Interview With Victoria Cuellar and Berta Jottar
Hemispheric Institute of Peformance and Politics, Spectacles of Religiosity, NYU, July 19, 2003

Vicki: In your opinion, can any nation, ethnicity or group of people own a dance and music form like the Rumba?

Berta: The question of ownership and cultural practice is on the one hand simple, and on the other extremely complex and controversial, particularly when you contextualize rumba within its various moments of international glamour, or nationalist assimilations. I will try to explain. The simple response to ownership is stated as the title in el Goyo Hernandez (a famous rumbero) latest CD: La Rumba es Cubana. When I read the title, I wondered why such an obvious assertion? When I heard the CD I was even more confused, the CD historicizes the rumba complex through the detailed curating of numbers that include from coros de clave to the Chinitos guarapachangueo. It took me a second round of thinking, particularly when cultural ownership appears in the terrain of contestation against the music industry’s process of globalization on the one hand, and on the other when rumba is nationally assimilated by an international cultural elite. I would not be surprised that the title/assertion La rumba es Cubana, assumes a level of anxiety against its global assimilation that may de-nationalize and de-historicize rumba’s specificity; its historical connection to Cuba, a location that has served as the bridge between Europe and the Americas. Remember that the island was the intersection, an in-between port of trade for colonial ships not only Spanish but British as well, in their circulation of products—including slaves-- into the Americas. All the resulting differences met and decided to continue to do so at the syncopated event of the rhythm and pulse of clave. Indeed the anxiety might result from various events.

For instance, the U.S. system of appropriation by the record industry corporations of other Cuban musical forms repackaged into hegemonic markets. In one way, ownership has also to do with one’s ability to sell and represent. And this discussion is not about grass-roots independent labels such as Qbdisk or 6 Dregrees Records which effort has been tremendous in the distribution of Cuban-made music and greatly influential indeed in their resistance against the US economic embargo. On the contrary, for instance, the use of the term salsa was coined in order to include all Latin danceable musical genres- many of them Cuban- during the late 1960’s for marketing purposes. It is important to remember that, before the term was coined by a NYC empresario, the danceable records of the 50’s and 60’s included the title of the songs and their forms, mambo, cha-cha-cha, charanga, son montuno, and so on. Of course, Cubans have been hurt by this move of “re-naming” and “redefinition” since it not only erased the origin of most salsa music, but in addition, it also coincided with a period, that still continues, of economic embargo towards Cuba. However, I am not saying that this was a conspiracy against Cuban musicians to steal their music; rather, cultural production is always struggling against its assimilation and re-definition from and for external interests. Indeed, this takes me to the fact that it was precisely Salsa what not only served as one resistance space of community and identity formation for Boricuas and Latinos in the U.S., and in the Americas. Who of the international Spanish-speaking lefty intelligencia does not remember Ruben Blades’ pan-americanist rumba “Todos Vuelven”, or “A donde estan los desaparecidos?” More importantly, Salseros always maintained a clarity about their practices and not only acknowledge Cuban music, but maintained a direct connection and collaboration with Cuban musicians in Cuba and in the Diaspora that had been going on since the early twenties during the Afro-Cubanismo movement. In this way, salsa functioned as a space of bonding between and among Latinos in the U.S. in particular, and in the world in general. Salsa is understood by some as an eating sauce, by others as mambo, or as a musical hybrid form that represented --through mixture-- the various rhythms of the Afro-Latin Diaspora: samba, son, rumba, murga, see for instance Willy Colon eclectic compositions. These productions kept the market open indirectly for the later re-insertion of Cuban Timba bands such as Van Van, Issac Delgado, Charanga Habanera, into the hegemonic global music industry. The Salsa’s marketing phenomena is almost like a prototype because of its mutation into contemporary forms of globalization that more often than not, attempt to reduce the musical product into exoticism –the tropical other, or universalism –we are the world. The son montuno, root of Salsa, was re-inserted into the international circuit by the “discovery” of the Buena Vista Social Club, great for the musicians, as their music must go on; however, I won’t even enter into the repercussions of what happens when every tourist in the island wants to hear only “Buena-Vista-Social-Club-kind-of-music.” Indeed, these are not “discoveries” except from an anthropological rescuing impulse motivated not necessarily by profit but by a nostaligic fantasy of, in this case, a reactionary past. Interestingly, and different from Salsa—which most people assumes is Puerto Rican, and in fact it is-- the Buena Vista’s phenomena asserts its Cubania specifically in a retrograde hyper-Cubaness emblematic of a desire of a “Cuba libre,” in other words, the Cuba of casinos and tropical pleasures. And this is connected to rumba too because the return to the “rescuing force’ behind the Buena Vista son music assumes, and therefore marks the music wrongly as “marginal” without understanding first the role of contemporary music in Cuba; and second, the son’s history of resistance precisely against the above pre-revolutionary fantasy. In fact, during the late 20’s it was that casino-cabaret context that promoted son but under the name of rhumba, or rhumba in its white-washed version adapted into orchestrations. Indeed, many rumberos such as Ignacio Piñeiro and Carlos Embale participated in the circuit of Conjunto music. The 1920’s internationalization of rhumba functioned as the result of its racist assimilation by the national cultural elite that circulated between Habana, NYC and Paris. This has been deeply analyzed by scholars like Robin Moore who historicizes the 1930’s Cuban Afro-Cubanismo movement, which as he has argued, functioned between the dialectics of son’s racist appropriation and the musician’s resisting re-insertion and re-definition but from already within that system. So what I am trying to say is that ownership functions in relationship, or in tension with processes of assimilation and appropriation, in this case by global markets, or the international cultural and tourist elite and industry. Of course, not without resistance from within, as the same musicians re-appropriate their mutated forms into critical revisions.

Now, the question of music ownership in relationship to its globalized circulation remains marginal in terms of profits. Rumba sells within the record section of world musics and Afro-Cuban traditions; or within the international more specialized circuits. While it is still more marginal than jazz, it actually exists within it given rumba’s importance in the production of Latin jazz with Chano Pozo’s introduction of the tumbadora drum in to the U.S. music scene during his collaboration with Dizzy Gillespie.

The question of rumba’s ownership takes us to the idea of its assimilation and appropriation not only by the national and international cultural elites, such as the Afro-Cubanismo movement mention earlier, or the global trend of worldbeats; but assimilation also occurs at the national level, particularly through nationalist discourses. For instance, the revolution institutionalized rumba, and Afro-Cuban practices as part of its egalitarian process of racial integration. One of the results of this politics of race inclusion resulted in the founding of the important Conjunto Folklorico Nacional who indeed hired rumberos and rumberas as experts of the rather broader field of Afro-Cuban culture. El Goyo told me once that rumba has lost its element of spontaneity because the revolution introduced the need of permits for its performance within private social gatherings—a rather simple process. But also, the revolution assimilation of the form has opened alternative venues for its elaboration. Still, I have not talked about rumba here, the rumba in the solar, in the street.

This question gets even more interesting when analyzed in relationship to issues regarding resisting minoritarian identities. The 1970’s Nuyorican’s assimilation of rumba is a fascinating example, the way in which they re-constructed rumba as a complicated space of self-definition using rumba as a third-alternative-space that articulated a historical critique not only against the still prevalent contemporary US colonialism of the island, but national race politics. What do I mean by national, Puertorican or U.S.? Both, remember, a large number of the first generation of Nuyoricans grew up sharing the same neighborhoods with African Americans, this made them understand en carne propia US racial politics against its minorities. In addition, rumba a la boricua could also be understood as a critical site against Puerto Rico’s national denial of the relevance of the African presence in Puerto Rican culture. Do they own rumba? Why not? Rumba has created an alternative site of identity articulation base on resistance, isn’t that what rumba is all about in Cuba anyway? And who was rumbeando with the boricuas in Central Park, or Orchard Beach? The various generations of Cuban rumberos in the Diaspora such as the famous Patato Valdes, his cousin the great singer Manuel Martinez Olivera-el Llanero, or el Tao la Onda, a prolific rumba composer. This is without mentioning the rumberos who did not frequent the park but performed with local NY musicians such as Daniel Ponce, or those who shared their religious knowledge such as Julito Collazo and Orlando Puntilla Rios So, what I am also saying is that rumba becomes a cultural space that is trans-local and the questions of ownership become highly controversial, particularly once rumba is understood as part of the larger African Diaspora in its continuous circulation. And I have not even mentioned the issue of authorship in relationship to how commercialization has forced the authors to register their songs even when the form is still orally transmitted and therefore, altered in its daily performance. The owners of rumba are the rumberos and rumberas of the world united by an embodied “cun kinkin con”. Rumberos/as know who is who in el ambiente, and if you are new in the scene, you will have to prove yourself at the rhythm of clave in Habana, New York or Italy. Yes, La Rumba es Cubana, but still, not all Cubans are rumberos.

END OF INTERVIEW

*Note: This is a revised and edited version of an interview that took place between Berta Jottar and Victoria Cuellar during the Encuentro, July 2003.