From The Archives 17: Racial Ideologies and Afro-Diasporic Musical Genres

And now we're into my 4th year essays! I don't have as much from my 4th year because I was writing my thesis at the same time, and so I was taking a much less heavy writing load for my classes. But I took Popular Music and Societies of the Hispanic Caribbean with one of the newly hired professors- Hugo Viera Vargas. HIGHLY recommend him as a professor, he's super knowledgable and just a great person overall to work with. And I put him on my thesis committee! Anyways, as someone with dual citizenship with Costa Rica, I really appreciated the opportunity to learn about music within Latin America in an academic context because it felt like a wonderful combination of my various worlds. 

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October 2018

            When it comes to musical genres, race isn’t mentioned enough. Especially in the Hispanic Caribbean, the history of colonial interaction led to racial structures like that of “invisible racism” and reinterpreted identity, creating a soundstage for developing music genres that often shadowed over them. Cuba’s rumba, Puerto Rico’s bomba, and the Dominican Republic’s merengue followed varying paths of societal and governmental structures, and the races resulting from the African Diaspora directly affected the music that was produced.

            Colonial-era Cuba formed cabildos de nación,  “mutual aid societies” to help newly arrived slaves adjust to the island, and within those societies new music was born out of the many nationalities living together. After slavery was abolished in 1886, Cuba continued to develop and industrialize and blacks moved out of the position of slave into the working class. Despite the abolishment of slavery, racism was obviously not abolished, and the early 1990s had a number of “whitening” campaigns. After the Cuban Revolution of 1959, the communist government attempted to rid the country of racial discrimination, which didn’t work. The argument of Cuba being a “raceless” society only caused the racism to ignored and “invisible” while still very much there.

            While music genres had been developing all along the way, rumba was one of them that originated from the early cabildos and has lasted through modern day. At the time of the revolution, the government started institutionalizing the arts, including rumba. At that point, rumba began to be used as a symbol of the Cuban community. The government gave rumba the status of being a national dance, and as tourism developed, so did the cultural tourism of viewing rumba. Once into the 1990s, the collapse of the Soviet Union created a “Special Period” for Cuba known by the resulting lack of resources and economic crisis. Fidel Castro maintained tight control over Cuba, though restrictions were loosened in 1993 for the legalization of the dollar and 1995 for foreign investments. 

From the mid-1990s onward, foreign tourism increased, but the tourism jobs were known for discriminating against black Cubans even in the hiring process. The Cuba that foreigners experienced was a whiter Cuba than the truth. That made rumba, although a “national dance” a marginalized “black thing” used primarily for show, and not as supported as a piece of heritage for the Cubans to have for themselves. The events outside of the state-sponsored ones tend not to be as well paid and in order to make a living wage, musicians often have to turn towards less than legal gigs. When rumba events happen, the logistics and setup are not done in a diligent and respectful way for the musicians. They can also get boisterous because of the inclusion of alcohol and enthusiastic dancers, any “bad behavior” reflects negatively on black. The nature of rumba’s origination aligning it with the experiences of a certain race, in this case, black, and the oppression forced upon blacks retains the negative association that exists because of racist structures, causing rumba to continue to be associated with negativity and blackness.

Puerto Rico’s bomba is a narrative of revolution and challenge. Bomba has an ancient history coming out of language out of West Africa and Ghana meaning a spiritual gathering. This became the term for the music coming from communities of African slaves that escaped to the mountains. The process for escaping was planned during these spiritual dance gatherings, building rebellion straight into the core of the music’s existence. What’s interesting about bomba is that the name is the same for the drum, dance, and music genre. The drum is intrinsic to the music because percussive rhythms use that drum, and the performance of the music with the drum is always accompanied by dance. 

The dance is described as a “dialogue” or “challenge” between the lead drummer and the solo dancer. While the other drummers continue the rhythm, the lead watches the dancer and plays corresponding beats to whatever movement the dancer is making. Quick steps could quick drumbeats whereas slowly moving arms could be reflected with slower deeper beats. Only one dancer dances at a time, facing the lead drummer at the start in recognition of their “challenge” and once they finish, someone else can fill into the dance space. Within their dance time, the dancer tries to connect with the lead drummer in a variety of intensities that contribute to the challenge they’re positioning the drummer into, which is to follow their lead. While the drums are traditionally associated with men, and the dance with woman, the dance itself has been quite inclusive towards having men dance too.

Bomba is traditionally in a 4/4 or 6/8 meter but there are many different variations of style and structure throughout the island. The organic evolution of oral tradition and folkloric music work well to share how much diversity can be enclosed within a certain musical tradition. Bomba has often been confused for plena because of the term “bombiplena” which has the default description and association to plena music. There is, of course, a “generic” bomba known as bomba sicá. While there is still a huge variation of rhythms, bomba sicá is known for having been danceable with a popular paired dancing style. Having a generic bomba style allowed for the capitalist government structure to market bomba as a tangible and recognizable genre, increasing its accessibility and popularity as the main style. This genre formed in the 1950s and 1960s with the help of Rafael Cortijo. 

Despite the diversity and variation within the genre itself, the integral connotations of rebellion and challenge and its origins of fugitive African slaves create a racist connotation towards the tradition and with the marginalization of black people. For a long time, bomba dealt with not being recognized as being an equal genre of music to the other ones out there. In terms of resources and literature, it has been very minimal in comparison to where it should be. It wasn’t until the 1970s when the collective Puerto Rican’s viewpoint began to recognize the varying afro-diasporic influences that are contained within their history, bringing bomba into the acknowledged narrative. Bomba, at this point, has never managed to reached the level of being Puerto Rico’s national music style, but it has continued to live within marginalized black spaces. It has even been mixed with jazz and hip hop, continuing its tradition of variation and diverse rhythms with a rebellion nature.

Of the three countries, the history that merengue evolved through in the Dominican Republic is the most different in terms of the African Diaspora. While both Puerto Rico and Cuba started their relationship with the African Diaspora through slavery for their sugar plantations, the Dominican Republic (previously known as Santo Domingo) was filled with cattle ranches not usually with slaves. Merengue’s early history isn’t well documented, and the same word was used for multiple music genres across different countries, but the merengue that is known today was formed from the Dominican Republic. It is likely that it started in social structures like the cabildos of Cuba, originating with a mix of West African spirituality and heritage in musical traditions.

The 1795 Haitian Revolution against the French helped to remove Spanish rule from the Dominican Republic, with the Haitians taking over Santo Domingo from 1822-1844. Because Haiti had been a black slave colony racially separate from the whiter and free area of Santo Domingo, the rebellious and lesser viewpoint about blackness was ingrained early on. 

The U.S. Marine occupation of the Dominican Republic from 1916-1924 maintained the same viewpoint on race and the continued negative association, but the most unique historical interaction for merengue’s evolution comes from the dictatorships the U.S. Marines paved the way for. The first dictator president created by the U.S. Marines was Rafael Trujillo, who held control of the Dominican Republic from 1930-1961. Rafael Trujillo was aware of the oft-rebellious nature of music genres born out of the afro-diaspora and used that knowledge to control that through merengue.

In his presidential campaigns, Trujillo would bring along a merengue band to play songs in support of him and his qualities. He was very quick to ban songs that were negative towards him and continued to use merengue as a form of propaganda that worked to make him more money. He used the well-known Cibao style of merengue for his presidential orquesta merengue group as his symbol of connection to his country, and was known to imprison musicians who made mistakes and required the songs he wanted played, and prohibit the musicians from playing certain songs that he didn’t approve of. Merengue as a genre became a static genre stuck in the bubble of Trujillo rule and restricted from expanding.

Once Trujillo was assassinated in 1961, Joaquín Balaguer was installed in 1965 and mostly held control of the Dominican Republic until 1996. Balaguer, however, wasn’t as strict as Trujillo and allowed for free evolution within the genre and more foreign interaction than had been allowed before. The record industry in the Dominican Republic started booming in the 1980s and merengue joined the U.S. music market. Merengue had the benefit of being a lot more easily marketable, and so when it was finally given the chance, it was able to succeed. It is moreso through the oppression of their first president that the style was held back than it is because of racial discrimination, but it doesn’t discount the effect that the African diaspora contributed to the genre.

The histories of the three countries and the evolution of the three musical genres that came from them take all different paths, but the influence of the African diaspora had when Africans were brought to the Caribbean by the Europeans. Cuba’s rumba, Puerto Rico’s bomba, and the Domincan Republic’s merengue were built from the structures of black slavery and white freedom, and each of them continued to feel oppressive rule for the majority of their history. While the racism that resulted from slavery continues to remain in the relationships these three genres have with their respective countries, each of the three genres are at a difference place in the process of freeing themselves from that racism.