Reading Week 3 Reflection

Latin Identity and Music

Cianci Melo-Carrillo

This week’s readings focused on centrality. A few examples being the centrality of Cuba
in American music, the centrality of the drum in dance, the centrality of dance in popular music,
and the centrality of African rhythms to music all over. This language of centrality, which
invokes a spatial dimension, made me aware that the mixing of cultures involves spaces, and that
the spaces mentioned in the readings were often similar: in poor places. The music of these poor
places was then exhibited to the popular audience through festivals. These festivals helped
facilitate popular support of the music so that it could become an expression of national identity.
This process is described by Sublette as “mainstreaming,” which is another center-space oriented
word but also carries an analogy to water. Sublette’s term carries with it a stronger implication
through analogy than “centrality,” because of the image that in time all smaller streams
eventually join into the mainstream. This is the same prophesy given by Morales that “one of the
characteristics of present-day Latin music is the increasing incorporation of lesser-known styles
into modern music forms.” This seems to a positive prophesy, one that ignores “whitening” or
the negative effects of commercialization, given that this process of mainstreaming has also led
to the variety of music that exists today. Mainstreaming is a process that makes music accessible
to the most people, and in that exposure exists the possibility of more creation.
The first obstacle preventing music from reaching the mainstream was the societal
division between poor and rich people. Sublette states that a “dance would start among the
lowest people—the slaves and free blacks” because they also carried the instrument of dance: the
drum. This societal division was the ultimate separator of culture, since even imposed religion
had a different reaction in the two groups. According to Sublette and Morales, whereas the
Christian church was able to prohibit the usage of the drum in Europe for centuries (until 1540),
in Cuba and Brazil, the enforced Christian religion was mixed with Yoruban religion so that their
descendants could covertly continue to practice their rituals. Cuban Santería and Brazilian
Candomblé both included musical rituals to invoke deities, with particular emphasis on
drumming, which Morales calls “trance-inducing.” This music, although part of a Christianized
religion, was distinctly different from the contemplative music that had been patronized by the
Church in Europe, which according to Sublette, was monastic and purely vocal—not meant to be
danced.
People wanted to dance, regardless of their social status. Dance is central to popular
music, and the African drum is central to dance. The first step towards mainstreaming the music
of the lowest people was having places where low and high classes mixed. According to
Sublette, one such place was the Corpus Christi festival in Sevilla where the zarabanda from
Congo was popularized and African performers were a strong presence. From Spain, the
zarabanda travelled up Europe, at each step becoming more mainstreamed until it reached its
French form as sarabande and became a concluding movement to the classical music dance
suite. At this point this form had little resemblance to the original, but its effect in prompting a
new dance suite was felt.
In the Americas, a place where high and low classes met was Havana, Cuba, a place
central to the future of American music. According to Morales, Cuba was a place where musical
forms were “brought to their highest form of sophistication before they were exported and
popularized elsewhere.” Sophistication in this sense could also mean mainstreaming in that it
brings music into an intelligible form for the high classes. These Cuban-made musical forms,
however, were the products of high and low mixing—of European and African elements—and
continued to mix until enough people were included in the mainstream. For example, Morales
describes that the danzón originated as a reaction to the rigidity of the contradanza. However, the
danzón was still less than inclusive of all groups in Cuba. According to Storm, in 1916 two of the
groups playing the danzón, the orquestas tipicas and the charangas, were specific to the
bourgeoisie, and ignored black street music. In reaction, the 1930’s saw the increase of
popularity of the conjunto, which “rarely if ever played danzones, but a rowdier and blacker
music.” Mainstreaming came fully when this rowdier conjunto music joined danzón through
music of the group Arcaño Y Sus Maravillas to create danzón-mambo. Storm states that as a
result of the popularity of this group, “a general Africanization of Cuban music” took place.
Therefore, a new music was created for the mainstream that appeased both high and low classes
by bringing elements of both cultures.
Adding to the centralities given by the readings, mainstreaming is a central process to the
creation of new music. What Storm calls the “ebb and flow” of changes to musical forms is a
democratic process where a musical form only succeeds if it contains all the desired elements of
its audience. Unfortunately, an implicit effect of this process is that cities have more power over
the rural areas. Big cities have the advantage of infrastructure and connections to other cities. As
Storm states, most of the Latin styles that affected the music of the United States were “big-city
popular forms.” This historical process is the same as the process described by Morales where
smaller music styles are being incorporated into modern music styles (big-city forms). In being
mainstreamed, these smaller styles lose their connection to their rural communities but give
access to more people to be able to create something new with their parts.