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The
Cuban population is a melting pot of
ethnic mixes from every corner of the
world. In the early days ,slaves cross
bread with masters creating the
mulattos of today. Later, people of
Russian, Chinese and European decent
created the make up of today's Cuba.
Nevertheless, all the groups that form
Cuba expressed themselves
inside a Creole cultural context
dominated by three chief
roots. The First of these roots
is that of the aborigines inhabitants.
Their ethnic contribution was reduced
tremendously by the environmental,
cultural and biologic assault caused
by the Spanish colonization. The
Tainos were replaced by the African
Slaves. It is for this
reason that the more significant roots
in the Cuban nationality are Spanish
and African.
The first was the result
of migration from the metropolis,
which has been going on throughout Cuba
history more or less regularly. During
the first centuries, after the conquest,
most groups came from Castile mainly
from Southern of Spain. Later, massive
migration arrived from Canary Islands,
Galicia and Catalonia. More recently
and during the last century Eastern
European and Chinese immigrants have
further enriched the unique
racial mix that makes up Cuba today.
The
African roots also left a very
particular mark in the process of the
formation of Cuban culture. Coming,
primarily, from five different ethnic
groups (Yoruba, Mandingos, Congo,
Carabalies, Bantu) as arriving slaves
worked at the plantations giving place
to new cultural associations among the
African communities themselves. The
influence of slavery itself on Cuban
Culture and on the psychopolitical
matrix of the nation was strengthen by
the fact that Cuba was one of the last
countries in the Americas where
slavery was abolished. The
continuous influx of slave even very
late in the nineteen century allowed
the syntax of African cultures and
their relation to the intemporal and
the universal to become the root of
popular culture and believes.
The African syntax express itself through a
syncretic mixture with European Christianity
and its icons.
Arts
expressions
Carnival painting
Unknown artist from Santiago de
Cuba
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Painting
seems to be the most genuine expression
of fine arts on the island. The
first painting on the island
were made by the aborigines in the
caves.
With
the conquest and the
christianization a religious kind of
painting prevailed, associated
to catholic liturgy. Only in the
19th century, when the San
Alejandro academy was founded
(1818), paintings by natives
began to flourish. They were designed to
satisfy the European taste of
Cuban bourgeoisie. The Economic
Association Friends of the
Country created the Academy and
its first principal was French
painter Jean Bautiste Vermay.
By
1880 a new tendency in Cuban
painting was born. Its main
subject was landscapes.
Outstanding in this period were
Esteban Chartrand and Valentin
Sanz Carta. The works of Basque
Victor Patricio de Landaluze
showed an interesting folkloric
style. But classicism still
ruled in fine arts. The
avant-gardist awakening of the
'20s (20th century) initiated a
new period for Cuban painting.
The modern movement had its
first and most important exhibit
in 1927, sponsored by the
magazine Avance. Eduardo Abela,
Victor Manuel, Antonio Gattorno,
Carlos Enriquez and others were
starters of the vanguardist
movement in Cuba. Following
years were of consolidation of
the modern movement; this was
evidenced at the celebration of
the First Modern Arts Salon on
1937. Then, young artists
already showed a new period in
Cuban art that would build up to
create, the so-called
"School of Havana" in
1940.
Painters
like Rene Portocarrero, Amelia
Pelaez and Mariano Rodriguez are
part of this movement. Wilfredo
Lam returned to Cuba in 1942
after a long stay in Europe and
a studio experience with Pablo
Picasso. On 1943 Lam painted the
work that immortalised him
"The Jungle", which
was acquired by New York's MOMA.
With the triumph of the
revolution, the artistic
movement strengthened, since the
foundation in 1962 of the
National School of Fine Arts.
Very important personalities
such as Raul Martinez and
Antonia Eiriz formed the body of
professors. A few years later,
in 1976, the Fine Arts College
of the High Institute of Arts
was founded. The important
patrimony of the last decade
gathers works of artists like
Roberto Fabelo, Zaida del Rio,
Tomas Sanchez, Manuel Mendive
and Nelson Dominguez. Young
artists such as, Jose Bedia,
Kcho and Flavio Garciandia have
occupied a privileged spot ahead
of the new styles of painting.
During the last 30 years Cuban
painting has shown great
capability to undertake the more
important influences from the
international arts, with a
creative and unique appearance,
assuming at the same time a
critic attitude to continue
defending the characteristic
features of the Cuban identity.
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Musique
Celia Cruz
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Of
all expressions of Art, music is
undoubtedly the one that has
influenced more the personality
of Cuban people. It is said that
the island's inhabitants speak
singing, dance while walking and
declare their love with a song.
Music has
developed fast and strong. The
Habanera, rhythm born from the
danza criolla and the
contradanza, received its
influence from the tango in
Argentina and other rhythms of
South America. Recent researches
prove that in the contradanzas
by Manuel Saumell, the tempo of
the habaneras could be heard,
for instance, in "La
Tedesco", the first part is
like the danzon, which appeared
later; in many of his music
scores, song and guajira were
also outlined. Son and bolero
arrived in Havana from the
eastern provinces, specifically
Santiago de Cuba.
The bolero
emerged at the beginning of this
century with great composers
such as, Alberto Villalon and
Sindo Garay, influenced by Pepe
Sanchez (who wrote the first one
"Tristezas", in 1883).
Though the songs of the old
trova were boleros, best
composers were Orlando de la
Rosa and Isolina Carrillo who
left one of the most sublime
gifts of all times, the bolero
"Dos Gardenias".
News
about the son montuno dates back
to the second half of the 19th
century. In 1920 "Havana's
Sextet " showed up at the
high society salons in the
capital. The "Matamoros
trio ", started their
long-lasting and important
career in 1925 in Santiago de
Cuba. They created some of the
classic Cuban songs: Son de la
loma, Mariposita de primavera y
Lagrimas negras. Soon after, the
first golden era of the son
arrived and dozens of septets
and sextets came forth, some of
them began to make records with
big North American companies.
Arsenio Rodriguez, Miguelito
Cuni, Felix Chapotin and Roberto
Faz succeeded the first
performers of song. Meanwhile,
orchestras like "Arcaņo y
sus maravillas" and
"La Sensacion"
spirited balls in Havana playing
danzones and charangas during
the '40s and '50s. Enrique
Jorrin composed first cha cha
cha "La Engaņadora"
on 1950. Perez Prado made his
first mambo on 1952. The second
splendour of son took place in
the '50s decade when a
self-taught man from Cienfuegos
turned up: Benny More, who,
years later would be acclaimed
"El Barbaro del Ritmo".
This composer and singer revived
the traditional ways of Cuban
music, leading the son montuno
to a concept of jazz band.
The
winds of change and a nexus
beyond politics
Cuban music did not escape the
winds of political and social
changes that swept through the
country with the revolution of
1959. Some musician went
into exile some stayed and
supported the revolution.
The Cuban experience soon became
a complex reality divided by a
huge political chasm between the
revolutionaries who stayed in
Cuba to fight for a new
perspective of the Cuban
existence and those who went in
exiles either for personal
political conviction or just
because they felt out of place
in the emerging political
reality.
Celia Cruz for instance went
into exile in 1960 and became an
ambassador of the Cuban
"Joie de Vivre"
in the United States and around
the world. This sort of
happy people perspective
of the Cuban music failed,
however, to remind the world
that Cuban artists did also
express the feeling of the
excluded and the downtrodden in
Cuba. "Pintor que
pinto las iglesias, pinto un
angelito negro" (You the
artist, who paints in the
churches, paints a black angel)
said an old song who seems to
symbolize the sense of exclusion
felt by the black people in
Cuba.
African music is the foundation
of Cuban rhythms but for a
long time black Cuban suffered
from the prejudices engendered
by Cuba's long history of
slavery. Armed with this
very important factual element
of Cuban history, an
objective observer moved by a
commitment to the free
expression by all people of the
totality of their humanity can
understand why some artists
choose to stay in Cuba and
participate in the revolution even though
its Marxist modernistic course
could stifle the free expression
of musical forms which
could be labeled by the purists
and the modern day Marxist
inquisitors as bourgeois music
unfit for the revolutionary
evolution of the masses.
Free musical expressions are by
essence diverse, multifaceted
artistic manifestations.
They do
not fit well into any political
schematic which tends to
sanitize human existence for the
sake of any form of tight social
conformism be it reactionary,
revolutionary, Christian
fundamentalist, Muslim
fundamentalist or
atheistic.
Beyond the geographic
and political divide between the
Cuban exiles and the revolutionaries,
Cuban remained united by their
tremendous love for music. The
pro Castro rallies in Cuba and
the anti Castro gathering in
Miami are done to the tune of
Cuban rhythms. Music is the
invisible nexus connecting all
Cuban regardless of their
political conviction. It
is a very important part of what
exiled Cuban brought with them
when they left their country to
create a Cuban Diaspora mainly
based in Miami. Through
the voices and the musical
creations of many, Cuban music
became a part of the musical
experience of the world.
The
Cuban musician who had more
influence on the process of
evolution of Cuban and Caribbean
music was Benny More. The
"Van Van" orchestra of
popular dancing music, with a
very typical and modern
sonority, was created in 1970.
Year's later this sound offered its
musical syntax to Cuban Salsa, which
also incorporated Caribbean
rhythms and sounds from the
music of Latin (Cuban, Dominican
and Puerto Rican) communities in
New York.
Cuban salsa, very well
known today almost everywhere,
reached its boom at the end of
the '80s and beginnings of the
'90s when orchestras like
"Van Van" and "NG
la Banda" grew solid and
new, young orchestras like
"El Medico de la
Salsa", "Paulo FG y su
elite" and "Isaac
Delgado" came forth.
Compay Secundo
In
the Late 90's and early 2000,
Latin Music, whose roots lie
primarily in Cuban rhythms, has
met a massive revival worldwide
with groups such as Ricky
Martin, Christian and the Buena
Vista social Club with Compay
Segundo who sold several
millions of records world wide.
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