelectuales, a statement made by Fidel Castro at a meeting at the National Library between artists, intellectuals, and the government in June 1961. Discursively, this statement proclaimed the subordination of any cultural production and artistic creation to the revolutionary government’s control.
- 4.
See El Socialismo y el Hombre en Cuba, published first in 1965 by Marcha, a Uruguayan weekly publication.
- 5.
See Fornés, El quinquenio gris; Criterios, La política cultural del período revolucionario; and Giroud, El caso Padilla.
- 6.
The revolutionary government created UMAP during the 1960s, which stands for Unidades Militares de Ayuda a la Producción (Military Units to Aid Production). They were labor camps in the countryside run by the military. Through roundups and arbitrary detentions, around 35, 000 homosexuals, intellectuals, artists, religious practitioners from several denominations, and anyone considered counterrevolutionary and “weak” by government authorities were confined to these places for long periods of time and were subjected to forced labor and political reeducation. See Joseph Tahbaz, “Demystifying las UMAP” and Abel Sierra Madero “Academias para producir machos en Cuba.”
- 7.
For a more detailed account about the impact of the Special Period, please see González Corzo, Mario A. “Transition or Survival?” and Carmelo Mesa- Lago, Cuban’s Aborted Reform.
- 8.
“Novísima trova” is a term commonly used to describe a generation of less committed and more critical song- writers that supersede the so-called Nueva Trova movement during the 1980s. It included musicians like Carlos Varela, Gerardo Alfonso, Santiago Feliú, Frank Delgado, Donato Poveda, **omara Laugart, Pedro Luis Ferrer and Polito Ibañez, among others.
- 9.
Timba was the most popular dance music genre in the island in the 1990s, pumped by the tourist industry. A local, very eclectic and musically complex evolution of more traditional genres like son, guaracha, mambo, and cha-cha-chá, heavily influenced by Afro- Cuban rhythms, chants, and instrumental arrangements from American jazz, funk, and pop. Timba dance is usually frenetic and more freestyle than salsa; with lyrics often sexually charged that usually borrow direct calls from street slang, working class and Afro-Cuban cultural narratives.
- 10.
Los Novísimos was a term coined by literary critic Salvador Redonet in the anthology Los últimos serán los primeros (1993), to identify a group of dystopian Cuban writers born and raised within the Revolution, who during the 1990s economic crisis openly disengaged from the saga of Socialist Realism, aesthetic and ideology inserted by cultural bureaucrats in the literary canon on the island particularly during El Quinquenio Gris in the 1970s.
- 11.
The Wet Foot/Dry Foot policy comprises a revision of the Cuban Adjustment Act of 1966, by which anyone who fled Cuba and got into the United States would be allowed to pursue residency a year later. After talks with the Cuban government, the Clinton administration came to an agreement with Cuba that it would stop admitting people found at sea. Since then, in what has become known as the “wet foot, dry foot” policy, a Cuban caught on the waters between the two nations (i.e., with “wet feet”) would summarily be sent home or to a third country. One who makes it to shore (“dry feet”) gets a chance to remain in the US, and later would qualify for expedited “legal permanent resident” status and US citizenship. The Obama Administration put an end to this policy in 2017.
- 12.
See Cantor-Navas, “Van-Van Plays On” for a detailed account of the hostile environment experienced in Miami by several musicians living on the island, such as Van-Van in 1999, and of a presentation in Miami by jazz musician Gonzalo Rubalcaba in 1996, among many others.
- 13.
See Sublette, “The Missing Cuban Musicians,” for a detailed analysis of the impact of the US regime of restrictions on cultural exchange with Cuba.
- 14.
Arturo Sandoval, Paquito de Rivera, Ignacio Berroa, Carlos Averhoff, Ahmed Barroso, Albita Rodríguez, Meme Solís, Lucrecia, Donato Poveda, Malena Burque, Mike Purcel, and Pancho Céspedes among many others, are among the generation of Cuban musicians who migrated in the 1980s and early 1990s.
- 15.
Nueva trova was an important song movement from the 1960s inspired by the so-called Hispanic “nueva canción” (new song) movement and North American protest songs. They proposed highly poetic and socially conscious lyrics as a norm. They were inspired by traditional Cuban songs and influenced by rock, pop, and Brazilian musicians from the Tropicalia movement. By the mid-1970s, nueva trova became a national institutionalized movement with hundreds of members throughout the island, with the full support of other institutions like ICAIC (Cuban Institute of the Arts and Cinematography Industry). Nueva trova also acquired a significant international fan base that was instrumental to the island’s cultural establishment. See also Giro Radamés, Diccionario Enciclopédico de la Música en Cuba (Tomo 4) (212–215).
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Bravo, E.S. (2024). Towards a Post-national Cuban Imaginary: Theoretical and Historical Context. In: Cuban Fusion. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-53692-2_2
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