During the Spring 2017 semester, I designed and taught the class SPA 322 "Cuban music: Readings and critical auditions on imaginaries about the nation and the diaspora," for undergraduate students at the University of Miami. In this class, students were able to improve their writing, listening and oral skills in Spanish, while learning, developing critical skills and producing knowledge on cultural aspects about Latin-American topics, in this case on Cuban music and negotiations of identity.
The class provided a historical overview throughout some of the most important Cuban music genres since the 19th century, from Rumba to Reggeaton. It explored the influence of music in the process of negotiation of the idea of a Cuban nation, as well as on negotiations of national, diasporic and transnational identities within and outside the island, throughout historical time and geographical spaces.
An important component of the class was to provide students with firsthand interactions with Cuban musicians living in diaspora since the last 25 year, specially singer-songwriters and academically trained musicians. For that purpose, I invited Yusa, Vanito Brown, Pavel Urquiza and Ariel Fernandez-Dj Asho. They are among the protagonists of the important process of transnationalization and renaissance of Cuban music production that is taking place throughout the world since the 1990s crisis.
-Pavel Urquiza
Pavel Urquiza was the first invitee, under the section on Cuban Fusion. He is one of the protagonist of what I call Cuban Fusion, which refers to the music produced between Cuban singer-songwriters and jazz musicians since the 1990s throughout the world.
Cuban fusion is for the most part underground or alternative (non-mainstream), relies heavily in ad-hoc collaborations and improvisation, and transcends generic borders. It's highly informed by timba, boleros, guaracha, La Nueva Trova and Afrocuban rhythms, in an open-ended dialogue with an array of world music genres like funk, jazz, pop, hip-hop, cumbia, reggae, Argentinian rock, Brazilian songs and others. Cuban fusion is also informed by the generational and individual subjectivities, education, references, frustrations, illusions and aesthetics of these musicians, who massively became migrants and are dispersed throughout the world.
In his presentation, Pavel expanded on one of his latest and more important projects so far, his double album and documentary La ruta de las almas (2014). The project traces back the ancestral human connections prompted by music from Persia to Patagonia, throughout 30 cities and with the participation of 50 musicians. He also talked about another project on the making, which focuses on the tambor (drum) culture across the world.
Ariel was closely involved with the Cuban hip-hop movement in the island since the 1990s. Before the class, the students read an article wrote by Ariel for La Jiribilla, "Poesía urbana o la nueva trova de los noventa" (2001), where he provides his views on the origins and challenges faced by the Cuban rap and hip-hop movement.
Under the class' section about this type of music, Ariel provided a comprehensive presentation about the historical presence of African traditions since the origins of rumba, the emergence of Afrocuban jazz in New York during the 1940s, the filing song movement in the island and the consolidation of Cuban rap and hip-hop as a movement in the late 1990s. He also highlighted the historical influence of American music in Cuba, such as in most of the music genres mentioned before, and specially salient in the appropriation of jazz band sonorities like in the case of legendary Benny More.
He situated Cuban rap and hip-hop as one of the most important examples of American music' appropriations by Cubans in the island. Beyond that, Ariel also considered the developments of this music genre in the island the result of a local need from the marginal and black populations to have a voice, as the most affected social sectors by the nineties' crisis.
Vanito is one of the founding members of Habana Abierta, a music collective often regarded as the “generational voice” of the 1990s. He indicated he was part of a group of singers, songwriters and bohemians who spontaneously interacted in Havana at the time, in gatherings like La Peña de 13 y 8, and undergrounds bands such as Lucha Almada, Superávit, Cuatro Gatos, Cachivache, Debajo and En Serie. Those gatherings and bands mapped out an alternative music scene in the midst of the most severe post-revolutionary crisis. As a result, most of these musicians eventually migrated and spread out throughout the world.
From diverse and mostly self-trained music backgrounds, these musicians updated the legacy of La Nueva and La Novísima Trova with multiple references common to their generational music universe referred before. Vanito also talked about the origins of Habana Abierta, his career in Spain, and he shared details about H.A. two successful come back presentations in Havana, despite the lack of support from the cultural establishment.
Vanito provided an overview on his career as a soloist. He showed the class his two latest videos: Chévere (2014), recorded in Havana and featuring a song from his latest album Norte, Sur, Este y Aquel; and the making of Bolero Inaudito (2016), a song he composed twenty years ago in Madrid together with singer songwriter Kelvis Ochoa, and that they recently recorded in Miami.
-Yusa
Yusa is one of the pioneers Afrocuban women from what I call the Transnational Cuban Alternative Music Scene (TCAMS), a network of music production and collaborations across the world established by Cuban diasporic singer-songwriters and academically trained musicians since the 1990s crisis.
She was a founding member of the music collective Interactivo, together with Robertico Carcasses and others. Yusa has an important discography as a singer-songwriter as well as an skillful performer of guitar, bass and tres. Yusa has been very successful in the World Music and jazz scenes in Europe, Japan and Latin America. She is also a pioneer in the introduction of feminist and LGTB topics in the Cuban song. After a long residency in Argentina, Yusa is currently residing in Miami.
For the class, Yusa reviewed some of the most important moments of her career, since her initial incursions performing traditional Cuban music in Europe, until her prolific career as a singer-songwriter and bass player across the world. Yusa recognized that, although she has been greatly surprised by the impact of fortunate coincidences in her life, she believes that her career has been closely related with careful choices and decisions she has made along the road. She performed two songs for the class accompanied by her acoustic guitar: "Waking Heads," from her album Haiku (2008), and "Tomando el Centro," from Yusa (2002).
