CLBA Journal 2002-05
Jazz in America: Influence of African and Spanish rhythms
Introduction: By Ernesto R. Pichardo 2002©
At the height of
its popularity Jazz in America began to become
influenced by Cuban music. Cuban music
was born from the merging of the European and African cultures that made up the
island. Although the main European influence is of the ancestry of Spain, both French and
Italian music were influential in the 19th century and these musical
influences were shared. Cuban music, more so than the music of other Latin-American
countries, represents a more balanced merger of African and Spanish traditions.
Other Latin-American countries have a distinct Amerindian tradition. This was
not possible in Cuba because Cuba’s indigenous
tribes were virtually wiped out by European disease early in the island’s
colonization. Thus the African traditions took their place. The historical,
economic and religious forces of the time allowed for the survival of traceable
African traditions. They were well documented by the Spanish authorities, down
to the geographic/ethnic origins of slaves purchased.
The Slave Trade
The history of the island of Cuba, since its
discovery, was rooted in the political and economic needs of the colonizing
Spaniards and others who utilized the island for trade and products. The
economy of the island was, until the end of the 18th century –
concerned mainly with the raising of cattle and the cultivation of tobacco. The
introduction of sugar as a crop during the beginning of the 19th
century created a demand for African slaves that transformed the island into a
plantation economy. Although slaves had been introduced into Cuba from Spain and Portugal in the 16th
century, the cultivation of sugar exponentially increased the demand for
slaves. It is estimated that almost 400,000 slaves were brought to Cuba from West Africa from approximately
1835 until 1864, with slaves making up over 40% of the total Cuban population
by 1841. With them they carried their rich musical tradition growing out of the
cultures and religions of their homelands. Many of the captives sold as slaves
came from the area now known as West Africa, during a time of
inter-tribal wars (such as the Yoruba-Dahomey
conflicts) that supplied prisoners of war to the slave traders (Marks).
The African
slave trade to Cuba began
early in the 1440s and lasted longer than in the rest of the
Americas/Caribbean. Although records show that people of over 100 different
African ethnic backgrounds came to Cuba as
slaves, the four major ethnic groups were: Bantu, Yoruba Ibo, Ibibio & Ijaw and Ewe/Fon. The number of slaves brought to Cuba (and
having survived the trip) was approximately 1.3 million or about 1/10th
of all slaves brought to the Americas (Lopes).
(Appendix # 2)
The Development of Afro-Cuban Culture
Cuba was, by
the 1850’s, coveted by the United
States, which wanted to annex Cuba. The
Cuban sugar planters, who heralded this as a way to protect slavery and their
prosperity, supported the idea. On the other hand, Great
Britain had recently freed the slaves on
its Caribbean colonies and saw emancipation in Cuba as a way
to level the economic playing field by driving up the cost of producing sugar
in Cuba and
thereby increasing the competitive ability of Britain. In the
face of these challenges, Spain reacted
by abolishing the slave trade to Cuba and
freeing all slaves imported to Cuba after
1835. Also permitted was intermarriage
between the races and the importation of non-slave black labor to Cuba. This
paved the way for Afro-Cuban culture. (Starr 172)
Throughout
this entire period the Catholic Church, who considered slaves to be humans,
allowed slaves to interact together by participating in mutual aid societies
called Cabildos.
These societies eventually included both free and enslaved blacks and their
descendants all of whom came from the same ethnic areas within Africa. The
renowned Cuban researcher, Fernando Ortiz, identified 14 different “nations”
that preserved their identity solely through the Cabildos.
After Emancipation in 1886, the Catholic Church required the Cabildos to adopt the name of a Catholic patron saint. It
is within these church sponsored organizations that African based religion and
traditions survived. The Cabildos were mostly an urban phenomena. In the rural areas the sugar estates
(or Ingenios
or Centrales)
also became the centers of specific African “nations” because they were mostly
self-contained industrial townships rather than plantations (Ortiz). In both of
these communities Africans were allowed to play their own music freely and
hence their musical tradition was not lost.
A still
dominant example of cultural survival is the Regla Lukumi religion, also referred to as Regla de Ocha or Santeria (there is currently
an ongoing debate on the anthropological semantics used in the naming of this
religion and its followers), which can be primarily traced to the Yoruba
traditions. In Lukumi there is an
all-powerful God, Olodumare,
along with a set of deities each of which represent a different section of
nature and society. In traditional Yoruba culture, each family worshiped a
particular deity, such as Shango, the god of War and Fire. With the transfer to the New World, the
worship of multiple gods called Orisha was merged into a religious tradition. Each of the
African Orisha
became identified with a Catholic Saint, much in the same way as the Cabildos adopted a patron saint. The worship itself remained essentially
African in nature (Wippler __). The traditional
instruments, music and singing of the ritual chants are an essential element in
the Lukumi worship, sung in archaic Yoruba and Yoruba/Spanish (Cabrera).
Early Afro-Cuban Music
Several of the
surviving “nations” had major impacts on the development of Cuban music. Each
of these had different styles and drum patterns, mostly based in religious
ceremonies. The ones that had the most influence can be broken into four groups
which come from the same geographic regions.
Yoruba
Traditions
Yoruba ceremonies
in Africa today still include a variety of instruments. The most
sacred of these instruments are the Bata
drums. These are trio of sacred drums which are ritually consecrated (they are
known as fundamento
or foundation) and are believed to contain an inner deity or sacredness called ana. The Bata
drums are played at many ceremonies such as initiation rights, funerals,
celebrations, and anniversaries of initiations, among many others. Bata drums are shaped in the form of a
double-headed cylinder (Illustration #1) and are held horizontally by the
drummers in their laps and struck on both heads. There is a master drum called
the Iya and then the itotele drum that follows the
rhythmic patterns of the master drum, the third is the okonkolo drum that plays
different phrases (Ortiz). The drums can be played with singing and dancing to accompany
them, such as in celebrations, and they can also be played alone in ceremonial
mode. Along with the Bata, the
ensembles often contain beaded gourds called chekere (Marks) and other drums. Some
of these having a different drumming form that survived such as the Iyesa drums,
which are thought to be of Yoruba ancestry and are played with sticks usually
in groups of three or four, and with more unified rhythmic patterns than the Bata. They are often accompanied by two
dance gongs of different pitches called agogo (Marks). Yoruba music is usually slower and more
ceremonial whether or not it is being played.
Ewe/Fon (Arara) Traditions
The instruments and
music heritage of the Dahomean (Benin Republic) slaves brought to
Cuba has a distinct
style of drumming played on four drums. The master drum is called the junga and is
played with both the palm of the hand and with a stick. Two drums support the
master: the junguede
and the juncito
both played with sticks and play different rhythms. The fourth drum is called
the jun
and follows the rhythm of the juncito drum. Additional instruments include the ogan which is a
hoe blade that is played with a piece of metal and a pair of metal rattles
called cheres
as well as the use of claps and body percussion (Marks). The Arara in Cuba eventually began
assimilated into the Yoruba culture.
This is because the religion of the Arara is as similar to Lukumi as the Greek Gods were to the
Roman Gods. In fact, one of the Lukumi deities, Asoyin, is said to originally
come from the Arara
region by the Lukumi themselves. Ironically, it was the Ewe and Fon who, during an inter-tribal war, captured the Yoruba
who were eventually shipped to Cuba.
Abakua
Traditions
The Abakua tradition in Cuba refers to those
slaves brought to Cuba from Cameroon and parts of Nigeria know as Carabali or Brikao including
the Ibo and Ibibio. These cultures established a leopard secret society, called
Ngbe, with
their first lodge (potencia)
opening in the port town of Regla (across the bay
from Havana) in 1835. These
secret societies were often found in Africa. They are similar to religions in terms of
practice, but are actually not religions.
One could compare them to the Stonecutters in the popular cartoon “The Simpsons.” Only the members of the secret society are
allowed to know anything about its origin and practices. One of the traditional
symbols of Afro-Cuban folklore is the “ireme” or the
leopard-masker of the society (Illustration
# 2). The Abakua have different songs for
almost every ritual performed in their society. The traditional song leader is
called a Morua.
He sings in a leader-chorus alternation and instruments included in their
musical ensemble (called a biankomeko) are four drums, basket rattles (erikunde), dance
gongs (ekon)
and two sticks that are beaten one of the drums for additional rhythms (Ortiz).
Congo
Tradition
The Cuban Kongo or Congo musical tradition
encompasses a vast array of peoples and ethnic designations with some more
dominant clans such as Mayombe
giving their name to the Cuban-Kongo religion called Palo Mayombe
(also known as Regla de Congo or Palo Monte). The initiation ceremony or juramento includes singing and drumming
as part of the ritual exercise, and a common element of worship seems to be the
Nkisi or Nganga which is a
sacred containing the concentrated forces of nature and of certain spirits. Palo Mayombe
or Congo songs are played
on three drums called ngoma
accompanied by a huataca
or metal hoe called and Ngongi
and rattles called nkembi.
The song leader is called a “gallo” (rooster) in Spanish and insunsu in Kongo
and the chorus is called vasallo
or muanan.
Many forms of Cuban music have strong elements of Congo tradition and
references such as the rumba and the traditional carnaval
music such as the Conga (Marks). The most common drums used in Kongo music are the yuka drums. This set
of three drums takes four drummers to play since the master drum, the caja, requires
one person to hold the drum and hit the base while a second uses a pair of
sticks to strike the body of the drum (Ortiz). The music of the Kongo is much less complicated than that of the Lukumi and the Arara styles. This simplicity and more structured
repetitions along with its faster, more upbeat rhythms made Kongo
music extremely danceable.
The Birth of “Cuban” Music
As time progressed
many different styles were merged with African drum beats spawning new musical
styles which then went on to blend with each other to form all new styles. The
outcome of these mergers were very complex and hard to trace African influences
in most, if not all, Cuban popular musical styles. It is so complex that Fernando Ortiz needed a
ten-volume work just to trace the cultural origins of the African instruments
being used in the popular music of time. Several different dozen musical styles
were the outcome. To this day, no book
has come close to the work done by Ortiz.
Contradanza
One of the first
styles of music that was born out of this blend was the Habanera (Roberts 4). The Habanera’s
predecessor was the Contradanza,
the Spanish version of a country line dance thought to originate in England. By the early part
of the 19th century, the contradanza was
well established in Cuba along with its
French counterpart the contredanse.
It soon took on African elements. African musicians began to play the Contradanza,
according to Cuban historian Alejo Carpentier, with a certain “lift” or “swing” and then they
included the traditional African call and response pattern. This Africanized
European dance became popular and was called the contradanza habanera its name was abbreviated and is now known as simply the habanera (Roberts 6). An example is the
1856 contradanza called “Tu
Madre es Conga” (your mother is Congolese) which
featured a held first note similar to the Afro-Cuban conga. The habanera form of was identified by Cuban
musical historian, Emilio Grenet, as being “perhaps
the most universal of our musical genres.” It eventually became the root of the
Argentine tango along with affecting American Jazz.
Another descendant
of the Contradanza was the Danzon, a couples dance from the
1870’s that was traditionally played by orchestras tipicas (bands that were led by cornets and supported by clarinets and
trombones) and typically performed outdoors in town plazas. (Storm Roberts 8).
The same dances performed in indoor venues with violins backing a flute lead
were known as charangas francesas. The
chachacha
in turn is claimed to be a descendant of the Danzon (Roberts 10).
Rumba
Rumba stems from the Spanish mainland (Flamenco Rumbas). Its Afro-Cuban
counterparts are associated with dances from three divisions that were born out
rhythms played on yuka
drums of Kongo origins, and following song patterns
of leader and chorus in the style of the “gallo and vasallo” (Cabrera). Cuban
Historian Lydia Cabrera identifies three varieties that differ in vocal style,
choreography and instrumentation: the yambu, the guaguanco and the columbia. The yambu has a slow tempo with dancing
mimicking old age. The guaguanco is a more urban rumba with a Spanish flourish as the opening segment, followed by a
chorus with a repeated refrain where the dancing is enlivened and flourished
with pelvic movements. The columbia is of rural
origins and is traditionally a male solo dance featuring acrobatic and complex
movements (Marks).
Carnaval
The Carnaval
tradition in Cuba started in Santiago de Cuba where the Cabildos and
other associations took to the streets in the months of June and July for
masked celebrations during St. Johns’ Day and St. Ann’s day. The Havana version was
celebrated on the day of Epiphany with both urban and rural celebrations taking
advantage of Catholic holidays to celebrate in African tradition (Marks).
Carnaval with time expanded
from the traditional dance groups to include celebrities and floats but
demonstrated a strong base of the African ancestry which can be seen to date.
In post-revolutionary Cuba, the Catholic
dates of St. Ann’s have been
replaced by commemoration of the day of July
27th 1953 when Fidel Castro and his troops attacked
the Moncada barracks in Santiago during a Carnaval
celebration. This date, which was a turning point in Castro’s regime, now
commemorates both the political date and Carnaval (Marks).
The music of Carnaval includes distinct styles with their own history
and origins. The cabildo
associations on parade dance to the Abakua rhythms played with iron gongs parade drums and rattles.
The Comparsa (or congas)
parade with hand drums, parade drums, gongs and brake drums played with iron
rods and sometimes incorporate an interesting instrument called the “Chinese
trumpet” which reputedly was introduced to Cuba in the 19th
century by Chinese laborers. In China, this instrument
is known as the sona, which is derived from the surnai of Indian and Turkestan origins. The comparsa dancers
which include couples and line dancers, perform elaborate routines (Marks).
Son
The son began in rural Cuba and has been
described as the first rhythm invented by Cubans (Marks). I was invented by the
guajiros
(cowboys) of the Cuban farms and mountainous regions. Upon its arrival in Havana in the 1920’s it
was performed with a tres
(a nine stringed small guitar) and a marimblua (a bass instruments originating from the African
finger piano), along with bongos, maracas, claves, and later on the trumpet (Storm Roberts 7).
Influence on the US and on American
Jazz
One of the earliest examples of the
influence of Cuban music in the United
States is the music of Louis Moreau
Gottschalk, who made ample use of Cuban elements in his compositions.
Gottschalk, a contemporary of Chopin, was a piano virtuoso who visited Cuba in 1854
for professional and health reasons (recuperating from malaria at a plantation
where he recorded in his diary his interpretations of the slave’s singing).
Within a month of his return to the US he had
composed a piece called “El Cocoye” based on an
Afro-Cuban dance. He went on to compose several Afro-Cuban influenced pieces
and returned several times to Cuba to visit
and perform. (Roberts 28) One of his short piano pieces “Ojos
Criollos” (Creole eyes) demonstrates a mix of the
Habanera rhythm with that of the black US cakewalk
which was the basis of ragtime, with this piece having been written 40 years
before the ragtime became popular (Storm Roberts 30). Ragtime then became one of the styles which
became Jazz. Hence, from the start,
Cuban music was influencing the base of Jazz.
The influence of
Cuban music on Jazz commenced as black musicians came in contact with Cuban
music and musicians. In the 1930’s the first appearance of authentic Cuban
dance music was played on Broadway at New York’s Palace Theater,
with the appearance of Don Azapiazu’s Casino
Orchestra with authentic Cuban instruments and dancers (first exhibition rumba
in the U.S.). They introduced what was to become one of the
most well know Cuban song in the US: The Peanut Vendor (El Manicero),
which was recorded and released that year and promoted in a syndicated column
by the then famous American humorist Will Rogers. The success of the Peanut
Vendor (Carpentier) led to other Cuban dance tunes
and ballads becoming popular. Other popular
promoters of Cuban music included Desi Arnaz, whose television show “I Love Lucy” popularized the
“Conga” dance (a
long line of dancers swaying with a kick on the fourth beat) and the Lukumi chant to Babalu Aye (Roberts 87).
The 1930’s, 40’s,
50’s and Beyond – From Cuba to the U.S.
The 1930s
through the 1950’s brought an evolution of traditional styles into more modern
ensembles. Early in this time a type of band called a conjunto evolved from the carnaval parade
groups. These incorporated voices, conga drums and trumpets along with piano
and bass when played indoors. One of the most influential of the conjunto musicians was a blind Afro-Cuban percussionist
called Arsenio Rodriguez. He blended the Abakua Carnaval with
the music of the Kongo and brought the “Mambo” rhythm
into the Cuban dance halls (Roberts 9). Also credited by some as the originator
of the mambo is the renowned Cuban bass player Israel “Cachao” Lopez he brought the Mambo through a danzon-mambo mix (Roberts 9). The makeup of the instrumentation in Cuban
bands evolved and changed over the times with style variations developed by
adding or deleting instruments such as the early ensemble groups with string
quartets and trumpet led septets that performed in the 1930’s. Later evolutions
included the orchestras of the Havana hotels,
the trumpet and percussion bands also called conjuntos and the charanga bands
based on flutes and fiddles (Roberts 8).
Cuba in the
1940’s and 1950’s was intrinsically connected with US culture
and popular trends. Its proximity to the mainland US (via ferry from Key West)
made travel back and forth easy, and the island’s bustling economy and tourism
industry, with US backed Casinos and Hotel Chains (such as the Hilton), made
for both a cultural and a musical exchange that influenced both
irrevocably. The 1940’s also increased
the popularity of the mambo and the brought the beginning of Latin Jazz.
At the
time Cuban groups were expected to play only Cuban music and not play American
Jazz. On May 28, 1943 the Machito
Orquesta while playing a concert at La Conga Club in Manhattan made a
mistake. The musical director, Maurio Bauza, called out the next
song to be played but there was some confusion and the piano player began to
play the descarga
tune “El Botellero” quickly the bassist began to
improvise a tune. Bauza
then quickly started the rest of the band into the next tune. The next day, in the presence of Jazz legend
Dizzy Gillespie, Bauza had the piano and bassist
replay what they had originally played and instructed the trumpets and
saxophones to play a Jazzy melody. The
result was the first Afro-Cuban Jazz song, Tanga (slang for marijuana)
(Salazar). Each following performance of Tanga was slightly
different. One of these versions had a
Be-Bop feel to it and created the genre of Cu-Bop.
Dizzy
Gillespie’s had a fascination with the Latin music which stemmed from his days
as the trumpet partner of Mario Bauza in Cab Calloways band years before. After witnessing the birth of
Cu-Bop he captured the sound for himself. On September 1947 Gillespies
new band gave a concert at Carnegie Hall that gave Cubop
a place among avant-garde jazz (Roberts 116). An interesting jazz example is a
1948 live recording of the song “Manteca” by Dizzy
Gillespies’ band at a Jazz club in Manhattan. Dizzy’s conga player, Chano Pozo, was a member of the Abakua
secret society. In this recording, Chano Pozo, during a long drum solo, breaks out into a passage in
the Congo tradition
which is answered by the band in a traditional African pattern (Marks). Many other famous jazz artists in America caught
and played their own songs. These include Stan Kenton, Charlie Parker, Stan
Getz and Dexter Gordon just to name a few that played with Machito’s
Orquesta (Salazar).
In the
1950’s the Mambo rhythm popular in the 30’s made a comeback with the New York creation
of Big Band Mambo, described as a “rumba
with jitterbug. Artists such as Jose Curbelo, Tito
Puente and Tito Rodriguez helped drive the hybridization process that developed
the Big-Band Mambo. The Puerto Rican born Tito Puente later on became known (in
what started as a publicity gimmick) as the “King of the Mambo,” and he
certainly helped bring it to a peak. The Cuban popularizer
of the Mambo, Perez Prado (author of the famous Mambo
#5), though famous in Cuba, never
gained great popularity in the New York limelight
(Roberts 126).
The 1950’s
unfortunately brought a gradual decline of Cuban/Latin music in the US started during the
late 1950’s. Ironically, one reason for the decline is attributed to the
success of the chachacha.
The chachacha,
originally born of the Cuban charangas bands, was made famous by one of the greatest
bands of the genre: the Orquesta Aragon. It swept
through Cuba in 1953 and its
music was catchy and easier to dance than the Afro-Cuban Mambo. When it arrived
in the U.S. in 1954 it was
immediately successful but its simplicity made it a fast burned out novelty as
it became further and further commercialized (Roberts 132-133). The other
significant factor was the rise of Rock and Roll music. Added to this mix was the rise to power of Fidel Castro and his communist
government, essentially cutting off tourism and travel (including musical
exchanges) between Cuba and the US.
Conclusion
Cuban music has had
a definite influence on the U.S. musical world, as
evidenced by Jazz and Latin-Jazz traditions and recordings. The proximity of Cuba to America and the influx of
Cuban musicians in U.S. bands in the 30’s-50’s lay the ground work for a definitive impression
including separate genres such as Cu-Bop.
The Cuban Revolution and the consequent embargo artificially cut off
that exchange in the 1960’s through today.
However, the Cuban musical tradition has made a sufficient impact to
continue to thrive especially in the Jazz world and with the synergies of other
Latin-American countries such as Puerto Rico. In Cuba today the
Afro-Cuban music continues to thrive and grow.
Recently there has been an effort to look back at the roots of
Afro-Cuban music and blend it with more modern styles. Such as the “Orishas,” a group which blends the traditional Yoruba
rhythms with modern Hip-Hop music.
The now famous recording of bands such as the “Buena-Vista Social Club”
and “Compay Segundo” are evidence that the early
Cuban traditional music has continued to survive under the current government
sanctions. One can only imagine the
impact of Cuban music had not occurred and the free exchange of music would
have continued to occur between the Island and the Americas.
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