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Abstract
This paper examines Afrocuban cultural practices in New York City, specifically the ‘folkloric’ music and dance complex known as rumba. I look at these cultural performances as arenas in which black Cubans from the post-1980 migratory cohorts (among others) craft and negotiate identifications that are shaped—discursively and spatially—by the larger social contexts, but are also sites for contesting hegemonic constructions of Cuban identity. Although most participants claim they are not political, I argue that they are engaged in a politics of recognition.
Acknowledgements
This article is dedicated to the memory of Mario Dreke Alfonso, popularly known as Chavalonga (d. 2007), legendary rumbero of Havana's Atares neighbourhood, and Theodore (Teddy) Holliday, Sr. (d. 2001) of New York City. They both played critical roles in the development and transmission of Afrocuban culture in the twentieth century (and beyond) and they taught me more than they may have realised. I am forever honoured and humbled by their friendship. Based on material from my doctoral dissertation (Knauer Citation2005) and a paper presented to the IMISCOE B6 cluster seminar in Amsterdam in June 1995, the article has benefitted from comments from Marco Martiniello and other participants, including those from the follow-up workshop in Oxford in June 2006. I am grateful to the anonymous JEMS reviewer and the JEMS editors for helpful suggestions. My thinking about rumba and race in Cuba and New York has been enriched by numerous colleagues in Cuba and elsewhere, both rumberos and scholars, too many to detail here.
Notes
1. A fuller discussion of the multiple renderings of Cuban national identity can be found in Hernandez-Reguant (Citation2008).
2. Amongst key interviewees in New York have been Paula Ballan, Antonio (Ñico) Cadenon, Ogduardo (Roman) Diaz Anaya, Gene Golden, Ted Holliday, Felix Sanabria and Leonardo Wignall.
3. The term ‘Marielito’ refers to those Cubans who emigrated in the 1980 Mariel boatlift, which brought over 125,000 Cubans to the US in the space of just four months. While it originally had a pejorative connotation, it is now used, even by members of the cohort, in a more neutral or even affectionate tone.
4. Glasser (Citation1995) and Regis (Citation1999) have addressed some of the dynamics of being a ‘pet outsider’, and also the ethical considerations of representation. I have discussed many of my observations and interpretations of the rumba scene with other participants and have shared papers and articles. Some of my work has been published in Spanish in Cuba, and several people have come across this work on their own and offered feedback.
5. There are several ‘religions of African origin’, as they are now called in Cuban scholarly discourse (see Pedroso 2002 for an analysis of the shifting nomenclature), that are widely practiced in Cuba, and at least three of these have acquired iconic status in the national imaginary, the result of creative recreations and adaptations during the last century or so in Cuba. The best known of these religions is La Regla de Ocha, or Santeria, based largely on the Yoruba-speaking cultures of what is now Nigeria. Two others are Palo Monte and the Abakua Secret Society – an all-male sodality; there seems to be a lack of concensus among practitioners about whether it is a religion, but most agree that it has religious aspects (Palmie Citation2002).
6. Starting in the 1960s, the Cuban government arranged international tours by performing artists, from ballet dancers to the Conjunto Folclórico Nacional (Hagedorn Citation2001; Moore Citation2006).
7. There are no reliable figures on the racial composition of the Cuban-origin population in the US prior to the massive post-revolutionary migrations.
8. Although membership has fluctuated over the years, the CCI is still in existence, although they gave up their Bronx headquarters several years ago and donated their archives to the New York Public Library's Schomburg Center.
9. According to the 1953 Cuban census, 27 per cent of the island's population was ‘black’ (cited in Skop Citation2001). Some scholars note that the census figures on race are not entirely accurate as people may select a ‘higher’ (i.e. lighter) racial classification. Cuba recognises several ‘intermediary’ racial categories, including ‘mulato’ or ‘mestizo’ (mixed). Additionally, census workers often rely upon their own subjective assessment of an individual's phenotype, and they, too, tend to ‘lighten’ (see de la Fuente Citation2001).
10. Immigrants had to have sponsors. Those who did not have family who could sponsor them had to rely upon groups like Catholic charities and were thus settled in places like Lincoln, Nebraska or Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Many left their place of first settlement and later migrated to major cities like New York, Los Angeles, Chicago or Miami (Skop Citation2001).
11. A Cuban-Chinese restaurant in Manhattan.
12. Literally ‘playing for the saints’—music is an integral part of all Afrocuban religious practices.
13. This concept also finds a parallel in Haitian vodou, where devotees speak of the need to chofe (heat up) a ceremony in order to ‘bring down’ the loa or spirits (Brown Citation2001).
14. A note of explanation on two key sites mentioned in this quote: Prado and Neptuno represent an intersection along one of Havana's main boulevards; La Engañadora is a Havana nightclub that was popular in the 1960s and 1970s.
15. The translations of these songs are mine, based on versions I learned orally (most Cuban CDs do not include lyrics). ‘Lenguasa’ is based on Rizo's encounter with a neighbour who told him to get a ‘real’ job. I am grateful to Greg Landau, whose CD, En El Solar de la Cueva del Humo, contained this song, for sharing this information with me. An invaluable source for rumba lyrics is the ‘Cancionero Rumbero’: http://www.nolanwarden.com/latinperc/cancionero.pdf for a printer-friendly version of the original; http://cancionerorumbero.blogspot.com for the revised online version.
16. Videos often circulate well beyond their point of origin, linking people who are otherwise only remotely connected. In late December 2004 I video-taped a rumba at the home of a well-known musician in Havana; I briefly handed the camera to a colleague while I took a turn dancing guaguancó. I made one or two copies of this video for friends in New York. However, in the past two years, at least five people in the New York rumba/Cuban immigrant scenes whom I had never before met or knew only slightly have greeted me by saying that they recognised me from a video of a rumba in Cuba and when I pressed them for details, it turned out to be a copy of my video.
17. There is, of course, an equally complex and lengthy history surrounding the relationship between racially or ethnically marked cultural forms—many of which, like rap music and graffiti, had their origins in marginalised public spaces—and vernacular practices and ‘polite society’. Mitchell Duneier's book Sidewalk (1999) explores how race and class shape the treatment and perception of sidewalk booksellers in Greenwich Village.
18. Washington Square Park, for example, has been the site of numerous battles over the governance of public space, policing, redevelopment plans, and appropriate forms of cultural activity. These have involved community residents, and both the city and New York University, the latter of which has steadily purchased most of the real estate surrounding the park, and thus claims the park as part of its campus.
19. See Central Park Conservancy: ‘Then and Now: Central Park History’, no date; http://www.centralparknyc.org/thenandnow/cp-history/
20. A frequent complaint articulated by many of the Cubans was that the African drummers were not subject to as much harassment although they attracted larger crowds and made as much—if not more—noise. However, in 2000 the police also cracked down on the African drummers, citing many of the same reasons they had used to justify their actions against the rumberos: noise, complaints by neighbours, and the lack of a permit (Siegel 2000).
21. The rumberos are not significantly sloppier than other similarly sized groups of people who use NYC public parks or beaches!
22. Orquest Aragon is a popular Cuban orchestra that toured the US in early 1998, playing to SRO crowds in New York City and California. Alpha 66 is one of the most notorious and violent Cuban exile organisations, founded in Puerto Rico in 1961, and supported by the US government, to prepare for an invasion of Cuba which never materialised after the failed Bay or Pigs incident. In the 1960s and 1970s the group targeted moderates in the Miami Cuban community and was responsible for many bombings. Their website, http://www.alpha66.org/index.html, indicated at the end of 2007 that there are active chapters in Florida, New York and California.