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Abstract
This essay examines how Federico García Lorca transforms the musical form son in his poem ‘Son de negros en Cuba’. Significant in this is Lorca’s relationship with anthropologist Fernando Ortiz, who regarded hybridity as foundational to post-colonial Cuban identity. For Ortiz and the Cuban writer Alejo Carpentier, son’s hybridity is analogous to ethnic and cultural syncretism, which Ortiz likens to counterpoint, or the juxtaposition of contrasting lines in music. Syncretism and counterpoint, the core concepts of Ortiz’s theory of ‘transculturation’, become paradigmatic of Lorca’s poem. By writing ‘counterpoint’ into the poem, Lorca creates space for the performance of intercultural dialogue.
Notes
1 Miguel Pérez Ferrero, ‘España otra vez: “Voces de desembarque. Veinte minutos de paseo con Federico García Lorca” ’, in Federico García Lorca en Nueva York y La Habana: cartas y recuerdos, ed. Christopher Maurer & Andrew A. Anderson (Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg, Círculo de Letras, 2013), 334–40 (p. 338).
2 For a complete calendar of Federico García Lorca’s travels in Cuba, with the most up-to-date information, see Federico García Lorca en Nueva York y La Habana, ed. Maurer & Anderson. Maurer and Anderson infer that Fernando Ortiz’s invitation came out of his friendship and professional collaboration with Federico de Onís, the Columbia University professor from Spain who attended to Lorca during his time in New York and who drew him in to his intellectual circles there. According to their research, Ortiz and Lorca most likely finalized the arrangement when Ortiz attended the 10 February 1930 homage to the Spanish poet at Columbia (306). Cuban novelist and essayist César Leante and poet Nicolás Guillén affirm that Ortiz invited Lorca to the island nation as a lecturer (César Leante, ‘Federico en Cuba’, Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos. Homenaje a García Lorca, 1:433–34 [1986], 235–40 [p. 235]; and Nicolás Guillén, Páginas vueltas. Memorias [Madrid: Mondadori, 1988], 82). Ortiz was President of the Institución Hispanocubana de Cultura at the time.
3 Lorca’s 1929–1930 poetry volume was published in May 1940 by W. W. Norton in English-language translation (Federico García Lorca, The Poet in New York and Other Poems, ed. & trans. Rolfe Humphries [New York: W. W. Norton, 1940]) and in Spanish by Mexico’s Editorial Séneca (Federico García Lorca, Poeta en Nueva York, prólogo de José Bergamín [México D.F.: Editorial Séneca, 1940]) in June; José Bergamín was the director of Editorial Séneca at this time. In 2013, Andrew A. Anderson published his edition of the original manuscript as provided to Bergamín by Lorca, which is the version of Poeta en Nueva York to which I refer: Federico García Lorca, Poeta en Nueva York, ed., con notas, de Andrew A. Anderson (Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg, 2013); further references are to this edition and will be given parenthetically in the main text. I divide Lorca’s 1929–1930 stay in the United States and Cuba into four roughly-defined periods. During the first, from his arrival in New York in late June 1929, Lorca lived in New York and took English classes for foreigners at Columbia University. At the close of Columbia’s Summer semester, which initiated the second period, he decamped to the north of New York City to be with friends. The third period of Lorca’s New World residence coincided with Autumn and Winter at Columbia, and the great Wall Street Crash of 1929 (24–29 October). Lorca’s fourth period in America began with his train trip to Florida on 4 March 1930, and embarkation on a ferry bound for Havana, where he arrived on 7 March, and ended with his return voyage from Cuba to Spain, when, on 12 June, he set sail for Cádiz (Daniel Eisenberg, ‘A Chronology of Lorca’s Visit to New York and Cuba’, The Kentucky Romance Quarterly, 24:3 [1975], 233–50 [pp. 235–38, 244 & 249]; and Christopher Maurer & Andrew A. Anderson, ‘Prólogo’, in Federico García Lorca en Nueva York y La Habana, ed. Maurer & Anderson, ix–xv [p. xii]).
4 Federico García Lorca, ‘Son’, Musicalia, 11 (1930), 43–44.
5 Lorca and Adolfo Salazar (1890–1958) travelled back from Cuba to Spain on the same ship, the Manuel Arnús (Christopher Maurer & Andrew A. Anderson, ‘ “ … estoy ya, como dicen los periódicos de Cuba, ‘aplatanado’ ”. Calendario cubano’, in Federico García Lorca en Nueva York y La Habana, ed. Maurer & Anderson, 308–18 (p. 318).
6 Adolfo Salazar, ‘Dos recuerdos: “Federico en La Habana” y “El mito de Caimito” ’, in Federico García Lorca en Nueva York y La Habana, ed. Maurer & Anderson, 321–30 (p. 327).
7 See Francisco García Lorca, Federico y su mundo (Madrid: Alianza Editorial, 1980), 67–69; Ian Gibson, ‘Lorca y la música’, in La música en la Generación del 27. Homenaje a Lorca 1915/1939 (Granada: Ministerio de Cultura/Instituto Nacional de las Artes Escénicas y de la Música, 1986), 81–83 (p. 81); and Ian Gibson, Federico García Lorca: A Life (New York: Pantheon Books, 1989), 31.
8 See Gibson, ‘Lorca y la música’, 81; Gibson, Federico García Lorca, 47; and Javier Herrero, Lorca, Young and Gay: The Making of an Artist (Newark: Juan de la Cuesta, 2014), 108–09.
9 See Gibson, ‘Lorca y la música’, 81; and Robert Stevenson, ‘ “Musical Moments” in the Career of Manuel de Falla’s Favorite Friend Federico García Lorca’, Inter-American Music Review, 17:1–2 (2007), 265–76 (pp. 265–66). Lorca’s travels as a university student with his preceptor, Martín Domínguez Berrueta (1869–1920), moulded his first published book, Impresiones y paisajes (1918) (see Federico García Lorca, Impresiones y paisajes, in Obras completas, ed. Miguel García-Posada, 4 vols [Barcelona: Galaxia Gutenberg, 1996–1997], IV [1997], 50–165).
10 Gibson, Federico García Lorca, 106.
11 Francisco García Lorca, Federico y su mundo, 426.
12 Daniel Devoto, ‘Notas sobre el elemento tradicional en la obra de García Lorca’, in Federico García Lorca, ed. Ildefonso-Manuel Gil (Madrid: Taurus, 1973), 23–72 (p. 71).
13 Fernando Ortiz, Contrapunteo cubano del tabaco y el azúcar, intro. de Bronislaw Malinowski [eBook] (Barcelona: Linkgua Ediciones, 2017 [1ª ed. La Habana: Jesús Montero, 1940]). Ortiz’s theory of transculturación goes against received notions in anthropology about the acquisition of a new culture after migration, in particular, the idea that a former culture is shed (desculturación or exculturación) before a new one is taken on (aculturación/inculturación [Contrapunteo cubano, 119–20]). As Ortiz acknowledges, the term transculturación is a neologism meant to accentuate his break with past ways of thinking (119).
14 See Klaus-Jürgen Sachs & Carl Dahlhaus, ‘Counterpoint’, Oxford Music Online (20 January 2001), <https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000006690> (accessed 30 July 2020).
15 Ortiz, Contrapunteo cubano, 119 & 122.
16 Alejo Carpentier, La música en Cuba, in Obras completas, ed. Felix Baez-Jorge, 17 vols (México D.F.: Siglo XXI Editores, 1983–2014), XII, Ese músico que llevo dentro (2011 [1ª ed. 1987]), 205–486 (p. 241). Alejo Carpentier’s narrative of ‘Son de la Ma’ Teodora’ is regarded in some quarters to be at least partially apocryphal. Carpentier locates the origin of son in Santiago de Cuba, in ‘una pequeña orquesta compuesta de dos tocadores de pífano, un sevillano, tocador de violón, llamado Pascual de Ochoa, y dos negras libres, dominicanas, oriundas de Santiago de los Caballeros, que eran las hermanas Micaela y Teodora Ginés’ (Carpentier, La música en Cuba, 238). As Carpentier tells the story, citing various sources from the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, when the musicians of the group journeyed to Havana to try their luck, Teodora was left behind in Santiago, maybe as a result of the age that ‘Ma’ could signify (Carpentier, La música en Cuba, 238–41). Alberto Muguercia y Muguercia has produced a meticulous study of texts and documentation relevant to the figure of Teodora Ginés, Carpentier’s use of which he considers invention (Alberto Muguercia y Muguercia, ‘Teodora Ginés: ¿mito o realidad histórica?’, Revista de la Biblioteca Nacional José Martí, 13:3 [1971], 53–85). See also Steve Loza, ‘The Origins of the Son’, Aztlan, 15:1 (1984), 105–21; and Peter Manuel, ‘From Contradanza to Son: New Perspectives on the Prehistory of Cuban Popular Music’, Latin American Music Review/Revista de Música Latinoamericana, 30:2 (2009), 184–212.
17 Carpentier, La música en Cuba, 243.
18 Carpentier, La música en Cuba, 245.
19 Lydia Cabrera (1899–1991) happened to be Ortiz’s sister-in-law.
20 Carpentier, La música en Cuba, 409; and Noriko Manabe, ‘Reinterpretations of the Son: Versions of Guillén’s Motivos de son by Grenet, García Caturla, and Roldán’, Latin American Music Review/Revista de Música Latinoamericana, 30:2 (2009), 115–58 (p. 119). Manabe observes that verses were frequently, but not always, octosyllabic, as in romances (119).
21 Emilio Grenet, Popular Cuban Music: 80 Revised and Corrected Compositions, Together with an Essay on the Evolution of Music in Cuba, with a prologue by Eduardo Sánchez de Fuentes, trans. R. Phillips (Havana: Southern Music Publishing, 1939), xxxvi.
22 Manuel, ‘From Contradanza to Son’, 186.
23 María Muñoz was a pianist who had studied with Manuel de Falla in Spain. Falla sent his former student and her husband a letter recommending Lorca before he came to Havana (Ministerio de Educación, El poeta en La Habana: Federico García Lorca [Havana: Consejo Nacional de Cultura/Ministerio de Educación, 1961], 19–20).
24 See Gibson, Federico García Lorca, 291; and Carlos A. Rabassó & Federico Javier Rabassó, Granada-Nueva York-La Habana. Federico García Lorca entre el flamenco, el jazz y el afrocubanismo (Madrid: Ediciones Libertarias, 1998), 414. Tellingly, it was in Ortiz’s house that Lorca accumulated a collection of objects tied to Afro-Cuban folklore (Urbano Martínez Carmenate, García Lorca y Cuba: todas las aguas [Havana: Centro de Investigación y Desarrollo de la Cultura Cubana Juan Marinello, 2002], 77). Cabrera, whom Lorca had met in Madrid a few years earlier, and to whom, along with her Black servant, Carmela Bejarana, he dedicated his poem ‘La casada infiel’, brought him to a ceremony of the Ñáñigo (Abakuá) Afro-Cuban secret society (Gibson, Federico García Lorca, 291; see also Alice J. Poust, ‘Transculturation, Transformation and Tempest in Federico García Lorca’s “Son” ’, Revista de Estudios Hispánicos, 43:3 [2009], 591–608 [pp. 591–92]). ‘La casada infiel’ appears in Romancero gitano (Federico García Lorca, Poema del Cante Jondo; Romancero gitano, ed. Allen Josephs & Juan Caballero [Madrid: Cátedra, 2009]). Lorca wrote Romancero gitano between 1924 and 1927; the volume was published in 1928.
25 Gibson, Federico García Lorca, 286. Lorca was photographed with Muñoz on a number of occasions while in Cuba. Salient to this are the following photographs, which are held in the Archivo de la Fundación Federico García Lorca (hereafter AFFGL) at the Centro Federico García Lorca (hereafter CFGL), Granada, Spain: ‘De izqda. a derecha: Federico García Lorca, María Muñoz de Quevedo, Lygia Mackenna de Callejo (sic [Lygia McKenna de Callejo]) y Sandalio Callejo. Cuba, 1930’ (Cat. 3.4.2.19); ‘F.G.L. con María Muñoz de Quevedo, Lygia Mackena de Callejo [sic] y Sandalio Callejo. —Cuba 1930—’ (Cat. 3.4.2.20); and ‘Federico García Lorca con María Muñoz de Quevedo en La Habana, 1930’ (Cat. 3.4.2.23).
26 César Leante, ‘Federico en Cuba’, 236–37.
27 Ministerio de Educación, El poeta en La Habana, 17. Erzsébet Dobos has revealed the ostensibly anonymous author of El poeta en La Habana to be none other than Antonio Quevedo (‘Nuevos datos sobre el viaje de Federico García Lorca por Cuba en el año 1930’, Acta Literaria Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae, 22:3–4 [1980], 392–405 [p. 393]).
28 Salazar, ‘Dos recuerdos’, 328; and Gibson, Federico García Lorca, 291.
29 Salazar, ‘Dos recuerdos’, 327. See also Guillén, Páginas vueltas, 82; and Nicolás Guillén, Motivos de son (1930), in Nicolás Guillén, Summa poética, ed., con intro., de Luis Íñigo Madrigal (Madrid: Cátedra, 2016), 59–73. Louis A. Pérez Jr explains that the fritas were dockyard clubs in his book, On Becoming Cuban: Identity, Nationality, and Culture (Chapel Hill: Univ. of North Carolina Press, 2008), 199. In his memoir, prior to mentioning having seen Lorca at the fritas, Guillén states that ‘su presencia me era cercana por razones obvias’ (Páginas vueltas, 82). Nicolás Guillén’s Motivos de son were published in the ‘Ideales de una raza’ section of the Diario de la Marina, a Sunday supplement devoted to the Black community, on 20 April 1930—shortly before Lorca’s ‘Son de negros en Cuba’ came out in Musicalia. The eight poems caused a literary and cultural sensation in Cuba and, in short order, the rest of the world, making Guillén’s name (Luis Íñigo Madrigal, ‘Introducción’, in Nicolás Guillén, Summa poética, 11–46 [p. 15]). Motivos de son combined several currents involving the musical form, the Afro-Cuban vernacular, and ‘high’ art Afrocubanismo—speaking to concerns about identity on a number of different planes. Guillén and Lorca initially met at a Havana café, on their way to an intellectual gathering; they saw each other on a few occasions thereafter, building something of a rapport based on their mutual interest in poetry and son. Guillén tells of two other encounters with Lorca: at the fritas, at which son was customarily played, and attending an exhibition of paintings by Carlos Enríquez (Páginas vueltas, 82). According to Guillermo Rodríguez Rivera, ‘García Lorca y Guillén fueron presentados por ese gran animador de nuestra cultura de entonces que era José Antonio Fernández de Castro, y rápidamente comprendieron su comunidad’ (‘Lorca en Guillén, Guillén en Lorca’, in Madrid habanece: Cuba y España en el punto de mira transatlántico, ed. Ángel Esteban [Madrid: Iberoamericana/Frankfurt am Main: Vervuert, 2011], 81–89 [p. 87]).
30 The 1921 banking collapse paved the way for dominance by American branches, and the price of sugar, a crucial export, fell dramatically as a result of post-First World War peace in Europe, where it had temporarily replaced the continental product. Cuban sugar prices reached new and devastating lows in 1925 (Jules R. Benjamin, ‘The Machadato and Cuban Nationalism, 1928–1932’, The Hispanic American Historical Review, 55:1 [1975], 66–91 [pp. 70 & 75]).
31 This trend had a profound impact on the work of Cuban intellectuals in the arts and humanities, and gave rise to organizations such as the Junta de Renovación Nacional (1923), Sociedad del Folklore Cubano (1924), and Institución Hispanocubana de Cultura (1926), all of which Ortiz had a major role in establishing (Robin Moore, ‘Representations of Afrocuban Expressive Culture in the Writings of Fernando Ortiz’, Latin American Music Review/Revista de Música Latinoamericana, 15:1 [1994], 32–54 [p. 39]).
32 On 18 March 1923, a group of thirteen, led by the poet Rubén Martínez Villena, walked out of an assembly of the Academy of Science in order to censure the Zayas administration for corruption, thereby igniting the Protesta.
33 See Ana Cairo Ballester, El Grupo Minorista y su tiempo (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1978). In her book Días cubanos de Lorca, Nydia Sarabia discusses Lorca’s contact with the Minoristas (Havana: Editorial Cultura Popular, 2007), 64–65.
34 The Minoristas included the painters Jaime Valls and Eduardo Abela; poets Agustín Acosta and José Tallet; and writers and journalists like Carpentier, José Antonio Fernández de Castro and Emilio Roig de Leuchsenring. As Urbano Martínez Carmenate has emphasized, ‘[e]l Minorismo, vale decirlo, había sido […] crisol del Vanguardismo en Cuba, resorte y célula prefundadora’ (Martínez Carmenate, García Lorca y Cuba, 61).
35 Moore, ‘Representations of Afrocuban Expressive Culture’, 48. Regarding Ortiz and the Grupo Minorista see Isaac Barreal, ‘Prólogo’, in Fernando Ortiz, Etnia y sociedad, selección, notas & prólogo de Isaac Barreal (Havana: Editorial de Ciencia Sociales, 1993), vii–xxxiii (pp. xxi–xxiii); and Moore, ‘Representations of Afrocuban Expressive Culture’, 40–41 & 48.
36 Antonio Benítez-Rojo, ‘The Role of Music in the Emergence of Afro-Cuban Culture’, trans. James Maraniss, Research in African Literatures, 29:1 (1998), 179–84 (p. 180).
37 See El poeta en La Habana, 38; Maurer & Anderson, ‘ “ … estoy ya dicen los periódicos de Cuba, ‘aplatanado’ ” ’, in Federico García Lorca en Nueva York y La Habana, ed. Maurer & Anderson, 312; and Cairo Ballester, El Grupo Minorista y su tiempo.
38 Belén Vega Pichaco, ‘La construcción de la música nueva en Cuba (1927–1946): del afrocubanismo al neoclasicismo’, Revista de Musicología, 37:2 (2014), 715–23 (p. 719). See also Belén Vega Pichaco, ‘De “Musicalia” (Madrid, 1921) de Ortega y Gasset a “Musicalia” (La Habana, 1928–1932) de María Muñoz de Quevedo: estética musical e ideología que trascienden fronteras’, Revista de Musicología, 33:1–2 (2010), 159–76.
39 The Quevedos featured compositions reflective of the Afrocubanismo tendency in art music. Frequent contributors were their close friends, the composers Amadeo Roldán (1900–1939) and Alejandro García Caturla (1906–1940), a co-founder of the Sociedad de la Música Contemporánea de La Habana, who were primary exponents of Afrocubanismo. Roldán, in conjunction with Carpentier, helped initiate the Afrocubanista movement in Cuba, for which García Caturla provided a corresponding music theory. See Vicky Oveson, ‘Cuban Nationalism from 1920–1935: The Contextualization of Afrocuban Poetic and Musical Themes in Motivos de son by Nicolás Guillén and Amadeo Roldán’, MA thesis (Univ. of Calgary, 1999), 29; Stevenson, ‘Musical Moments’, 274; Robin Moore, Nationalizing Blackness: Afrocubanismo and Artistic Revolution in Havana, 1920–1940 (Pittsburgh: Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 1997), 196–97; and Leante, ‘Federico en Cuba’, 237. Both Roldán and García Caturla set Guillén’s Motivos de son to music (Manabe, ‘Reinterpretations of the Son’). There are settings of Guillén’s Motivos de son by Eliseo (1893–1950) and Emilio Grenet (Manabe, ‘Reinterpretations of the Son’, 115 & 113). It should be noted that the aesthetic trajectory of Musicalia later shifted toward the neoclassical (Vega Pichaco, ‘La construcción de la música nueva’, 719).
40 Anke Birkenmaier refers to Georg Simmel’s 1908 essay, ‘Der Fremde’ (‘The Stranger’) (in Theories of Ethnicity. A Classical Reader, ed. Werner Sollors [New York: New York U. P., 1996], 37–42).
41 Anke Birkenmaier, ‘La Habana, 1930: Lorca entre raza y cultura’, trad. Andrés Gil von der Walde, Revista de Antropología Social, 17 (2008), 95–118 (p. 105).
42 Birkenmaier, ‘La Habana, 1930’, trad. von der Walde, 105.
43 Poust, ‘Transculturation, Transformation’, 593.
44 Poust, ‘Transculturation, Transformation’, 593.
45 Poust, ‘Transculturation, Transformation’, 595.
46 Poust, ‘Transculturation, Transformation’, 596. From Poust’s standpoint, these facets of the poem can be traced to Afro-Cuban culture’s religious syncretism, the scholarly study for which Ortiz and Cabrera laid the initial foundations. She also underscores that Lorca’s attraction to Afro-Cuban cultural syncretism grew out of his prior interest in the syncretic aspects of Andalusian culture (Poust, ‘Transculturation, Transformation’, 595).
47 Sarah Wright, ‘Dramatic Encounters: Federico García Lorca’s Trip to Cuba (1930)’, in Cultural Encounters: European Travel Writing in the 1930s, ed. Charles Burdett & Derek Duncan (New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books, 2002), 131–42 (p. 137).
48 Juan Marinello, García Lorca en Cuba (Havana: Ediciones Belic, 1965), 16.
49 Marinello, García Lorca en Cuba, 18. He means ‘Son de negros en Cuba’.
50 Marinello, García Lorca en Cuba, 18.
51 Marinello, García Lorca en Cuba, 18. Two illustrations provided in the memoir support these ideas, showing the ‘Fonseca’ cigar box as bearing the bust of a gentleman with an elegant mane, and the ‘Romeo y Julieta’ brand box as adorned with the image of an adoring young couple—he on a ladder, and she, receiving her admirer from her balcony (Marinello, García Lorca en Cuba, n.p.).
52 Marinello, García Lorca en Cuba, 19.
53 Guillermo Cabrera Infante, ‘Lorca hace llover en La Habana’, Cuadernos Hispanoamericanos. Homenaje a Lorca, 1:433–34 (1986), 241–48 (p. 245).
54 Federico García Lorca, Epistolario completo, ed. Andrew A. Anderson & Christopher Maurer (Madrid: Cátedra, 1997), 688. The music to ‘Tú’ was composed by Eduardo Sánchez de Fuentes and the lyrics were written by Hernán Sánchez (Eduardo Sánchez de Fuentes, ‘Tú’ [Habanera for soprano or tenor, transcription for voice, violin, and piano], lyrics Hernán Sánchez [Havana: Excelsior Music Company, n.d.], La Biblioteca de Federico García Lorca [hereafter BFGL], AFFGL, CFGL). A habanera, as a dance, is derived from both African roots and the English country dance (imported to Cuba by Spanish immigrants and French refugees from Haitian rebellions during the late 1700s and early 1800s). The lyrics of the habanera form part of the culture of ida y vuelta between Spain, especially the Catalan Costa Brava, and Cuba; many have romantic longing, often between an idealized mulata woman and a Spanish seafaring man, as their theme (Frances Barulich & Jan Fairley, ‘Habanera (Catalan havanera)’, Oxford Music Online, 20 January 2001, <https://doi.org/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.article.12116> [accessed 10 February 2020]). In La música en Cuba, ed. Baez-Jorge, 303–14, Carpentier writes about the importance of the country dance (contradanza) for the evolution of Cuban music.
55 Sánchez de Fuentes, ‘Tú’ (BFGL, AFFGL, CFGL). In Lorca’s collection, there are also two books by Sánchez de Fuentes, El Folk-lor en la música cubana (Havana: El Siglo XX, 1923) and La canción cubana. Conferencia (Havana: Molina y Compañía, 1930) (see BFGL, AFFGL, CFGL). It is important to note the dedication on the former work—‘A Federico García Lorca para que conozca nuestra música. Devotamente Eduardo. La Hab. Abril 30’—and the 16 March 1930 date and dedication of the latter (a lecture published in book form)—‘Para Federico García Lorca con la admiración de El Autor. La Hab-Abril 30’ (Sánchez de Fuentes, El Folk-lor en la música cubana; and Sánchez de Fuentes, La canción cubana. Conferencia respectively). Lorca’s personal library encompasses Sánchez de Fuentes’ Cuban popular-song compositions, ‘Canciones’, ‘Deseo’, ‘Por tus ojos … ’, ‘Secreto’ and ‘Serenatina’ (‘Canciones’, Album No. 2; ‘Deseo’, Canción cubana; ‘Por tus ojos … ’ [Recuerdo de México]; ‘Secreto’ [Habanera]; and ‘Serenatina’ [Havana: Excelsior Music Company, n.d.] [BFGL, AFFGL, CFGL]). Two of his Sánchez de Fuentes scores have Afro-Cuban folkloric themes: ‘Danza de esclavos de (Cubita bella)’ ([Havana: Excelsior Music Company, n.d.], BFGL, AFFGL, CFGL); and ‘¡Oh Yamba Oh!’ ([Havana: Excelsior Music Company, n.d.], BFGL, AFFGL, CFGL). See also Roger D. Tinnell, Federico García Lorca y la música. Catálogo y discografía anotados (Madrid: Fundación Juan March, en colaboración con la Fundación Federico García Lorca, 1998 [1ª ed. 1993]), 423–24.
56 Andrés Soria Olmedo, ‘Cuba en un poema de Federico García Lorca’, in Studies in Honor of José Carlos Mainer/Homenaje a José-Carlos Mainer, Anales de la Literatura Española Contemporánea, 38:1–2 (2013), 441–59 (p. 449). See also Lope de Vega, La dama boba, ed., con intro., de Diego Marín (Madrid: Cátedra, 2002), 150–54. Soria Olmedo refers to Act III, Scene 6, in which musicians sing the following lyrics (in part):
57 Soria Olmedo, ‘Cuba en un poema de Federico García Lorca’ (449–50). See also Federico de Onís, ‘ “Se sentía como en casa … ”: Federico de Onís evoca a Federico García Lorca’, in Federico García Lorca en Nueva York y La Habana, ed. Maurer & Anderson, 170–73.
58 Carpentier, La música en Cuba, ed. Baez Jorge, 244.
59 Anthony Reed, ‘Authentic/Artificial’, in Time: A Vocabulary of the Present, ed. Joel Burges & Amy J. Elias (New York: New York U. P., 2016), 294–307 (pp. 294–95). The circular logic at the heart of what Reed calls a ‘racialized spatiotemporal schema’ (294) is heavily dependent on nostalgia. At the same time, as Ben Etherington has demonstrated in his work on Martinican Négritude author Aimé Césaire, neither primitivism nor primitivism’s expression of the desire for a return to a pre-civilized past by accessing the authentic can be confined to ‘Western’ modernism (see Ben Etherington, Literary Primitivism [Stanford: Stanford U. P., 2018]).
60 K. Merinda Simmons & James A. Crank, Race and New Modernisms (London/New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2019).
61 Richard A. Rogers, ‘From Cultural Exchange to Transculturation: A Review and Reconceptualization of Cultural Appropriation’, Communication Theory 16:4 (2006), 474–503 (p. 478).
62 Mary Louise Pratt, Travel Writing and Transculturation (London/New York: Routledge, 1992), 5–6.
63 Wright, ‘Dramatic Encounters’, 131 & 132. Wright examines Poeta en Nueva York (including ‘Son de negros en Cuba’ and the ‘Oda a Walt Whitman’) and the plays Así que pasen cinco años, El público and Yerma, all of which were at least partially drafted during Lorca’s stay in Cuba. She likewise looks at the influence of Lorca’s Cuban episode on La casa de Bernarda Alba. See Federico García Lorca, Así que pasen cinco años, El público, Yerma and La casa de Bernarda Alba, in Obras completas, ed. García-Posada, II, Teatro, 329–93, 279–327, 477–526 & 581–634 respectively. See also: Lawrence Venuti, ‘Translation As Cultural Politics: Regimes of Domestication in English’, Textual Practice, 7:2 (1993), 208–23; Writes of Passage: Reading Travel Writing, ed. James Duncan & Derek Gregory (London/New York: Routledge, 1999); and Roland Barthes, Camera Lucida. Reflections on Photography, trans. Richard Howard (New York: Hill and Wang, 1981).
64 Wright, ‘Dramatic Encounters’, 132.
65 Wright, ‘Dramatic Encounters’, 132.
66 Wright, ‘Dramatic Encounters’, 133.
67 Gemma Corradi Fiumara, The Other Side of Language: A Philosophy of Listening, trans. Charles Lambert (London/New York, Routledge, 1990), 29. See also Hans-Georg Gadamer, Truth and Method, trans. revised by Joel Weinsheimer & Donald G. Marshall, (New York: Continuum, 1994 [1st German ed. Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1960]) on which Fiumara draws in her work.
68 Alan West, ‘Nancy Morejón: Transculturation, Translation and the Poetics of the Caribbean’, Callaloo, 28:4 (2005), 967–76 (pp. 974–75).
69 Wright, ‘Dramatic Encounters’, 136.
70 Pratt, Travel Writing and Transculturation, 6.
71 Gustavo Pérez Firmat perceives the ‘Cuban criollismo’ of which Ortiz is an exponent as ‘translational rather than foundational’ and, certainly, translation as metaphor stays embedded in the idea of transculturación (see Pérez Firmat, ‘From Ajiaco to Tropical Soup: Fernando Ortiz and the Definition of Cuban Culture’, Dialogue No. 93 [1987], ed. Richard Tardanico, with Sofia A. Lopez [Miami: Latin American and Caribbean Center, Florida International University, 1987], 3; available online at <https://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/laccopsd/16/> [accessed 11 November 2020]).
72 Fernando Ortiz, La clave xilofónica de la música cubana: ensayo etnográfico (Mérida: Ceiba Ediciones, 2000), 80–81 & 96–97.
73 Ortiz, La clave xilofónica de la música cubana, 92. While it is sensible to remain sceptical about Ortiz’s anecdotes, it is also entirely reasonable that he was working in 1928 on an ethnomusicological study that would be published in 1935.
74 Benítez-Rojo maintains that racial integration is an essential component of the anti-colonial Cuban national identity envisioned by Ortiz (‘The Role of Music’, 179–81).
75 Ortiz, La clave xilofónica de la música cubana, 76.
76 Ortiz describes carceleras and martinetes as ‘canciones en España nacidas en las prisiones’. In his estimation, these Spanish songs ‘debieron ser traídas a Cuba por los galeotes o siervos penados a galera que hacían sus largas estadas con las flotas de Indias en la bahía cubana y trabajaban en las naves del arsenal habanero’ (La clave xilofónica de la música cubana, 80).
77 Ortiz, La clave xilofónica de la música cubana, 86.
* Disclosure Statement. No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.