Small African Encyclopaedia 17. From the African presence in Cuba

 By: Heriberto Feraudy Espino

 April 21, 2007

The poor slave was brought to Cuba naked. He had to leave everything in his native land, he brought no material thing, everything he brought was inside; but lacking family and wealth, he brought his spirit, his culture, his chants, his music, his language and his religion. The slave drivers who deprived him of his freedom could not deprive him either of his believes or his resistance capacity. It would have certainly been a great acquisition for the magnates of colonialism to import slaves without spirit! It was that spirit which provided our language, our temper, our way to live, to gesticulate and to walk, our national identity, with life.

It was in the cabildos and brotherhoods, in the practices of the Yoruba, Conga or Arará religions, in the Abakuá secret societies, in the palenques and barrack huts, where the African negroes cooked “their roots and the roots of their roots, to give us what we are today: a people which, together with the Spanish and other lands´ contributions, has been able to build a nation, whose mystery grows more incontrovertible each day when one analyzes its resistance power.

Among all the contributions of the Negro to the Cuban identity, Fernando Ortiz, who worthily considered Humboldt to be the second discoverer of Cuba , quotes three main manifestations: “art, religion and the tone of collective emotion” (F. Ortiz, 1919:25)

We referred before to the contribution of the African and his descendents in economic and political terms. In the cultural field these contributions acquire a bigger dimension playing a decisive role in the construction of a culture, which, as Inés María Martiatu states “has been a source of inspiration for the so called high culture providing it, not in few cases, with its mark of originality”. (María Martiatu, 2000.)

Let us start by music.

In Africa, the Sub-Saharan one, the Negro is already musical before he is born. When the African pregnant woman “ pilonea ” the boy or girl in her belly in the door of her house or in the back yard of the village, he or she moves with the rhythm of a pilon . When the mother, once the baby is born already, walks and climbs mountains carrying the baby in her bag, there is rhythm and even elegance in every step she makes.

It can not be spoken about Cuban music, as well as about any other aspect related to the African presence in Cuba, without referring to don Fernando. About the theme of music the master points out: The Afro-Cuban music is Cuban without a doubt, with full Cuban identity; but anyone who studies the Cuban music from the historic or ethnographic point of view, in what it has of national, can not do without the appropriate nomenclature to express the afro-negro that is almost always in and which provided it with its tones, its curves and his heats. According to him, the Cuban people music is Cuban, but in order to characterize it historically, in order to characterize its cultural mix, it has to be referred to as Afro-Cuban, as the necessary last name to define a person, and he adds:

“… it can well be said of Cuba what Euclides Cuña said of Brazil “ the mulatto came to us made abroad”, since there were millions of dark-skinned and brown people in the Iberian Peninsula long before than in America and there the African music sounded already before Christopher Columbus had been born. Don Christopher himself had to hear the African music in Lisbon , and in Guinea itself, before sailing to the land of the setting sun. And then, from Spain Negroes were brought to Cuba with their drums, their vihuelas and a music already mulatto made in Andalusia .” And in another part he states: “It is not less indubitable that the most characteristic music of Cuba, the one that has always granted it world relevance, is that one that was merged with streams of African presence, in that Creole cresol set in the tropical fire; the product of a black-white cultural mix, from the ancient times of sarabande, cumbé and other dances of the common people, to the contemporary successes of Cuban composers like Amadeo Roldán and Alejandro Caturla, who took the African values of Cuba to the high symphonic music of our times in the universal auditorium.” (Fernando Ortiz. 1993-13-15)

And as in many other matters related to the qualities of the African and his descendents, Ortiz rebelled when he heard the despise some used to deal with the music of these peoples “How can be said that the African Negroes do not know melody? Are there chants without melody at all? The life of the African is sung life. Those who affirm that the African music is only rhythm without the value of a melody are wrong”.

And quoting Milligan he states: “The negro sings everything, his joy as well as his pain, his love and his hatred, his revenge and desperation, and even his slavery” (Ob.cit.,p.179), and in other text he offers us an anecdote: “An old landowner of Matanzas told us that the foreman of one his sugar mills had a sadistic idea: when they had to whip a slave, instead of hanging him head down making him count the zurrugazos aloud, one by one, as it was frequent, he forced the negro to sing a song with the rhythm of the drum, then the lashes fell on his back with the rhythm, the mayoral had to give up that procedure”. (Ortiz. 1940)

The African influence in the Cuban music is in Son, Rumba and Changuí and in most of the expressions of people´s nature, not only for the timbre and expressive function, for the strength of the rhythms, but also for the use of instruments that give the sonority and movements observed in these manifestations. In terms of music, Rumba has been maybe one of the most outstanding manifestations as resistance expression before the racial prejudices. For its rooting and survival, Alberto Fall, a prestigious Cuban musician has stated that, in his opinion, it should be considered as the Cuban national dance. Among the African ethnical groups present in Cuba the ones which influenced us the most were, without any doubt, the Bantus and the Yorubas.

When valuing the importance of the African presence in the Cuban music it is indispensable to mention, among others, figures as: José White, Brindis de Salas, Miguel Faílde, Lico Jiménez, Aniceto Díaz, Pepe Sánchez, Manuel Corona, Amadeo Roldán, Alejandro García Caturla, Gilberto Valdés, José Urfé, Manuel Saumell, brothers Orestes and Israel López, Antonio Arcaño, Paulina Álvarez, María Teresa Vera, Sindo Garay, Miguel Matamoros, Ernesto Lecuona, Celia Cruz, Miguelito Valdés, Chano Pozo, Arsenio Rodríguez, Ignacio Piñeiro, Rita Montaner, Mario Bouzá, Antonio Machín, Machito, Enrique Jarrín, Barbarito Diez, Abelardo Barroso, Joseíto Fernández, Benny Moré, Bola de Nieve, José Antonio Méndez, Cesar Portillo de la Luz , Celeste Mendoza, Elena Burke, Omara Portuondo, Rafael Lay, Dámaso Pérez Parado, Vicentino Valdés, Pedro Izquierdo, Félix Chapotin, Pacho Alonso, Elio Revé, Juan Almeida, Tata Guines, Changuito, Juan Formel, Lázaro Ross, Chucho Valdés. We could make a neverending list. (To be continued).

Translation: Yusimí Rodríguez

Source: Cubarte