Caribbean Roundup

by Ray Allen

The choice of Trinidad as the site for the Spring 2001 meeting of the Society for American Music and the Center for Black Music Research promises to bring attention to one of the New World’s richest musical regions. The Caribbean’s position as a wellspring of musical innovation has been long recognized by ethnomusicolo-gists and students of world music, but American music scholars have been slower to realize the region’s impact on the music of the United States. American musicologists are familiar with influence of Caribbean rhythms on the works of American composers from Gottschalk to Copland and on many forms of American jazz. Occasionally a lecture on salsa or calypso slips into our survey courses when we scramble to include a sampling of American “ethnic” music. But such lip service belies over a century of marvelous musical exchange between the Caribbean and the continental United States.

There are two compelling reasons why the study of Caribbean music should be more integrated into the larger field of American music. First, as scholars of world music have argued for some time, the Caribbean, the southern United States, and parts of coastal South America form a unified musical region where the fusion of European, African, and (occasionally) Amerindian traditions has shaped vernacular musical practice for centuries. Creolized Caribbean forms like the Cuban son, the Puerto Rican plena, the Trinidadian calypso, and Haitian Vodou music have much in common with American hybrid genres such as spirituals, blues, early jazz, and gospel music. Second, the diaspora of Caribbean music to the United States in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries has indelibly shaped the vernacular music cultures of urban centers like New Orleans, New York, and Miami. Moreover, transnational interchange among Caribbean, Latin, and North American urban centers promises to foster some of the new century’s most imaginative popular styles.

The diversity of Caribbean musical styles can dazzle and intimidate the uninitiated. Fortunately, a tremendous upsurge in scholarship in the 1990s has begun to chart the complex terrain of musical expression in the islands and in the diaspora. Peter Manuel’s solid introductory text, Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music from Rumba to Reggae (Temple University Press, 1995; $19.95), is the best place to start. Viewing the Caribbean basin as a crucible where European and African musical cultures met and commingled, Manuel surveys traditions from Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti and the Lesser Antilles, Jamaica, and Trinidad. Well organized and clearly written, the work is enhanced by musical examples and substantial bibliographic/discographic citations for the music cultures of each island.

Cuban music, considered by many to be the Caribbean’s most influential expression, has received surprisingly little attention in the English-language literature. Essays on Cuban Music: Cuban and North American Perspectives (University Press of America, 1991; $60), edited by Peter Manuel, is a useful compilation of essays that includes English translations of historical and ethnographic works by several of Cuba’s leading ethnomusicologists. The Roots of Salsa: The History of Cuban Music (Excelsior Music, 2000; $19.95), forthcoming from noted Cuban journalist Cristobal Diaz Ayala, promises a more thorough history. Maria Teresa Velez’s Drumming for the Gods: The Life and Times of Felipe Garcia Villamil (Temple University Press, 2000; $19.95) documents the musical traditions of the Afro-Christian Santaria cults through the life history of one of Cuba’s most esteemed practitioners of sacred drumming.

The definitive work on Puerto Rican music has yet to be written, so most information must be gleaned from popular works on Latin jazz and modern salsa such as Musica: The Rhythm of Latin America (Chronicle Books, 1999; $22.95), by Sue Steward, and Salsiology: Afro-Cuban Music and the Evolution of Salsa in New York City (Excelsior Music, 1992), edited by Vernon Boggs. Though not a comprehensive history, Frances Aparicio’s innovative interdisciplinary study, Listening to Salsa: Gender, Latin Popular Music, and Puerto Rican Cultures (Wesleyan University Press, 1998; $19.95) deftly explores the cultural politics of Puerto Rican music, revealing how salsa illuminates the complexities of class, race, and gender identity among Puerto Ricans at home and in the continental United States.

Merengue, the popular dance from the Dominican Republic that has recently challenged salsa’s claim as the preeminent Latin pop sound, is the subject of Paul Austerlitz’s Merengue: Dominican Music and Dominican Identity (Temple University Press, 1997; $19.95). The work traces the stylistic development of merengue from its roots in nineteenth-century European contredanse and African folk drumming to its ascension, by the mid-twentieth century, as a nationalist popular style, and finally its diaspora to New York and other parts of the Caribbean.

The music of the French-speaking Caribbean is explored in Jocelyne Guilbault’s Zouk: World Music in the West Indies (University of Chicago Press, 1993; $24.95). The work meticulously traces the development of Zouk, an Antillian/Creole style that burst onto the world music scene in the mid-1980s with the success of the group Kassav. Combining musical analysis with ethnography and socio-political considerations, Guilbault studies the role of Zouk in the assertion of Antillian/Creole identity in Martinique, Guadeloupe, St. Lucia, and Dominica. Music and politics are the twin themes of Gage Averill’s study, A Day for the Hunter, A Day for the Prey: Popular Music and Power in Haiti (University of Chicago Press, 1997; $17.95). Moving chronologically from the first American occupation (1915-34) through the reign of the two Duvaliers and into the 1990s, Averill traces the emergence of various popular styles in relation to Haiti’s tumultuous political struggles: the salon meringues of the 1910s and 1920s, Vodou-Jazz of the 1940s and 1950s, konpa-direk of the 1950s and 1960s, the mini-djaz of the 1960s and 1970s, and the mizik rasin (roots music) movement of the 1980s and 1990s. The more traditional styles of drumming and singing associated with Haiti’s sacred Vodou ceremonies and Rara celebrations are well covered in Lois Wilcken’s The Drums of Vodou (White Cliffs Media, 1992; $19.95).

Turning to the English-speaking Caribbean, Trinidad’s rich calypso tradition is chronicled in Donald Hill’s Calypso Calaloo: Early Carnival Music in Trinidad (University Press of Florida, 1993; $49.95). Hill follows the evolution of calypso from Trinidadian Carnival celebrations through its commercial recording and diaspora to New York City during the 1930s and 1940s. The Steelband Movement: The Forging of a National Art in Trinidad and Tobago by Stephen Stuempfle (University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995; $18.50) provides the definitive history of Trinidad’s unique steelband tradition, moving from its emergence during Carnival celebrations in the 1930s to its establishment as a symbol of national identity in the 1960s and its role in shaping class and ethnic sensibilities in contemporary Trinidad society. The writings on Jamaican popular music are wide but thin. Reggae Routes: The Story of Jamaican Music, by Kevin O’Brien Chang and Wayne Chen (Temple University Press, 1998; $19.95) offers a brief account of reggae’s roots in Afro-Christian Pocomania and Rastafarian cult music and in popular mento, ska, and rock steady styles. The development of reggae in the 1960s and 1970s and the arrival of contemporary deejay-driven dub and dancehall music round out the work. Peter Manuel’s forthcoming East Indian Music in the West Indies: Tan-Singing, Chutney, and the Making of Indo-Caribbean Culture (Temple University Press, 2000; $29.95) surveys Indo-Caribbean folk and popular music in Trinidad as well as Guyana and Suriname.

The literature on Caribbean music in the diaspora is uneven, with Cuban and Puerto Rican genres—both central to the development of Latin jazz and salsa—receiving the most thorough coverage. The pioneering work here is John Storm Roberts’s popular 1979 survey, The Latin Tinge: The Impact of Latin American Music on the United States, which traces the development of rumba, mambo, Latin jazz, and salsa in New York City, as well as the more general influences of Mexican, Brazilian, and Argentinian styles on the popular musics of North America. The second edition (Oxford University Press,1999; $14.95) includes a new chapter on the internationalization of salsa in the 1980s and 1990s and the rise of contemporary salsa romantica, Latin rap, and Dominican merengue. Roberts’s most recent offering, Latin Jazz: The First of the Fusions, 1880s to Today (Schirmer Books, 1999; $29.95) covers much of the same ground, but with a clearer focus on the Cuban, Puerto Rican, and Brazilian influences on American jazz, from Jelly Roll Morton to contemporary fusion styles.

Puerto Rican music in New York City is explored in two important works: Ruth Glasser’s My Music is My Flag: Puerto Rican Musicians and Their New York Communities, 1917-1940 (University of California Press, 1995; $17.95) and Juan Flores’s From Bomba to Hip-Hop: Puerto Rican Culture and Latino Identity (Columbia University Press, 2000; $17.50). Glasser’s work, a superb historical documentation of Puerto Rican music making in New York between the two world wars, reveals the complex interplay between musical practice and ethnic identity, while adroitly debunking the myth that the city’s Latin music scene was exclusively Afro-Cuban. The relationship between popular expression and identity politics is further explored in Flores’ collection of insightful essays focusing on contemporary Nuyorican culture. Ranging widely from the revival of traditional bomba and plena music to the emergence of Latin rap and performed poetry, Flores grapples with the nature of Puerto Rican/Latino identity in the rapidly changing landscape of late–twentieth-century New York City.

Glasser and Flores contributed essays to ISAM’s most recent publication, Island Sounds in the Global City: Caribbean Popular Music in New York (University of Illinois, 1998; $14.95), edited by Lois Wilcken and myself. The compilation focuses on the transformation of Latin, West Indian, and Haitian music in New York City, a Caribbean crossroads currently home to over two million people of island lineage, and a center of Caribbean music production and distribution.

The plethora of recent surveys and popular histories of Caribbean music provides a broad though incomplete map of one of the world’s most diverse and complex musical regions, and an initial glimpse at the musical interplay between the islands and the United States. The more theoretical studies lay the foundation for future research into the process of musical creolization, the nature of transnational music networks, and the constellation of issues surrounding the relationship of music to nationalism, ethnicity, class status, and gender.

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