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Music and Dance in South Louisiana's Cuban Community By Tomás Montoya González with contributions from T. Ariana Hall. Translations by Lori N. Tyler, Guillermo Cabrera Rojo, and T. Ariana Hall Cuban Migration to Louisiana: Race, Identity, And Generation Cuban Music And Dance Styles And Instruments Son is a particular style of singing, a style of instrumental music, and a style of dance. It has Spanish and African elements, but it is one of the quintessential genres of Cuban music. Son dancing is a partner dance that has greatly influenced the Latin dance style of salsa. Son music incorporates a wide variety of instruments, which has helped the music spread, evolve, and penetrate Cuban cultural identity. The first forms of son included singers, guitar, tres, maracas, bongo, claves, and trumpet. Over time other instruments have been inserted into the traditional Son configuration including upright bass, piano, tumbadores (conga hand drums), etc. Son music has a syncopated rhythm that is faster than its predecessor the danzón, which sounds similar, in some ways, to the North American ragtime. Son is primarily dance music and many of the song lyrics are directed to the dancers. Conga is a style of music and dance that has African origins, including its rhythms and the percussion instruments used to play those rhythms. During the Spanish colonial period, plantation owners allowed enslaved Africans to play and dance their traditional music, which later developed into several distinctly Cuban styles of music including conga. At the beginning of the 20th century conga groups began incorporating brass and woodwind instruments including trombones, trumpets, and saxophones in western Cuba, and the Chinese cornet in eastern Cuba. These conga processions and Carnival parades, which brought together hundreds or even thousands of participants, originated in public spaces as neighborhood parades. The traditional conga parade dance step is a very simple slow moving shuffle with a constant swaying back and forth with the hips. Conga even made a world-wide impact in the 1930s with a stylized theatrical version for international audiences, where the basic parade shuffle transformed into a long line of dancers each holding the waist of the person in front of them. Rumba is one of the best-known music and dance styles in Cuba. Its origins are in the urban spaces of western Cuba, primarily Havana and Matanzas, where there were large numbers of free and enslaved Blacks during the Spanish colonial period. The use of tumbadoras or conga drums, wooden boxes, and a wide range of percussion instruments, often found objects, made rumba an essential element in the cohesion of those original Afro-Cuban communities. Several percussionists, dancers, and singers are necessary to perform a rumba. They can be performed at house parties or in public neighborhood spaces. Rumbas are not parades. They are gatherings that are more akin to drum circles, with a dance contest, of sorts, between a man and a woman or between two men. The collective group recognizes and praises the best dancers. Rumba songs can be traditional verses or chronicles of current events. A stylized ballroom dance, loosely based on traditional rumba but with many essential differences, was popularized around the world in the 1920s and 1930s. Cha cha cha is a style of music and a style of dance. The music is based on a distinct rhythm and it incorporates elaborate vocals. Cha cha cha evolved out of two older Cuban music/dance genres: danzón and son. Created by Enrique Jorrín in the 1940s, this partner dance was incredibly popular in Cuba and around the world. The rhythm is broken into two parts, the first part is "1 - 2", and the second part is "1 - 2 - 3". The name cha cha cha corresponds to the "1 - 2 - 3" since the dancers would count "1 - 2", "cha - cha - cha." For more details on the history of cha cha cha, consult the Diccionario de la música cubana. Biográfico y técnico by Helio Orovio. These styles and others heavily influenced what came to be known as salsa, a style of Latin dance music created in New York City by Latino musicians in the early 1970s. Many of the partner dance movements and musical elements that became part of the salsa style of music and dance were based on music and dance styles that originated in Cuba and spread throughout the Caribbean. Independently, a parallel, but distinct, popular music and dance style called timba cubana, evolved in Cuba in the 1980s. Timba incorporates elements from many popular Cuban genres including rumba, son, conga, and cha cha cha. Different generations of Cuban immigrants have been influenced in very different ways by the evolution of salsa and timba, depending on if the person was living in Cuba or in the United States during the 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s. To the untrained eye and ear, salsa and timba music and dance styles may sound and look similar but there are many key differences. They are both partner dances with complicated turns and movements superficially similar to Swing, Jitterbug, and other modern partner dances. Musically, salsa is focused on the melodic aspects of the music, while timba is faster and more focused on highly syncopated, layered, complex rhythmic structures. The lyrics of salsa often concentrate on longer narratives while timba lyrics are infused with many punchy almost spoken choruses that are imbued with multiple meanings and interpretations. Both are partner dances where the two dancers repeat a foot pattern within the 4/4 beat, that stays in time with the music while they do various turns. The salsa foot pattern usually "breaks" (the part of the pattern when each dancer steps back) on the 2nd beat, while the timba foot pattern always "breaks" on the 1st beat, with a syncopated pause before that 1st beat. This is a huge distinction for dancers. Clave, güiros, maracas, and tres guitar are some of the musical instruments that create the particular Cuban sounds of Cuban music, and that Cubans relate to their national identity. The clave is a wooden percussion instrument that originated in Cuba. There are two wooden cylindrical pieces of wood that the musician puts into each hand and strikes together to create the sound. Claves seem to have originated in poor neighborhoods of colonial Havana as an African retention. Over time claves have become ubiquitous throughout almost all Cuban music styles. Güiros are made from the gourds from the güira tree in Cuba. The ideal gourd is longer and larger, between 30 to 50 centimeters. The güiro as a percussion instrument has African roots. The sound is produced by running a stick along one side of the gourd that has a series of cut ridges. The gourd is held in one hand and the stick is held in the other hand. The güiro is widely used in popular Cuban music with large format orchestras or big bands (cha cha cha, mambo, etc.). It creates a raspy percussion sound similar to that of the washboard in South Louisiana music. Maracas are usually made from two güira tree gourds, but they may be made from the rounder smaller gourds. They have pre-Columbian origins and they are used throughout Latin America. Other kinds of gourds and fruits can be used to make maracas. The fruit or gourd is hollowed and dried out, leaving the hard outer shell. Then small seeds are put inside the shell. The hole that has been used to extract the insides and to insert the seeds is then covered up with a wooden handle, which is used to move the instrument up and down. Maracas are used in traditional Cuban styles like son. Tres guitar is a uniquely Cuban three-stringed guitar. The strings, which are usually metal, are stretched across the neck and body of the instrument, like a typical guitar. The tres guitar distinguishes the sound of son cubana and of Cuban music from the countryside. |
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