Master of Music / Department of Music, Theatre, and Dance / Craig B. Parker / This Master’s Report will address questions about Afro-Cuban music, focusing on Afro-Cuban percussion and music in the late 1800s and early 1900s. The first two chapters will address congas and timbales, which are two Afro-Cuban percussion instruments at the center of Cuban culture and music. The next three chapters will address danzón, rumba, and son. These chapters will provide analysis into the influences that shaped the music as well as analysis of the music itself. Chapter 6 of this report addresses Cuba’s impact on culture outside Cuba, relating but not limited to music, with emphasis on the 1930s into the beginning of World War II. Throughout this report videos have been created to help explain topics of Afro-Cuban music to readers in a more interactive way. The purpose of these videos is to demonstrate how the instruments sound as well as what the instruments look like, how notation included in the report is realized, and generally to make the page come to life in ways that technology today now allows.

Many black Cubans decided to join the Cuban criollo separatists in their fight for independence from Spain in the late nineteenth century because rebellion seemed to promise a means to end slavery and shake their bonds of second class citizenship. To a large degree this was true as Cuban independence represented a multiracial triumph that ignored race and social status. Racial fraternity quickly faded, though, as the twentieth century began and black Cubans found themselves in the same disadvantaged position as before independence. This essay discusses how racism and limitations on black organization in the early republic dashed any real hopes for social mobility and spurred many Afro-Cubans to seek alternative ways to fight for racial and socioeconomic equality. I will focus on how Afro-Cuban racial awareness and black organization grew following the disappointments of Cuban independence and how the application of the 1910 Morua amendment restricting political organizations and the 1912 massacre of thousands of Afro-Cubans forced black activists to seek less direct means to redress problems of poverty and inequality. Following an analysis of why many black Cubans renounced assimilation and decided to organize based on race, I will discuss the small political space within which Afro-Cubans were able to operate and the various strategies they employed to avoid being labeled as racists and anti-Cuban. These strategies were generally passive in nature, though, and employed racial uplift or regeneracion as a means to become accepted by white society. Considering that many black elites accepted racial uplift as a means to fight for black opportunities and equality, I will evaluate if this strategy served their goals of penetrating white society at the expense of poorer Afro-Cubans. I will also focus on the rare efforts of Juan Rene Betancourt, one of the very few black activists that rejected regeneracion and endorsed black nationalism as the sole means to achieve racial equality in Cuba. The paper will conclude with an analysis of the efficacy of black Cuban organizations to improve the position of blacks in Cuban society leading up to the 1959 revolution and why they were not more successful.

This project focuses on African American and Afro- Hispanic literature and folklore. Specifically, I employ Fernando Ortiz’s theory of transculturation. Ortiz makes the case that a new Afro- Cuban identity is created with the intermingling of African, Spanish and native inhabitants of Cuba. Using Ortiz’s critical framework as the foundation of my study, I undertake a new critique of Zora Neale Hurston’s portrayal of African American identity. Analyzing Hurston’s work through the model of transculturation, I examine the parallel between her work and that of Lydia Cabrera, a Cuban ethnographer whose work represents Afro-Cuban identity as a transcultural one. Establishing this comparison, I reflect on the similarities and differences among their strategies of representing Transculturation in African- based identities. I look at their works from a womanist lens to analyze how their female anthropologist status influenced their folkloric portrayals and how they enacted a political agenda that emphasized female agency. I also analyze the oral aesthetic of their texts; in my opinion, Hurston and Cabrera reproductions of the spoken are ways to represent transcultural dialogue. Finally I compare their ethnographic studies of the African- based spiritual systems of Santeria and Voodoo.

This thesis is an ethnography and biographical study that examines the impact of the immense socioeconomic changes underway in Cuba at the turn of the 21st century and the flexible identity categories through which individuals navigate a social crisis. The biography and ethnography in this thesis are centered on the life of Violeta Aldama, an aging revolutionary and Afro-Cuban mother who struggles to make ends meet while fighting to steer her son, Brian, through a classical music education and into a music career. Amid growing racial inequalities when many Afro-Cubans are locked out of the most lucrative jobs in the new tourism sector and less likely to have family abroad sending remittances, the booming dance music industry offers the greatest promise for advancement and wealth than possibly any other profession. With the retraction of the state in a growing market economy, Violeta must scramble to build new networks of support while also coming to terms with the idea that the system she fought for all of her life will no longer be able to sustain her son. This study argues that individuals navigate through social crises through identity categories that are both socially constructed and subjectively fluid. In the process, they rely on these identity categories to build new contacts for support while also finding in them meaning and agency. I frame this thesis around three broad identity categories - race, class and national identity. The study also shows how Violeta in turn experienced these categories - as well as motherhood and her revolutionary roles - and the ways that she used them to build networks of support. The thesis is guided by the theory on lo informal developed by scholar Damián Fernández: the split in individuals between ideals and passionate beliefs versus life on the black market to help loved ones survive. The study's methodology draws from feminist ethnography, examining not only Violeta's position in society as an Afro-Cuban woman and aging revolutionary, but also my relationship with her and her son as a white, middle-class American researcher during a time when relationships with foreigners became a crucial means of social advancement. This research bridges academic areas of study regarding Cuba's growing racial inequalities and the rising economic power of the music industry. It also contributes to the academic canon on social movements by highlighting roles of individuals - not just the state or opposition alliances - as social actors.

Stuttgart, FH, Diplomarb., 2000.

Boston University. University Professors Program Senior theses. / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / 2031-01-02

The Medium and the Message investigates the incorporation of Afro-Cuban trance techniques in Western theatrical performance. Through art practice and research, I am asking two questions: how do performers, trained in Western theatrical contexts, articulate their experience with Afro-Cuban trance techniques? And how can my research methodologies illuminate the inherent intercultural tensions in ways that are productive for performance practitioners and theorists? To answer these questions, I created four new works of theatrical performance where I developed a method for performers, utilizing Afro-Cuban rituals adapted for non-practitioners. Working toward a phenomenological understanding of what is happening when a performer incorporates a character, I drew on the ritual knowledge of trance possession in Lukumí and Palo Monte in order to examine how ontologies might speak to each other in artistic practice. I also served as advisor for the creation of a fifth work in order to test the method outside of my studio. I constructed a studio practice methodology, called kanga (from the Bantu for tying and untying), using three methods based on aspects of Afro-Cuban ritual, and modified for performance contexts: spell, charm, and trance. This methodology enacts and complicates distinctions between performance and ritual, serving as a contribution to respectful and responsible intercultural performance practices. My research-led practice includes autobiographical writing and auto-ethnography under a phenomenological research methodology that uses three methods for data collection: formal recorded interviews, video footage of the studio work, and regular rehearsal debriefings. The overall methodology, bridging theory and practice, is bricoleur, drawing from ethnography, psychoanalytic theory, and phenomenology. Both research and studio work led to the articulation of a state of consciousness in performance that I call hauntological. This borrows from Derrida (1994: 10) but is redefined to refer to a state of being where reality is co-constituted by the living and the dead, where ancestral spirits are invoked to do the work once reserved for characters. Finally, this led to the construction of a creative artifact called The Ghost Lounge, an art work that evokes a hauntological state of consciousness in the viewer.

Orientadores: Marcelo Gimenes, Antônio Rafael Carvalho dos Santos / Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Artes / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-26T01:25:57Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 David_SergioLyra_M.pdf: 8364116 bytes, checksum: 20771953a548d1e1463fccad33ec3981 (MD5) David_SergioLyra_M_Anexo.zip: 134326893 bytes, checksum: 617b105c2880f4486756e9f19ce5c3b4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014 / Resumo: Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo investigar aspectos da construção do latin jazz de Eddie Palmieri. Para tal propõe descrever suas características como estilo musical: estruturação musical, relações com o jazz e com a música afro-cubana, elementos culturais e sociais. Um estudo mais detalhado enfocou a música "Palmas" procurando descrever o procedimento de Palmieri na manipulação de duas linguagens musicais, o jazz e o afro-cubano. Um estudo preliminar sobre a organização rítmica na tradição musical africana foi realizado para melhor compreensão da estrutura rítmica do objeto analisado. Eddie Palmieri é pianista, compositor e arranjador. Com mais de 50 anos atuando no cenário da música latina traz em sua obra uma característica peculiar, o uso do idioma jazzístico num diálogo intenso com elementos rítmicos da música afro-cubana. Este trabalho demonstra como Eddie Palmieri manipula essas linguagens descrevendo seu estilo através da análise de áudios e partituras / Abstract: This research aims to investigate aspects of the construction of latin jazz of Eddie Palmieri. For this proposes to describe his characteristics as a musical style: musical structure, relationships with jazz and the afro-cuban music, cultural and social elements. A more detailed study focused on the song "Palmas" trying to describe Palmieri¿s procedure in handling two musical languages, jazz and afro-cuban. A preliminary study on the rhythmic organization in African musical tradition was conducted to better understand the rhythmic structure of the analyzed object. Eddie Palmieri is a pianist, composer and arranger. With over 50 years working in the latin music scene brings to his work a peculiar feature, using the jazz language in an intense dialogue with rhythmic elements of afro-cuban music. This work demonstrates how Eddie Palmieri handles these languages describing his style by analyzing audio and sheet music / Mestrado / Fundamentos Teoricos / Mestre em Música

The Cuban-born artist Ana Mendieta (1948-1985) created the Silueta Series during the 1970s and ‘80s. It consists of earth-body works in situ featuring the silhouette of the artist's body fashioned from mud, plants, rocks, gunpowder and other materials. Underlying the creation of the Silueta Series is Mendieta's belief that the elements are sentient and powerful beings. This perception is particularly strong in the Afro-Cuban religion Santeria, a creolized form of the Òrìsà tradition of the Yoruba of West Africa introduced to the Americas during the trans-Atlantic slave trade. While scholars have noted Mendieta's incorporation of Santeria in her art, a thorough analysis of the iconographical references to the deities have yet to be explored. This thesis aims to provide such an analysis of Mendieta's works; thus enriching the current discourse on the Silueta Series.

Le Cajón est un rituel de possession cubain dont la musique est une composante essentielle. Une approche musicologique et une étude d’anthropologie religieuse combinées permettent de mettre en avant les spécificités du Cajón au sein des différents cultes afro-cubains à La Havane. Considérant le Cajón comme un fait social total, cette recherche propose d’analyser la complexité du rituel en prenant en compte les niveaux social, musical autant que religieux. De fait, l’analyse montre que le Cajón s’inscrit de diverses manières dans la pratique religieuse des cultes afro-cubains, en dépassant même parfois le cadre. Le Cajón comprend une suite de rites (Misa, Biagué, Chamalongo, sacrifice et Toque) ancrés dans un espace sacré où chaque participant a un rôle bien identifié. L’analyse d'une séance de rituel et des interactions qui s’y produisent nous permettent de définir le rôle de la musique. Celle-ci s’adapte en permanence au rituel : elle structure le temps rituel, participe à l’induction et à la socialisation de la transe de possession. Les musiciens, comme officiants, exploitent de manière créative des systèmes mélodiques et des motifs rythmiques associés à la musique de rumba, de la makuta et du palo monte. La superposition de répertoires et de systèmes musicaux engendre une complexité sur le plan sonore. Nous parvenons à la conclusion que l’analyse musicale constitue une clef pour la compréhension du rituel. / The Cajón in Cuba is both music and a possession ritual. The combined approach of musicology and religious anthropology highlights the specificities of the Cajón. Therefore, it is possible to position the musical and ritual practice of Cajón among different Afro-Cuban cults in Havana. Considering the Cajón as total social fact, this research aims to analyze the complexity of ritual taking into account social, musical and religious aspects. The analysis shows that the Cajón can be recognized in different way among religious practices of Afro-Cuban cults, even sometimes coming out of its framework. The Cajón covers a sequence of rituals (Misa, Biagué, Chamalongo, sacrifice and Toque) embedded in a sacred space where every participant has a well-identified role. The analysis of one sequence of ritual and of interactions which happen enables the definition of the role of music. The music is permanently adapting to the ritual being one of its components: it structures the ritual time, it participates to the introduction and also to the socialization of the possession trance. The musicians as participants use in creative way melodic systems and rhythmic patterns associated to the music of rumba, makuta and palo monte. Overlapping of repertoires and musical systems generates a complexity concerning sound effects. We conclude that the musical analysis is a key for the understanding of the ritual.