"Afrocubanista" Poetry and Afro-Cuban Performance

Author(s): Miguel Arnedo

Source: The Modern Language Review, Vol. 96, No. 4 (Oct., 2001), pp. 990-1005
Published by: Modern Humanities Research Association
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3735865
Accessed: 29/11/2010 18:11
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at
http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless
you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you
may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.
Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=mhra.
Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed
page of such transmission.
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of
content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms
of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Modern Humanities Research Association is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access
to The Modern Language Review.
http://www.jstor.org
AFROCUBANISTA POETRY AND AFRO-CUBAN
PERFORMANCE
In the
I920S
Cuba's intellectuals
began
to search for a new definition of Cuban
cultural
identity
as a
response
to
increasing
US domination of all
aspects
of Cuban
life. Influenced
by European
and North American 'black' and Primitivist artistic
movements,
the nation's literati soon turned their attention to Afro-Cuban cultural
traditions. To
them,
these
represented
a
home-grown
culture that was
unique
to the
island and had remained
largely
uncontaminated
by
US cultural influences.
Consequently, they
seemed a
particularly appropriate
source of raw material for
the
production
of nationalist
literary
forms. These writers formed the
afrocubanista
poetic
movement
and, during
the decade
I928-I938, they
wrote
poems incorpo-
rating
Afro-Cuban culture.
In a more
general sense,
the movement can be understood as
part
of a discourse
of
mestizaje which,
as Vera Kutzinski
points out,
has been central to the construct of
Cuban national
identity
since the
writings
of
Jose
Marti.'
The
leading figure
of
nineteenth-century
Cuban nationalism heralded the idea of a Cuba free of racial
divisions in order to convince Cubans of all colours to
fight together
for
independence
from
Spain.
More
specifically,
with the notion of 'nuestra America
mestiza',
he
sought
to
promote
an
image
of racial
unity
which would counteract the
Cuban whites' fear
that,
in an
independent
Cuba without
protection
from
Spain,
blacks would rise
up
and take over the island.2 Like their revered national
hero,
Cuban intellectuals of the
I92os
and I
93os
also came to believe that Cuban blacks'
cooperation
with Cuban whites was an essential
prerequisite
for the island's
autonomy.
After Cuba became an
independent republic
in
I902,
fear of black
mobilization had
continued,
as it was
widely
believed that it would
provide
an
excuse for US
occupation.3
In this
way, solidarity amongst
all sectors of the
population again appeared necessary
for full Cuban
independence.
Afrocubanista
poets
assumed that the
way
to make blacks feel
part
of an
oppressed
Cuban
people,
thus discouraging their mobilization and
gaining
their
support
for the nationalist
cause,
was to enhance
unity
between the two racial
groups.
As evident in the
programme
of the Sociedad de Estudios
Afrocubanos, they
assumed that this could
be achieved
by bringing
to the fore 'mulatto' cultural
forms,
which had resulted
from the coexistence of blacks and whites
throughout
Cuban
history.4
Fernando
Sugar's
Secrets. Race and the Erotics
of
Cuban Nationalism
(Charlottesville: University
of
Virginia Press, 1993),
p.
56.
2Jose Marti,
'Nuestra America'
(1891),
'Mi raza'
(1893),
'El "manifiesto de Montecristi": El
partido
revolucionario a Cuba'
(1895),
in
Jose
Marti: Sus
mejorespdginas,
ed.
by
Raimundo Lazo
(Mexico: Porrua, 1985),
PP.87-93,52-53,67-72.
3
Vera M.
Kutzinski, pp. I40, I43,
and Aline
Helg,
Our
Rightful
Share. The
Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality,
i886-i912 (Chapel
Hill and London: The
University
of North Carolina
Press, 1995),
pp.
190, I45,
219
4
The Sociedad de Estudios
Afrocubanos,
founded in
1936,
was
presided by
Fernando Ortiz and its members
included
afrocubanista poets
Emilio
Ballagas,
Ram6n
Guirao,
Nicolas Guillen and Marcelino Arozarena
(see
'Miembros de la Sociedad de Estudios
Afrocubanos',
Estudios
Afirocubanos,
I
(I937), 9- IO). Consequently,
the
objectives
which the association set out to achieve can be seen as a reliable outline of the
afrocubanista ideology.
The notion that these intellectuals wanted to
promote
cultural
unity by bringing
to the fore 'mulatto' cultural
forms is evident in the
following quotation
from 'Los estatutos de la Sociedad de Estudios Afrocubanos':
El
objeto
de la Sociedad de Estudios Afrocubanos sera el de estudiar
[.
. .] los fen6menos
[..
.]
producidos
en Cuba
por
la
convivencia de razas
distintas, particularmente
de la llamada
negra
de
origen africano, y
la lamada blanca o
caucasica,
con el fin de
lograr [.. .]
la
mayor compenetraci6n igualitaria
de los diversos elementos
integrantes
de la naci6n cubana
MIGUEL ARNEDO
991
Ortiz,
the movement's leader in
questions
of Afro-Cuban
culture,
was the main
advocate of this
approach.
He believed that
'truly
national' cultural forms were
those
incorporating
elements from both African and
Spanish origins. According
to
him,
these 'mulatto'
forms,
as he called
them, emerged
from a common
juice
or
stock formed
by
the historical interaction between black and white Cubans.
Afrocubanista poetry
was one of the
products
of this
process,
a 'mulatto'
literary genre
that
symbolized
black and white cultural
unity
because it introduced 'black' cultural
forms into 'white'
poetry.5
The
study
of this movement must meet the
challenge
of
reaching
a balance
between
denouncing aspects
that are
ideologically
troublesome and
rescuing
those
that are
positive.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the case of Fernando Ortiz.
On one hand his
acceptance
of the notion of
biological determinism,
which sustains
nineteenth-century
racial
theories,
is noticeable in
many
of his
writings.6
Further-
more, although
he
gradually
moved from overt
hostility
to relative
acceptance
of
Afro-Cuban
culture,
evolutionist and
highly
elitist
descriptions
of it continue in his
writings
as late as the
1950s (see
Moore
1994,
and Arnedo 200
).
On the other hand
Ortiz's
writings
contain
highly exploitable
formulations that have been
productively
adapted
and elaborated
upon
in
important
works of criticism in the last
forty years.7
Elsewhere I have
explored
the restrictive
aspects
of his
concept
of'mulatto
poetry',
hacia la feliz realizaci6n de sus comunes destinos hist6ricos.
(p. 7)
Members of the Sociedad saw it as a
response
to the
urgent
need for blacks and whites to feel
'conjuntamente
responsables
de la fuerza hist6rica que
integran' and, thus, 'propender honradamente,
en una identificaci6n
totalitaria,
al examen
profundo, inteligente,
valeroso e
imparcial
de los fen6menos
producidos
en la isla a
causa del contacto entre sus
pobladores
mas etnicamente caracteristicos'. The role of the
Sociedad, they felt,
was to 'ser un instrumento
para
ese examen
y para
esa uni6n'
('La
Sociedad de Estudios Afrocubanos Contra
los Racismos. Advertencia
, comprensi6n y designio', 3-6 (pp. 5-6)).
5
For a more detailed
analysis
of Ortiz's
concept
of mulatto
poetry,
see
my
'Arte blanco con motivos
negros:
Fernando Ortiz's
Concept
of the Cuban National Culture and
Identity',
Bulletin
of
Latin American
Research,
20
(2001),
88-101.
6
See,
for
example,
Los
negros brujos (I906) (Miami
FL: Ediciones
Universal, 1973)
where he claims that 'el
fetichismo,
como suele
decirse,
esta en la masa de la
sangre
de los
negros
africanos'
(p. 230). Considering
Ortiz's status as the 'defender' of blacks
(see
Robin Dale
Moore, 'Representations
of Afro-Cuban
Expressive
Culture in the
Writings
of Fernando
Ortiz',
Latin American Music
Review, 15 (1994), 32-54 (p. 33))
and his
important
role in
afrocubanismo,
it is
shocking
to see how these theories continued to influence his work
years
later. The
following
extracts from a book
published
in
19 3 strongly
reflect the influence of Herbert
Spencer's
Social Darwinism:
El transformismo es
hoy ley
de la vida en todas sus manifestaciones [...]. Acaso nuestro
porvenir
nacional no sea en el
fondo mas
que
un
complicado problema
de seleccion etnica
-
fisiologica y psiquica.
Quizas
no se trate sino de
conseguir
que
el
espinoso
cactus de nuestra
psiquis
criolla
(desgraciadamente
cruzada con
especies
de escaso
jugo y
de muchas
puas)
vaya por escogidos
cruzamientos con cactos
jugosos y
sin
espinas
[...].
La selecci6n de este cactus humano
[...]
especialmente
en Cuba
-
sigue
abandonada a si
misma,
determinada
por
las mas elementales
leyes
fisico
sociales,
luchando contra la
biologicamente general prolificuidad
de las
especies
inferiores.
(Entre
cubanos.
Psicologia tropical (Havana:
Editorial de Ciencias
Sociales, 1986),
p.
54).
7
In
particular,
his term and
concept
'transculturation'.
See,
for
example,
Gustavo Perez
Firmat,
The Cuban
Condition
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, I989), My
Own Private Cuba:
Essays
on Cuban Literature and
Culture
(Boulder,
CO:
Society
of
Spanish
and
Spanish-American Studies, I999);
Antonio Benitez
Rojo,
'Fernando Ortiz and Cubanness: A Postmodern
Perspective',
Cuban
Studies, 18
(1988), I25-32; Angel Rama,
Transculturacion narrativa en America Latina
(Mexico: Siglo xxi, 1982);
Fernando
Coronil,
'Transculturation and
the Politics of
Theory: Countering
the
Center,
Cuban
Counterpoint',
in Fernando
Ortiz,
Cuban
Counterpoint,
trans.
by
Harriet de Onis
(Durham, NC,
and London: Duke
University Press, 1995),
pp. ix-lvi;
Catherine
Davies,
'Fernando Ortiz's Transculturation: the Postcolonial Intellectual and the Politics of Cultural
Representation',
in Postcolonial
Perspectives
on the Cultures
of
Latin America and
LusophoneAfrica,
ed.
by
Robin Fiddian
(Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2000),
pp. 141-68.
In 'La critica latinoamericana
y
sus metaforas:
algunas
anotaciones' (Thesaurus: Boletin del Instituto Caro
y Cuervo, 54.3, forthcoming)
Patricia D'Allemand
provides
a useful
analysis
of some of the uses
given
to Ortiz's
concept
in Latin American cultural criticism. She
denounces the recent
tendency
to focus
solely
on its reductionist
aspects
and stresses the
importance
of also
exploiting
its
productive potential.
9Afrocubanista' Poetry
which
implied
a view of Cuban national culture and
identity
as imbued in a
whitening process
in which
'pure'
African cultural forms were
disappearing (Arnedo
200I).
This article is an
attempt
to achieve a more desirable balance
by looking
at
some of the more
positive
effects that Ortiz's
concept
had on the
afrocubanista poetic
production.
This article
explores
the difficulties
posed by
the non-written nature of
Afro-Cuban culture for these intellectuals in their endeavour to
produce
'mulatto'
poetry.
It then illustrates the various
ways
in which
they
overcame these
problems
in the
process
of
formally incorporating
Afro-Cuban culture.
Drawing
from these
explanations,
the article then evaluates Ortiz's
concept
and the
poetry's potential
to
symbolize
a
harmoniously integrated
Cuban cultural
identity.
Fernando Ortiz
generally
referred to all
afrocubanista poems
as mulatto. Neverthe-
less,
he viewed some as
being
more
authentically
or
typically
mulatto than others.
Producing
these authentic mulatto
poems
was not
just
a
question
of
using
Afro-
Cuban culture as
subject
matter
but, rather,
as an instrument
through
which to
alter
high literary
forms. In relation to
language,
for
example,
he
argued
that it was
necessary
to do more than
simply
insert the occasional Afro-Cuban term. The
poetry
achieved
through
this kind of
approach
would not be
negroide:
'como no lo es
el retrato de una mulata en una
postal
de
litografia
alemana. Es
poesia,
al
parecer,
mulata
por
su virtud de
espejo
donde se
refleja
una
externidad; pero
no lo es
por
su
naturaleza intrinseca'.8
One obvious
difficulty afrocubanistas
faced in
formally incorporating
Afro-Cuban
cultural forms was that this task
clearly required
a
degree
of
proficiency
in Afro-
Cuban cultural traditions.
Unfortunately,
like most of the second
generation
of
republican intellectuals,
these
poets
did not come from the black sectors where these
traditions were
practised. Instead, they belonged
to the middle
classes,
and were
highly
educated in the dominant culture.9 Emilio
Ballagas,
for
example, belonged
to a white middle-class
family
in
Camaguey.
He received a
university
education and
held a
teaching position
in the Escuela Normal de Santa Clara
throughout
the
duration of the movement.10 The
poets Jose
Zacarias Tallet and
Alejo Carpentier,
both
white,
were educated in France and the United States and
they
were members
of the
minoristas,
a
political group
with artistic interests whose members came from
relatively wealthy backgrounds."
Another obstacle in this endeavour was their belief that Afro-Cuban culture did
not
comprise
a written literature from which to borrow formal characteristics. Ortiz
had
pointed
out in 'Los ultimos versos mulatos' that the
only
black literature in
Cuba was confined to the oral
expressions
used in Afro-Cuban
religious
and secular
collective
practices.'2
Even as late as
1938,
he attributed R6mulo Lachatafiere's
difficulties in
writing iOh,
mio
remayd!
to the oral characteristics of his
primary
sources. These, he
argued,
were a continuation or survival from
'preliterate'
African
8 'Mas acerca de la
poesia
mulata. Escorzos
para
su estudio'
(1936),
in Iniciacidn a la
poesia afro-americana,
ed.
by
Oscar Fernandez de la
Vega
and Alberto N. Pamies
(Miami:
Ediciones
Universal, I973), I73-202 (p. 179).
9
For an outline of the social
background
of the members of this
generation,
see Francisco
L6pez Segrera,
Cuba:
Culturay
sociedad
(Havana:
Letras
Cubanas, i989), p.
190.
10
See Robin Dale
Moore, Nationalizing
Blackness:
Afrocubanismo
and Artistic Revolution in
Havana, 1920-i935
(Ann Arbor,
MI: UMI Dissertation
Services, 1995),
p.
224,
and
Argyll Pryor Rice,
Emilio
Ballagas:
Poeta o
poesia
(Mexico:
Ediciones de
Andrea, I966), p. 17.
L Ram6n
Guirao,
Orbita de la
poesia Afrocubana. 1928-37 (Havana: Ucar,
Garcia
y Cia, 1938), pp. 64, 76,
and
Moore, Nationalizing Blackness, p. 213.
12
'Los iltimos versos
mulatos',
in Fernandez de la
Vega, pp. 156-71 (pp. i56-58).
992
MIGUEL ARNEDO
societies.13 It is clear that this
perception
of Cuban black culture
guided
the
movement's
representations. Indeed,
afrocubanista
poetry
draws
inspiration
exclu-
sively
from non-written Afro-Cuban cultural forms.
However,
Fernando Ortiz was
wrong
in
assuming
that the written word did not
play
a role in Afro-Cuban
traditions. A considerable
corpus
of Lucumi literature was
preserved
in Cuba in
notebooks or libretas that
included,
amongst
other
things,
hundreds of
myths
and
fables, lists of
sayings,
ritual
procedures,
and
systems
of divination.14 Like
Ortiz,
afrocubanista poets
did not know about these written Afro-Cuban forms and so it
could be
argued
that their
representation
of Afro-Cuban culture as
exclusively
oral
and
performative
is reductionist because it leaves out its
literary
elements.
Nevertheless,
some considerations
grant validity
to this
representation.
For one
thing,
these written forms cannot
strictly
be described as
'literary'.
Unlike
literary
forms of
European origin,
the libretas were written with the strict intention of
preserving
the material that would inform future oral
practices. Thus, many
of the
stylistic
differences between these forms and
literary genres
of
European origin
are
those that exist between oral and written
literary
forms.15 This
supports afrocubanistas'
perception
of Afro-Cuban culture as oral. In
fact,
the role of the libretas as devices to
'refrescar la memoria'
points
to the
predominance
in Afro-Cuban culture of oral
and
performative
collective
practices
over literate ones
(Martinez Fure, p.
2 1
I).
The
centrality
of the former is evident in
George
Brandon's
study
on Santeria where he
explains
that 'the
image
of the African
past
held and recited in Santeria
mythology
is
conveyed,
sustained and reinforced in its ritual
performances'.16
Live
performances
such as these take
precedence
over written forms such as the libretas in the
preservation
of Lucumi cultural
memory.
As Brandon
explains,
three-of the main
strategies
that serve to transfer
memory
and
keep
it
circulating
within this
group
are
'calendrical
repetition,
in the form of commemorative ceremonies for the
saints;
verbal
repetition, through
which the use of Lucumi as a sacred ritual
language
conditions communication between humans and the
orisha;
and
gestural repetition
as it relates to ritual dance and ceremonial
spirit possession' (p. I43).
It is evident
that secular dance and music
practices
were also
integral
to the culture
afrocubanistas
13
'Dos nuevos libros del folklore
afrocubano',
Revista Bimestre
Cubana, 42 (1938), 307-20 (pp. 314-I5).
Ortiz
still believed as late as
1950
that some cultures were
preliterate
rather than
non-literate,
that
is,
that
they
had
not
yet developed
a
'superior'
literate culture. This is evident in the
following:
La musica del
negro
africano es aun misica
ingrafica y
su literatura es
preletrada, propia
de los
pueblos parvulos que
auin
no usan escritura. En estos las artes sonoras casi
siempre
van
juntas. [.
..] La escritura hace a los hombres mas hombres
pues
a mas del
lenguaje
hablado
(que ya
es una caracteristica
original
de la
humanidad),
les da la
fijaci6n
de ese
lenguaje y
su
perdurabilidad y
extensiones ilimitadas
por
el
espacio y por
el
tiempo.
(La africania de la
musicafolklorica
de
Cuba, 1950
(Havana:
Editorial
Universitaria, 1965)
p.
16i).
Ortiz's
perspective
here derives
specifically
from
nineteenth-century
evolutionist theories in which
contempo-
rary Europe exemplified
the adult state of civilization while
non-European
cultures were viewed as
permanently
trapped
in a childhood
stage (see
Eileen
Julien, African
Novels and the
Question of Orality (Bloomington
and
Indianapolis:
Indiana
University Press, 1992), p.
I
I).
14
Rogelio
Martinez
Fur6, Didlogos imaginarios (Havana:
Arte
y Literatura, 1979),
p. 2 I1.
15
Some of the differences between oral and
literary
forms can be found in Eileen
Julien's
critical review of
studies of the oral nature of African novels
(Julien, pp. 26-42).
See also
Josaphat
Bekunuru
Kubayanda,
'Polyrhythmics
and African Print Poetics:
Guillen,
Cesaire and Atukwei
Okai',
in
Interdisciplinary
Dimensions
of
African
Literature. Selected
Papersfrom
the
1982
Conference of
the
African
Literature Association
(Washington,
DC: Three
Continents
Press, 1985),
pp.
I55-I69.
This article outlines charecteristics of African and African-derived
'drum
rhythm poetry',
which
Kubayanda
defines as
'poetry
for
reading
aloud' or for
'reciting [...]
simultaneously accompanied by
the beats of the drum'
(p. I56).
16
Santeria
from
Africa to the New World. The Dead Shell Memories
(Bloomington
and
Indianapolis:
Indiana
University Press, 1993),
p.
148.
993
4Afrocubanista' Poetry
focused
upon.
These offered a rich source of
complex
aesthetic
practices (such
as
drumming, singing,
and
dancing)
for blacks without access to dominant cultural
forms. The
rumba,
for
example, clearly
functioned as a vehicle of black liberation
and
protest,
and
played
the same role as did the
press
in dominant
society.17
These
considerations
amply justify referring
to Afro-Cuban culture as
predominantly
non-
literate in
spite
of the existence of the written forms mentioned above. Thus
afrocubanistas'
insistence on
representing
blacks in connection with oral and
performative practices may
be seen to reflect an
important
characteristic of the
culture
they sought
to
represent.
The
centrality
of such collective
practices
in Afro-Cuban culture constituted a
serious
problem
for
afrocubanistas.
Unlike written
poetry,
which is limited to the use
of conventional
graphic signs,
these collective
practices conveyed messages through
a much
larger
number of what Victor Turner calls
'sensory codes', including
gestures
and facial
expressions,
sounds and even smells. Like all 'cultural
perform-
ances',
Afro-Cuban rituals and secular celebrations were also
composed
of what
Milton
Singer,
as cited
by Turner,
referred to as 'cultural
media',
that
is,
modes of
communication that include verbal
language
but also
non-linguistic media,
such as
music and dance.
They were,
as Turner would
argue,
'orchestrations of
media,
not
expressions
in a
single
medium'.'8 Thus, afrocubanistas
felt that
they
had to
formally
incorporate
into their
poetry
cultural forms based on non-written modes of
expression
and different
sensory
codes.
One of the
ways
in which
they
went about this was
through
the use of
linguistic
devices known as
jitanjaforas. Representative examples
of these are Guirao's
'culembembe, bembere, culembembe',
in 'Solo hombre
yo';
'Macucho con tu
rumba,
I [...] |
te tiene
cachumbambe',
in 'Macucho con tu
rumba',
and
'lJongolojongo I
del
Rey Congo',
in 'Canto
negro
de
Ronda',
as well as Tallet's
'Umabimba, mabomba,
bomba
y bombo',
in 'La
rumba';
and Guillen's
'iYam-
bamb6, yambambe!,
in 'Canto
negro'.19
The dilettante
approach
to African culture
that informed these devices is evident in
Ballagas's explanation regarding
his
composition
of 'African' verse
using only
names of African countries:
eEs
un nuevo
poema
africano?
eSon
las
palabras magicas
de un ritual? Gertrude Stein
celebr6 en una revista
que
ella
dirigia, juegos
de
palabras parecidos
a estos. Pero
aqui,
en lo
que
acabo de
escribir,
no se trata de un
poema.
Es una lista de nombres de
paises
africanos
que
lei en un
mapa
de ese continente
y
los
puse
a continuaci6n.
Algunos poemas negros
que
hemos conocido no tienen
mayor significaci6n
que
esta curiosa lista. Pero
tampoco
tiene
significado
el canto del ruisefior
y
nos
agrada.
Ofrece estimulo al oido
y
a la
imaginaci6n.
Nos hace saber
que
el hombre no es todo
16gica
y
reflexi6n
racional; que
lo
primitivo, que
es
energia,
forma
parte
tambi6n del
organismo
mental del hombre civilizado.20
This
quotation suggests
that
jitanjaforas
cannot be considered as a utilization of real
Afro-Cuban verbal forms.
Nevertheless,
the
employment
of
made-up
nonsense
17
Moore, Nationalizing Blackness, p. 4.
Martinez Fur6 as cited in Ivonne
Daniel, Rumba,
Dance and Social
Change
in
Contemporary
Cuba
(Bloomington
and
Indianapolis:
Indiana
University Press, I995),
p.
I9,
and Leonardo
Acosta,
'The
Rumba,
the
Guaguanc6
and Tio
Tom',
in
Essays
on Cuban Music. North American and Cuban
Perspectives,
ed.
by
Peter Manuel
(London-Lanham, Maryland: University
Press of
America, 199 ), pp. 51-73
(PP-54-55)-
18
TiheAnthropology of Performance (New
York:
PAJ Publications, 1986), pp. 22-23.
19
Ram6n
Guirao, Bongo: poemas negros (Havana:
Ucar
Garcia, I934),
no
pagination,
and Orbita de la
poesia
Afrocubana. i928-37, pp.
55-56, 65-68, 94-95.
20
Emilio
Ballagas,
'Poesia afrocubana'
(I951),
in Fernandez de la
Vega, pp.
78-87 (p. 87).
994
MIGUEL ARNEDO
syllables
for
purely
aesthetic
purposes,
or with the intention of
sounding African,
was also a
widespread practice
in Afro-Cuban culture.
According
to Samuel
Feij6o,
for
example,
the
African-sounding
lines of the
songs
of the
eighteenth-century
cabildos de nacion were
merely pretexts
for
rhythm
and
song
without
any
semantic
meaning.21
The use of nonsense
syllables
for
rhythmic purposes
can also be heard
in classic rumba
compositions
such as Carlos Embales' 'Pim
pam pum y
blen blen
blen'.22
Furthermore,
meaningless syllables
have also been
traditionally
used in
rumba in the lalaleo, the melodic
fragment by
which the lead
singer
establishes the
key
and the
harmony
at the
beginning
of a
song (Daniel, p. 85). Thus,jitanjaforas
can
be viewed as an abandonment of a semantic
principle
of the dominant literature in
Cuba in favour of an Afro-Cuban verbal art form in which words
may
have a
phonically suggestive
or musical function.
Percussive
onomatopoeia
was another of the verbal forms used
by afrocubanistas
in
this
way.
Verbal
reproductions
of
percussive
sounds have a
long history
in Afro-
Cuban culture.
According
to Fernando
Ortiz,
this
type
of
music-making
or musica de
bemba was
normally practised by
blacks
'para
imitar los ritmicos tamboreos cuando
faltan los tambores
y
sus
posibles
sustitutivos'.23 A written
example
of
muzsica
de bemba
can be seen in the
following transcription
of a
song
or oral
poem
from an
eighteenth-
century
cabildo
congo:
Piqui, piquimbin,
piqui, piquimbin;
tumba, muchacho,
yama
bo
y
tamb6.
Tamb6 ta brabbo.
Tumba, cajero.
Jabla,
mula.
Piqui, piquimbin,
piqui, piquimbin.
Pa, pa, pa, praca,
pracata, pra, pa.
Cucha,
cucha mi bo.
(Guirao, Orbita, p.
3)
Singers
from
popular
son bands
during
the
afrocubanista vogue
also
interspersed
musical
onomatopoeia
in their
improvisations
and these
undoubtedly
influenced
afrocubanista poets.
For
example,
Tallet's
'iTarariiii!
I
[...]
|
jTararaaaa!',
in his
'Quintin
Barahona' is reminiscent of the
onomatopoeia
'taran tarantarantantan'
by
the lead
singer
of Sexteto Habanero in the
song
'Eres mi lira armoniosa'.24
Since,
likejitanjaforas,
these devices contradict the semantic and
syntactic logic
of
Spanish,
21
El son cubano.
Poesiageneral (Havana:
Letras
Cubanas, 1986), pp. 230-31.
22
Cuba Classics:
Rumba, I995.
CD TUMI
052.
23
Fernando
Ortiz,
Los instrumentos de la
muzsica Afrocubana,
2 vols
(I952) (Madrid:
Editorial Muisica Mundana
Maqueda, i996), I,
p.
33.
In
fact,
the
practice
Ortiz referred to as muisica de bemba continues in Cuba
nowadays
in the a
cappella compositions
of Vocal
Sampling (Unaforma mds, I994.
CD SIRE
9362-4575I-2).
For use of
percussive onomatopaeia by
a
contemporary
rumba
ensemble,
listen also to
Conjunto
de Clave
y Guaguanco's
'La
prueba
del ritmo'
(written by
Amado
Dedeu)
in Cuba Classics: Rumba.
24
Las raices del
son, 1992
(all
recordings
made between
1925
and
1931).
CD Tumbao
009.
995
996 Afrocubanista'
Poetry
they
also
modify
a fundamental
principle
of the dominant literature in Cuba.25 This
is
particularly
evident when contrasted with Alfonso Hernandez Cata's
reproduc-
tions of musical sounds in the
following
extract from 'Rumba'
(Guirao, Orbita,
pp. 127-29),
where the sounds of musical instruments are
conveyed through
the
poetic
device of
personification:
Mientras la cuerda se
queja,
vocifera el cornetin.
[...]
El
galopar
de los timbales
pisotea
todo recato
[...]
El
bong6
se ha vuelto loco.
Afrocubanista poets
also used
lyrics
from Afro-Cuban music to alter
high literary
forms. This is
particularly
evident in Nicolas Guillen's
poetry,
which
incorporates
formal characteristics from son
lyrics.
As the
poet
himself
pointed
out
upon
the
publication
of Motivos de son in
I930:
'He tratado de
incorporar
a la literatura
cubana
-
no como
simple
elemento
musical,
sino como elemento de verdadera
poesia
-
lo
que
pudiera
llamarse
poema-son
basado en la tecnica de esa clase de
baile tan
popular
en nuestro
pais'.26
The influence of son
lyrics
is evident in the
structure of
many
ofGuillen's
motivos,
which resembles that of
early
son
compositions.
These,
as Olavo Alen
Rodriguez explains,
started with the
repetition
of a four-line
refrain
sung by
a chorus and then moved on to a second section where the lead
vocals
improvised
in
response
to a
shorter, repeating
chorus.27 A
representative
example
is the
following
extract from the
song
'Yo no tumbo
caaa'
by
the Sexteto
Habanero,
a
group
whose influence on Motivos de son was
directly acknowledged by
Guillen:28
Sofiaba
que
me
querias, mujer
Mi sueiio fue una
quimera
Es rara
y
una hermosa
Que
le toc6 mi coraz6n
[chorus]
Yo no tumbo cafa
que
la tumbe el viento
[lead vocalist]
Yo no tumbo cafia
que
la tumbe el viento
[chorus]
Dile
que
la tumben
que
le den candela
[lead vocalist]
Yo no tumbo cafia
que
la tumbe el viento
[chorus]
Dile
que
la tumben
que
le den candela
[lead vocalist]
Yo no tumbo
cania que
la tumbe el viento
[chorus]
25
Of
course,
the use of
onomatopoeia
has a
long history
in all
European languages
and in Western
literary
traditions. See Donald R.
Kloe,
A
Dictionary of Onomatopoeic Sounds,
Tones and Noises in
English
and
Spanish
(Michigan:
Blaine
Ethridge, I977),
and
J.
A.
Cuddon,
The
Penguin
Dictionary
of
Literary
Terms and
Literary Theory
(London: Penguin, I992), pp.
656-57.
In
fact,
similar
onomatopoeia
to those
employed
in afrocubanista
poetry
can often be found in
representations
of blacks in Golden
Age Spanish
literature. For
example,
in his
1599
Entremes
delplatillo,
Sim6n
Aguado
uses the
onomatopoeia 'chiqui, chiqui' (see Feij6o pp. 17, 66-67)
which are
similar to Tallet's
reproduction
of the sound of shakers in 'La rumba'.
However,
this does not
necessarily
reinforce the idea that
afrocubanista
onomatopoeia
are devices of Western
origin
since
Golden-Age playwrights
may
have also borrowed them from the black culture of their time.
26
Quoted
in Nicolas Guillen. Summa
poitica,
ed.
by Inigo Madrigal (Madrid: Catedra, I990), p.
62.
27
De lo
afrocubano
a la salsa.
Subgeneros
musicales de Cuba
(Havana: Artex, 1994),
p.
30.
28
Quoted in
Recopilacidn
de textos sobre Nicolas Guillen, ed.
by Nancy Morej6n (Cuba:
Casa de las Americas,
1974), p. 41.
MIGUEL ARNEDO
Que
la tumben las
mujeres
con sus movimientos
[lead
vocalist]
Yo no tumbo cania
que
la tumbe el viento
[chorus]
(Las
raices del
son)
There is a
perceptible
structural
similarity
between Guillen's 'Me bendo caro' and
'Yo no tumbo cafia'. The
poem
also commences with four lines that introduce the
theme of the
composition,
and it also continues
by alternating
a
changing
line with
a
repeating
one. In this
way,
the first stanza recreates the introduction of son
compositions sung by
a chorus and the
alternating
lines the call and
response singing
between the
improvised
lead vocals and the
repeating
chorus. This can be
appreciated
in the
following
extract:
A mi me
gutan
la
negra,
pero
cuando son
bonita;
dede
que
toy
de Cronita
me bendo caro!
[. .]
Pero si la
negra yora,
ique
le
boy
hase!
Si se me
arrodiya,
ique
le
boy
hase!
Si me dice
santo,
jque
le
boy
hase!
Si se
pone trite,
ique
le
boy
hase!
(Orbita, pp. 85-86)
Guillen was not the
only
one to make use of formal elements from Afro-Cuban
lyrics.
In Tallet's 'La
rumba',
for
example,
the
repetition
of the lines 'cambia e
paso
Cheche, |
cambia e
paso Cheche, I
cambia e
paso
Cheche' can be seen as an
influence of the
repetition
that characterizes Afro-Cuban
song
forms. The lack of a
fixed
syllabic pattern
or a fixed number of lines
per
stanza in this
poem
can also be
seen as an influence of the free versification of rumba
lyrics.
The free versification of
rumba
lyrics
can be
appreciated
in Daniel's
transcriptions (pp. 85-90).
Afrocubanistas
sometimes also
managed
to
formally incorporate
the non-verbal
sensory
codes of the
represented performances.
An
example
of this is the
following
description
of the black female dancer in 'Bailadora de rumba'
by
Ram6n Guirao:
Bailadora de
guaguanc6,
piel negra,
tersura de
bong6.
Agita
la maraca de su risa
con los dedos de leche
de sus dientes.
(Orbita,
p. 53)
As can be
seen,
the texture of the
bong6
serves as a
metaphor
for the texture of the
dancer's skin and the sound of the maracas for the sound of her
laughter.
Since
metaphor
is one of the essential formal devices of
poetry,
this is an
example
of how
tactile and sonic codes from an Afro-Cuban
performance
can
formally
influence
afrocubanista
poetry.29
29
Amittai F.
Aviram, Telling Rhythm. Body
and
Meaning
in
Poetry (Ann
Arbor:
University
of
Michigan Press,
1994), P. 43.
997
9Afrocubanista'
Poetry
Musical
rhythm
also served as a source of formal innovation.
Josaphat
Bekunuru
Kubayanda
has described Guillen's
poetry
as
'technically inspired by
Afro-Cuban
musical
ingenuity'
and has
brought
attention to its use of 'units of the African
musical "mixed metre"
[patent
in
the]
unstressed
beats,
the differences between
stanzas,
the clusters of identical vowel sounds
(assonance),
the
buzzing,
nasalized
consonantal vibrations
(i.e.,
mb in
bembon),
the
visually
and
audibly
uneven
lines,
the
repeats'.30
The influence of Afro-Cuban musical metres can also be detected in
Tallet's 'La
rumba',
where the
predominantly dactylic
metre of the first two stanzas
is reminiscent of the 6/8 feel of the music of the rumba
guaguanco being performed by
the
poem's protagonists.31
The dilettante
approach
that seemed to
guide
the
composition
of 'La rumba'
might
lead some to
object
that this could not be a
deliberate formal
accomplishment.32
Nevertheless,
to become aware of this
aspect
of rumba need not have
required painstaking
research at the time. The
journal
Archivos del Folklore
Afrocubano
had
regularly
included articles on Afro-Cuban cultural
traditions, mainly by
Fernando
Ortiz,
from as
early
as
I924.33
In
fact,
in this same
year
Ortiz had
explained
in Glosario de
afronegrismos (Havana:
El
Siglo xx)
that 'la
sincopa que
ofrece la musica de este baile
[rumba] [.
.
.]
es
muy
caracteristica dentro
del
compas
de "dos
por
cuatro" en
que
se escribe
y
en el
que
se intercalan
frecuentemente tresillos de
negras que
le dan un sabor inconfundible'
(p. 41O).
Tallet could
easily
have read about this
aspect
of rumba in
any
of these
publications
and decided to
try
to
incorporate
it into the metre of'La rumba'.
Marcelino Arozarena's
'Liturgia etiopica'
could also be seen to reflect the 6/8
metre of
many
of the
rhythms that,
as evident in Amira
I992,
are
traditionally
employed
in the bembe,34 a celebration dedicated to the orishas in which the
poem
takes
place.
For
instance,
the
following
stanza is made
up entirely
of
dactyls:
Entona su canto
Jose Carida;
lamiendo la bemba
vigila
a Merse:
y
en tanto cansado
y
sudado cantaba el bembe
pensaba orgulloso:
-
Tu
paso
sabroso
que mata, mulata,
lo e'ta
protegiendo
Babalfi
Aye.
(Orbita, pp.
151-53)
Afrocubanistas
also
capitalized
on the formal similarities between
poetry
and dance.
These are evident in
Judith Lynne
Hanna's list of data
categories
for dance
30
As cited in Lorna V.
Williams,
'The
Emergence
of an Afro-Cuban
Aesthetic', Afro-Hispanic Review, 14
(I995), 48-57 (P. 5)-.
31 The
rhythmic pattern
of the
guaguanc6
is often written in
2/4
or
4/4 (see Daniel, p. 83,
and
Larry Crook,
'A
Musical
Analysis
of the Cuban
Rumba',
Latin American Music
Review, 3.I (1982), 92-I03 (pp. 99-I00)).
However,
this is an
example
of the difficulties of
transcribing
much Afro-Cuban music
(see
'Los ultimos versos
mulatos', p. 170).
As
Larry
Crook
explains,
in rumba 'the basic
accompaniment patterns
of the
percussion
have
a
dynamic flexibility
built into their structure that allows for
duple-triple
ambivalence'
(p. I ).
32
Jos6
Z. Tallet's
afrocubanista poetry
is not at all
representative
of his overall
literary production (see
Helio
Orovio,
Orbita de
Jose Zacarias
Tallet
(Havana: Unea, 1969), p. 13)
and the
impetus
to write 'La rumba'
actually
came from a friend who dared him to make the nonsensical
phrase 'Mambimba, mabomba,
mabombo
y
bomb6'
part
of a
poem (Moore, Nationionalizing Blackness, p. 225).
As N6stor
Baguer points out,
the
poem
represented
for Tallet no more than
poetic gymnastics (Baguer,
as cited in
Moore, p. 225).
33
For
example, Ortiz, 'Personajes
del folklore
afrocubano',
Archivos del Folklore
Cubano,
I
(1924), 62-75,
and
'La fiesta afrocubana del "Dia de
Reyes"',
'Cataurito de
cubanismos',
Archivos del Folklore
Cubano,
I
(1924),
I46-65, 74-75.
34
See
John Amira,
and Steven
Cornelius,
The Music
of
Santeria
(New
York: White Cliffs Media
Company,
I992).
998
MIGUEL ARNEDO
movement,
where she includes
rhythm,
accent
(which
she defines as
'rhythmically
significant stress')
and metre
(the
'basic recurrent
pattern
of
tempo,
duration and
accent'). Moreover, amongst
the six modes of
signification
that she
applies
to
dance,
she includes
metonym
and
metaphor.35
Tallet's use of
language throughout
'La rumba' is a
good example
of how
Afrocuban dance influenced
afrocubanista poetry
from a formal
point
of view. In
writing
this
poem
the
poet
was faced with the difficulties of
describing
dance
movement
through
the
type
of
language traditionally employed
in written
poetry.
This is a
language
that draws attention to its rhetorical features, such as
style,
images,
and
figures. By contrast,
the main
purpose
of
expository language,
which is
used in other
literary genres,
is to draw the reader's attention to the
subject
matter
(Aviram,
p.
49).
As can be
appreciated
in the
following,
this is the
type
of
language
used to describe dance movement in academic studies: 'The male dancer holds his
back
very straight
with a forward tilt and with shoulders raised
slightly.
The head
retains a raised
position
and alternates between side
right
and side left. The elbows
are raised
extremely
to
moderately high
in middle
range. [...]
Arm movement is
from side to
forward,
in an arc'
(Daniel,
p.
76).
Tallet's
descriptions
do make
ample
use of
poetic
rhetorical
figures
such as similes and
metaphors.
Nevertheless,
as
evident in the
following
extract,
the
language
is also often
expository
in that its main
purpose
is to
convey
to the reader the exact movements of the two dancers:
Como baila la rumba la
negra Tomasa,
c6mo baila la rumba
Jose
Encarnaci6n.
Ella mueve una
nalga,
ella mueve la
otra,
el se
estira,
se
encoge, dispara
la
grupa,
el vientre
dispara,
se
agacha, camina,
sobre el uno
y
el otro tal6n.
Chaqui, chaqui, chaqui, charaqui.
Chaqui, chaqui, chaqui, charaqui.
Las ancas
potentes
de nifa Tomasa
en torno de un
eje invisible,
como un
reguilete
rotan con
furor,
desafiando con
ritmico,
lubrico
disloque
el salaz
ataque
de Che Encarnaci6n:
mufieco de cuerda
que
rigido
el
cuerpo,
hacia atras el
busto,
en arco hacia alante
[sic]
abdomen
y piernas,
brazos
encogidos,
a saltos
iguales,
de la
inquieta grupa
va en
persecuci6n.
(Orbita, p. 65)
A
poem
that exhibits
deep
formal influences from an Afro-Cuban dance is Emilio
Ballagas's
'Rumba'. As evident in the
following
stanzas,
this
poem
uses the
image
of
the
cyclone
to
convey
the black female dancer's movements:
El
ombligo
de la
negra
es v6rtice de un cicl6n.
El
ombligo
es v6rtice.
35
'To Dance is
Human',
in The
Anthropology of
the
Body,
ed.
by John Blacking (London,
and New York:
Academic
Press, 1977), pp. 211-32 (pp. 223-24).
999
IoOO
ftAfrocubanista'
Poetry
El vientre es cicl6n.
iLas
anchas caderas
y
su
pafnolon!
(Orbita, pp.
Io8-o9)
Since,
rather than
describing
movement
directly,
the
poem conveys
the idea of
movement
through metaphor,
it could be
argued
that the kinaesthetic codes of the
rumba
performance
have been
processed through
a
poetic
formal device. Neverthe-
less,
other factors also
justify viewing Ballagas's
'Rumba' as the
product
of an
opposite process.
In order to understand
this,
it is
necessary
to establish that this
poem
was in fact
inspired by
the dance of the orisha
Yemaya
of the Lucumi tradition.
The use of the
metaphor 'olaespuma'
to refer to the dancer's dress in the second
line of the
poem already suggests
the
presence
of
Yemaya
because her colours are
the blue of the sea and the white of the waves' foam.
Furthermore,
other
images
in
the
poem present
close similarities with the outfit worn
by
the
performer
who
represents Yemaya
in this dance. As Ortiz
explains,
this dancer 'viste una bata
blanca,
como las otras orichas
hembras,
ceniida con una
especie
de ancho cinto de
tela con un
peto
o
ampliaci6n
de forma romboidal sobre el
ombligo'.36
The use of
the word
olaespuma
to refer to the bata
suggests
that the
poem's
dancer
may
also be
wearing
a white dress.
Furthermore,
in view of the rhomboid
shape
over the
performer's belly,
the simile in the last stanza of
Ballagas's poem
cannot be
merely
a coincidence. The
poem
concludes with the lines: 'El
ombligo
de la
negra I
en la
sandunga
se
abri6 I fijo
como un
ojo impar I para
mirar a
Chang6.'
Like this
'eye',
the use of the
cyclone metaphor
to describe the dancer's movements could also be
an influence of the dance of
Yemaya.
This is made evident
by
the
following
extract
from Ortiz's
description
of the dances of this orisha:
Sus danzas comienzan con ondulaciones
suaves,
como las
aguas que
se mueven
languidas
al
soplo
de la
brisa, pero pronto
se encaracolan
y
van aumentando su
fervor,
como el
oleaje
se
enfurece con el vendaval. Las bailadoras con sus remeneos simbolizan las olas airadas
y
con
sus
amplias vueltas,
mas
y
mas
rapidas,
imitan los torbellinos del mar movido
por
los
huracanes.
(Los bailes, p.
345)
Since,
in the dance of
Yemaya,
the hurricane
presumably symbolizes
her uncon-
trolled and unbridled
character,37
the dancer's movements
may
be seen as an
example
of the
metaphoric
mode of
signification
in dance that
'expresses
one
thought, experience
or
phenomenon by
another which resembles the former and is
somehow
analogous
to
it,
such as
dancing
a
leopard
to refer to the
power
of death'
(Hanna,
p.
224). Thus, Ballagas's poem
uses a formal characteristic of the
represented
dance as an
important
rhetorical device.
A similar formal
borrowing
from rumba can be found in
Ballagas's
'El baile del
gavilan'.
This
poem
deals with a
pantomimic
rumba called Gavildn in
which,
as
Daniel
explains,
dancers enact the
hunting
of blackbirds
(p. i74,
n.
5).
A dancer
imitates a blackbird
through
his or her
dancing movements,
an association that
becomes the basis for the central
metaphor
of the
poem,
where the woman is
equated
to a
flying
blackbird:
'iAy,
morena! Relambia:
|
No te cansas de volar.
I
Te
cogi
la
punteria I y
te volviste a
escapar.38
A similar
judgement
can be made in
36
Los
bailesy
el teatro de los
negros
en
elfolklore
de Cuba
(195 I) (Havana:
Letras
Cubanas, I98I),
p.
345.
37 See
JahnheinzJahn,
Muntu: Las culturas de la
negritud (Madrid: Guadarrama, 1970),
p.
77.
38
Emilio
Ballagas, Obrapoitica,
ed.
by
Osvaldo Novarro
(Havana:
Letras
Cubanas, 1984), pp.
89-90.
MIGUEL ARNEDO
relation to
Ballagas's
'El baile del
papalote' (Orbita,
pp. II5-I7).
In the rumba on
which this
poem
is
based,
the male dancer
impersonates
a man
flying
a kite and the
female dancer
pretends
to be the kite. At the end of the
dance,
as he winds
up
the
string,
the female dancer
approaches
her
dancing partner
and
they
embrace. The
fact that this
part
of the dance has erotic connotations for the
performers
themselves
(Los
bailes, p.
432) strongly suggests
that the dance of the kite is a
metaphor
for the
courtship
between man and woman. In 'El baile del
papalote',
the dancers'
game
of
retreat and
approach
is recounted
by
the male
dancer,
who talks to the female
dancer as if she were a kite. In this
way,
the association of the act of
flying
a kite with
human
courtship,
which constitutes the
metaphoric
mode of
signification
of the
dance,
becomes the
poem's
central
metaphor. Considering
the
importance
of
metaphor
in
poetry,
this means that the
poem's
form has been determined
predominantly by
the form of the
represented
dance.
Consequently,
like 'Rumba'
and 'El baile del
gavilan',
'El baile del
papalote'
is an
example
of how
afrocubanista
poetry
can
formally incorporate stylistic
features of an Afro-Cuban
performance by
capitalizing
on formal similarities between dance and written
poetry.
On the basis of Ortiz's
definitions,
the
poems
seen above could be considered
authentically
or
typically
mulatto
because,
rather than
treating
Afro-Cuban culture
as mere
subject
matter, they incorporate
it from a formal
point
of view.
Nevertheless,
his
concept
of mulatto
poetry
is
fraught
with
problematic assumptions.
For
example,
it relies on an essentialist
approach
to culture. Ortiz assumed that cultural forms
were 'white' or 'black'
solely
on the basis of their
Spanish
or African
origin.
This is
particularly
evident in 'Los filtimos versos mulatos' where he
repeatedly
refers to
Spanish
as a 'white'
language
and to African
languages
as 'black'. It also becomes
clear in this
essay
that for him a
poem
was 'white' because its themes and form were
characteristic of
Spanish
literature
(pp. I57-58).
In a similar
fashion,
Ortiz's
tendency
to
apply
the
category
'black'
only
to oral Afro-Cuban forms
clearly
responded
to his belief that authentic African literature
(that is,
'black'
literature)
was
strictly
non-written.
Thus,
it was the
degree
to which these
literary
forms had
maintained their
original
African
orality
that determined their blackness. On the
basis of these
assumptions,
he conceived of
afrocubanista poetry
as 'mulatto'
because
it was a combination of'white' literature and 'black' cultural forms.39 The fact
that,
in Ortiz's
mind,
such black cultural forms were all based on non-written modes of
expression
is evident in his outline of the black aesthetic characteristics that
afrocubanista poetry
focused on. These were black
sexuality (which
was
expressed
through dynamic corporeal expression
such as
hip-swinging),40
the
rhythm
of
African drums and the
phonetic peculiarities
of black
speech ('Mas
acerca de la
poesia
mulata',
pp.
6
I-7 ).
Ortiz's
tendency
to ascribe racial identities to cultural forms on the basis of their
African or
Spanish origin clearly
derives from the classic
anthropological approach
to the issue of
defining
human
groups.
Fredrick Barth
explains
that one of the
primary
characteristics of an ethnic
group
in this definition was that its members
shared 'fundamental cultural
values,
realized in overt
unity
in cultural forms'. He
argues
further that
(under
this
perspective)
the
supposedly 'objective' anthropologist
39
For a more detailed
analysis
of Ortiz's
approach,
see
my
article 'Arte blanco con motivos
negros'.
40
For a discussion of the
representation
of
hip-swinging
black women in the
poetry,
see
my
'The
Portrayal
of
the Afro-Cuban Female Dancer in Cuban
Negrista Poetry', Afro-Hispanic Review,
i6
(1997), 26-33.
IOOI
0Afrocubanista'
Poetry
'is led to
identify
and
distinguish
ethnic
groups by
the
morphological
characteristics
of the cultures of which
they
are the bearers'.
However,
the
anthropologist
does so
without
incorporating
into his
judgements
how such
groups perceive
their collective
identity.41
This
approach
informs the etic
perspective
in which the
anthropologist
ascribes identities to cultural forms based on their historical or
geographic origins,
without
taking
into account their
practitioners' point
of view.42 The inevitable
implication
is that identities are a kind of essence contained within cultural forms
rather than constructs elaborated
by
individuals.
Whereas this essentialist
approach
undermines the
validity
of the
concept
of
mulatto
poetry,
there is no doubt that the cultural forms Ortiz identifies as 'black'
and 'white' did serve
important
functions for each of these racial
groups throughout
Cuban
history.
On the one
hand,
as
explained earlier,
collective
religious
rituals
enabled
marginalized
blacks to transfer the cultural memories of their ethnic
groups.
Since access to the cultural information of a
group
is essential for
maintaining
its
identity,
it is evident that these
practices
sustained the ethnic identities of
many
marginalized
blacks
(Brandon,
pp.
132, I43, 148).
On the other
hand,
written
literature in
Spanish
was an
important
instrument of the white literate elites
throughout
Cuban
history.
For
example,
in
early
colonial times the island's
aristocracy
used
newspapers
and
periodical publications
such as the
Papel
Periodico de
La Habana as a vehicle
through
which to maintain and defend their own interests
relating
to slave
imports, sugar production
and free trade.43
Similarly,
in the
early
republican period
the continuation of an
existing
racial
hierarchy
that benefited
whites was
justified
in
great part through negative misrepresentations
in the
press.
As Aline
Helg explains:
The
press [...]
was the most
outspoken
and
far-reaching
voice of racial
prejudice.
Mainstream Cuban
newspapers
continued the
Spanish
colonial effort to
present
Afro-
Cubans as inferior and uncivilized in order to
justify
their lower
position
in
society. [..
.]
Almost all of the
daily newspaper journalists
were white and wrote as
spokesmen
of
'civilization'
against
'barbarism'.
(p. 0o6)
Written
literary
forms of
Spanish origin
can also be considered 'white' because
they
have often been viewed
by
Cuba's white literate elites as a fundamental means of
expressing
their national
identity.
This is illustrated
by
the
following
comment
by
writer Carlos
Montenegro
from the
I930s,
a time
when, paradoxically, according
to Pamela Maria Smorkaloff,44
a
very high proportion
of the
country
was illiterate:
'Un
pueblo
sin literatura vernacula es desconocido aun
para
si mismo. La
novela,
la
leyenda,
la
biografia,
el
cuento,
son lazos
para unirnos, ojos para vernos,
sentimientos
para
conocernos
y estimarnos;
es
decir, para
ser: ser
para
los demas
y
para
nosotros mismos.'45 From this
perspective,
the differences between a
literary
genre
of
Spanish origin
and Afro-Cuban collective
practices
can be seen to reflect
41
Introduction to Ethnic
Groups
and Boundaries: The Social
Organization of
Ethnic
Difference (Oslo:
Universitetsforla-
get, 1969), pp.
I- 2.
42
Peter
Wade,
'Black Music and Cultural
Syncretism
in
Colombia',
in
Slavery
and Beyond: The African Impact on
Latin America and the
Caribbean,
ed.
by
Dari6n
J. Davis, (Wilmington,
DE: SR
Books, I995),
pp. I21-46
(pp. 122-23).
43
Larry
R.
Jensen,
Children
of
Colonial
Despotism: Press,
Politics and Culture in
Cuba, 1790o-840 (Florida:
University
Presses of
Florida, 1988),
p. 21.
44
Readers and Writers in Cuba: A Social
History
of
Print
Culture, i83os-iggos (New
York and London:
Garland,
1997),
p. 28.
45
Montenegro,
as cited in Ambrosio
Fornet,
En blancoy
negro (Havana:
Instituto del
Libro, I967),
p. 62.
1002
MIGUEL ARNEDO
important
cultural differences between Cuban blacks and whites.
Therefore,
the
movement's insistence on
finding ways
to
formally integrate
Afro-Cuban non-
written forms can be seen as an
attempt
to
produce
a
literary genre
which
harmonized the differences between Cuban black and white culture.
It could be
argued
that authentic mulatto
poems manage
to reconcile these
cultural differences at the
literary
level.
By contrast,
other
afrocubanista poems
actually emphasize
them. For
example,
in Alfonso Hernandez Cata's
'Rumba',
verbal forms from the event
appear
as
quotations
in italics that
interrupt
the
poet's
learned discourse without
directly affecting
its form. This division is exacerbated
by
metric differences. Whereas the latter is
expressed through
stanzas of four
octosyllabic
lines,
the
former,
in line with the free versification of rumba
lyrics,
do
not
present
a fixed
pattern.
These contrasts are evident in the
following
extract:
Ae, a!... . Ae la Chambelona!
Por
muy
vestida
que vaya
la
negra
estatua se ve.
Ojos
de concha
marina,
labios de crudo biste.
Yqueya Dominga
se
caso,
'Cuando
me
casareyo?
Mil
sortijas
en la
cabeza,
sesos huecos tras de la
frente,
y
mas alla del
disparate
algo que
brilla de
repente.
Que m'empreste
que
tufonografo
por
un momento ...
(Orbita, pp. 127-28)
A similar detachment is evident in 'Bailadora de rumba' where Guirao uses inverted
commas in
quoting
the chorus from the
represented
rumba.4 Like Hernandez
Cata,
Tallet also uses italics when
reproducing
a
phrase
from a
popular
rumba
song
in 'La
rumba'.47 He also accentuates differences between the
poem
and the
represented
practice by dividing
it into
long stanzas,
which describe the
performers' dancing
movements,
and short
ones,
which
attempt
to
reproduce
the sound of instruments.
Admittedly,
the
poem
could never
effectively reproduce
the
simultaneity
of audio
and visual
rhythms
in rumba.
Nevertheless, by delivering
these codes in
clearly
separated
stanzas the
poet actually emphasizes
this difference between the written
text and the live
performance.
In
general,
even authentic mulatto
poems
do not
completely camouflage
Cuba's
socio-cultural divisions.
Merely by giving prominence
to black oral and non-verbal
modes of
expression,
all
afrocubanista poems
accentuate the non-literate nature of the
culture
they sought
to
incorporate.
This
approach
also draws attention to the fact
that
afrocubanista poems
were intended for an individual reader and not as
part
of a
live Afro-Cuban
performance.
This is
because,
in such a
performance,
verbal modes
of
expression
would be
accompanied by
real non-verbal
forms,
such as dance and
46
The chorus is
'iArriba,
Maria
Antonia, I
alabao sea Di6!' and it was
clearly
taken from the Sexteto
Habanero
composition
'Eres mi lira armoniosa'
(Las
raices del
son).
47
The
phrase
is found in the line 'se acab6 la rumba con
con, co,
mabd'. Marcelino Arozarena also uses it in
italics in 'Carida' and defines it in his
glossary
as a
phrase
from a
popular
rumba
(Cancion negra
sin color
(Havana:
Ediciones
Uni6n, I983), pp. 27-28, I69). According
to Natalio
Galan,
this
phrase
had also been
adapted
to a
danzonete
by 1929 (Cubay
sus sones
(Valencia: Pre-textos/muisica, 1983),
p. 200).
I00o
0Afrocubanista' Poetry
music.
Consequently,
there would be no need to
reproduce
them
verbally,
as in
afrocubanista poems.
However,
it is also
important
to
recognize
the merits of authentic
mulatto
poetry.
Poems such as
Ballagas's
'Rumba' articulate black culture as an
active
principle,
thus
altering
the formal texture of a white erudite
literary
form.
This
certainly
sets this
type
of
afrocubanista poetry apart
from other
representations
of Afro-Cuban culture in Cuban literature. For
example,
the
representations
of
blacks in
nineteenth-century
abolitionist works were
consciously
based on
Spanish
and
European
cultural models.48 Other
contrasting examples
are R6mulo Lachat-
afiere's and Fernando Ortiz's attitudes towards Afro-Cuban oral forms in Oh mio
remayd
and La
africania
de la
muzsica
folkldrica
de Cuba
respectively.
Lachatafiere,
for
instance,
makes use of a realist-naturalist mode characteristic of
nineteenth-century
European
narrative in
relating
the
patakies,
the
religious
short stories of the Lucumi.
As Martin Lienhard
explains,
there is
nothing
left of the
enunciation,
the
rhythm,
the humour or the
vocabulary normally
used in these narrative forms. In a similar
way,
in Ortiz's famous treatise on Afro-Cuban culture the formal
peculiarities
of the
song
forms he deals with do not
visibly
affect the authorial discourse. The former
are
presented
in the form of
transcriptions
of
lyrics
that
interrupt
the learned
exposition
thus
creating
a kind of vertical
dialogue
between the scholar and his
cultural
subjects.49 Afrocubanista poems
that
formally integrate
black cultural forms
should be valued also because
they imply
a more
positive
attitude towards the black
sectors who
practised
Afro-Cuban traditions. When an author tries to
incorporate
into his or her discourse the formal
principles
of a
particular
culture,
it is
granted
a
degree
of
value, which, by extension, implies recognizing
its
practitioners
as
equals.
It is no coincidence that abolitionist Cuban
literature,
with its
emphasis
on
European high literary forms,
should have been often far from
compassionate
towards Cuba's slave
population.50 Significantly, afrocubanista poems
that do not
formally incorporate
the forms of the
represented
cultural
practice
often
betray
a
derogatory
attitude towards blacks. For
example,
in Hernandez Cata's 'Rumba',
the
personifications
of the musical instruments seen earlier have the effect of
denying
the
agency
of the musicians who
play
them.
Also,
their
juxtaposition
to the
description
of the black woman as a statue
('la negra
estatua se
agita')
has the further
effect of
granting
less human status to her than to the musical instruments. Her de-
humanization continues in the
synecdoche
'risa feroz
que
no sabe
I que
el bien
puede
ser el
mal',
which
presents
her as a ferocious
animal, incapable
of
distinguishing
between
good
and evil. This
image,
combined with references to her
perfect body
lines
('formas perfectas, I
talle de
palma real'),
creates the
impression
of a 'voracious and sadistic sexual
predator'
who uses her charms to seduce and
destroy
innocent men.51 It is also
significant that, although
the dancer succeeds in
48
As Cintio Vitier
explains,
the abolitionist
project
was one of 'cultura de nivel
europeo y
s6lida base
espafiola' (as quoted
in Lisandro
Otero,
'Delmonte
y
la cultura de la
sacarocracia',
Revista
Iberoamericana,
66.
52-53 (I990), 723-3 (p. 729)).
See also Robert
Paquette, Sugar
is Made with Blood: The
Conspiracy of
La
Escalera and the
Conflict
between
Empires
over
Slavery
in Cuba
(Middletown,
CT:
Wesleyan University Press, 1988),
p.
I02.
49
Martin
Lienhard,
'El fantasma de la oralidad
y algunos
de sus avatares literarios
y etnol6gicos',
Les
Langues
JNeo-Latines, 11.297 (1996), I9-33 (pp. 25-28).
50
For
example,
one of its
objectives
was to denounce the
way
whites were
being
contaminated
through
their
contact with blacks. See
Paquette, p.
i o
,
and William
Luis, Literary
Bondage:
Slavery in Cuban Narrative
(Austin:
University
of Texas
Press, 1990),
p.
44.
51
See
RoseGreen-Williams,
'The
Myth
of Black Female
Sexuality
in
Spanish
Caribbean
Poetry', Afro-Hispanic
Review,
I2
(I993),
I6-23 (p.
I8).
I
004
MIGUEL ARNEDO
eliciting
the desire of the event's
participants ('Cien ojos
buscan los caminos
I
que
conducen a sus
entrafias'), images
such as
'ojos
de concha
marina,
I labios de crudo
biste'
and 'nariz
desparramada'
reveal the
poet's disgust
towards her
physiognomy.
By contrast,
in 'El baile del
papalote', Ballagas displays
an
entirely
different attitude
towards the black
protagonist
and the
represented
cultural
practice.
Rather than
remaining
a detached
observer,
he
participates
in the dance
and,
in line with its
overt
sexuality,
he
directly
communicates to the black woman his desire for her.
On the basis of the material
put
forward in this
article,
the
following
conclusions
may
be drawn.
Afrocubanistas
turned their attention to Afro-Cuban cultural forms in
an
attempt
to
produce
'mulatto'
literary
forms that would
symbolize
black and
white cultural
unity.
The reliance on
performative
modes of
expression
in Afro-
Cuban culture led these
poets
to
experiment
with
ways
of
formally incorporating
non-written cultural forms. On
many
occasions
they managed
to achieve
this,
thus
altering
the formal conventions of the dominant literature in Cuba.
Although
the
idea of mulatto
poetry
is based on a
problematic approach
to
culture,
this
process
of
fusion can be understood as the interaction between 'black' and 'white' cultural
forms in as far as these
played important
functions within such racial
groups.
Following
this line of
thought,
one of the main achievements of authentic mulatto
poems
is that
they
alter white
literary
forms
by integrating
black culture at the
formal level. In
turn,
this
implies
a
positive
attitude towards the black collectivities
who
practised
Afro-Cuban traditions in the
I92os
and
I930s. Nevertheless,
in
contrast to the nationalist
urge
to subsume differences between blacks and
whites,
afrocubanista poetry
on the whole cannot avoid
accentuating
the differences between
written
poetry
and Afro-Cuban collective cultural
practices.
This failure to
produce
a
fully amalgamated literary
form reflects the drastic differences that existed
between black and white cultures and a
history
of conflict between them.
Thus,
no
afrocubanista poem,
not even an authentic mulatto
one,
could ever be the
symbol
of
the total
unity afrocubanistas
intended.52
QUEEN
MARY,
LONDON MIGUEL ARNEDO
52
I should like to thank Patricia D'Allemand for her invaluable comments on an
early
draft of this article.
I
05