Harmony and Normalization

US-Cuban Musical Diplomacy

Timothy P. Storhoff

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781496830890
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Ethnomusicology

Harmony and Normalization: US-Cuban Musical Diplomacy explores the channels of musical exchange between Cuba and the United States during the eight-year presidency of Barack Obama, who eased the musical embargo of the island and restored relations with Cuba. Musical exchanges during this period act as a lens through which to view not only US-Cuban musical relations but also the larger political, economic, and cultural implications of musical dialogue between these two nations. Policy shifts in the wake of Raúl Castro assuming the Cuban presidency and the election of President Obama allowed performers to traverse the Florida Straits more easily than in the recent past and encouraged them to act as musical ambassadors. Their performances served as a testing ground for political change that anticipated normalized relations. While government actors debated these changes, music forged connections between individuals on both sides of the Florida Straits. In this first book on the subject since Obama's presidency, musicologist Timothy P. Storhoff describes how, after specific policy changes, musicians were some of the first to take advantage of new opportunities for travel, push the boundaries of new regulations, and expose both the possibilities and limitations of licensing musical exchange. Through the analysis of both official and unofficial musical diplomacy efforts, including the Havana Jazz Festival, the National Symphony Orchestra of Cuba's first US tour, the Minnesota Orchestra's trip to Havana, and the author's own experiences in Cuba, this ethnography demonstrates how performances reflect aspirations for stronger transnational ties and a common desire to restore the once-thriving US-Cuban musical relationship.

1

US-CUBAN MUSICAL RELATIONS BEFORE AND AFTER THE REVOLUTION

On August 13, 2013, Chucho Valdés, the best-known jazz pianist, composer, and arranger in Cuba today, appeared live in concert with singer Natalie Cole at the Hollywood Bowl in California. Valdés toured the United States multiple times after 2009 and has been the highest-profile Cuban musician to do so with regularity. His concert at the Hollywood Bowl, however, was special because it marked a reunion of sorts. Earlier in the year, Cole released her first Spanish-language album Natalie Cole En Español, which followed in the tradition of her father Nat King Cole’s Spanish albums recorded in the late 1950s as a collaboration between US and Cuban musicians. One of Nat King Cole’s primary collaborators was Chucho’s father, Bebo Valdés. Although concert promoters billed both Cole and Valdés as headliners for the 2013 concert, each played separate sets and came together for only one song, a rendition of “Quizás, Quizás, Quizás” (“Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps”).

When Nat King Cole recorded “Quizás, Quizás, Quizás” for his 1958 album Cole Español it was common for musicians from Cuba and the United States to visit one another’s countries to record and perform. Despite political strains between Cuba and the United States in the early twentieth century, musical connections were thriving until 1959. Interaction between musicians became increasingly difficult after the Cuban Revolution, which was followed by the US trade embargo and travel ban on Cuba. This chapter provides a brief history of the US-Cuban musical relationship and the once rich prerevolutionary ties in art music, popular song, and jazz that deteriorated under shifting US policies toward Cuba from 1960 through 2008. An analysis of how US presidents from John F. Kennedy to George W. Bush approached Cuba illustrates that while musicians were unable to traverse the Straits of Florida with any consistency for over fifty years, the desire for musical interaction between these two countries continued to grow since its prerevolutionary peak. The period between 1958, when Bebo Valdés and Nat King Cole collaborated, and 2013, when their children performed together, had seen other musicians from Cuba and the United States make music with one another, but politics restrained the US-Cuban musical relationship and kept it from thriving.

PREREVOLUTIONARY US-CUBAN MUSICAL INTERACTIONS

The transnational relationship between the United States and Cuba was important to the development of music in both countries.¹ Beyond their close geographic proximity, political and economic ties dating to the colonial period led to a variety of musical interactions. After Cuba won its independence from Spain at the end of the nineteenth century, it was occupied and politically controlled by the United States. The 1901 Platt Amendment gave the United States the ability to intervene in Cuban affairs, and US politicians maintained sway over Cuban leaders throughout the first half of the twentieth century. The Cuban people reacted to North American hegemony in various ways; one of these was the cultivation and promotion of distinctly Cuban, specifically Afro-Cuban, musical forms. As the afrocubanismo movement of the 1920s and 1930s pushed African-influenced musical forms and mass-mediated images of dark-skinned Cubans into the national mainstream, Cuban conceptions of race and nation were transformed (Moore 1997). This period saw the popularization and commodification of Afro-Cuban dance genres such as rumba and son. As Afro-Cuban musical elements began appearing in middle-class music such as light opera and salon piano music, composers from both the United States and Cuba joined organizations to learn from one another and promote their music throughout the hemisphere.

The Pan American Association of Composers (PAAC) was founded by Edgard Varèse in 1928 with the goal of promoting and connecting composers from throughout the Western hemisphere (Root 1972). When Henry Cowell assumed leadership of the organization in 1929, he began establishing connections with Cuban musicians and recruited composers Alejandro García Caturla and Amadeo Roldán. In 1933, the organization’s most active year in the Western Hemisphere, PAAC gave five concerts in New York and seven in Havana. Caturla and Roldán both conducted orchestras in Cuba that they used to promote PAAC, making them the most active Latin American members of the organization (Stallings 2009, 91). PAAC disbanded in 1934, however, because of a lack of organization and an inability to remain solvent under the pressures of the Great Depression. Individual performers and composers, however, continued to visit Cuba. One of the most prominent individuals to represent the United States abroad, which included some trips to Cuba, was former OIAA Music Committee member Aaron Copland. He visited Cuba twice in 1941, after which he composed Danzon Cubano for two pianos (Hess 2013, 203).

Other musical connections grew out of travel, economics, and the prohibition of alcohol in the United States after the passage of the Eighteenth Amendment. Irving Berlin, one of Tin Pan Alley’s most prolific composers, played on the US-Cuban connection in some of his songs that were marketed to white North American audiences. In 1911 he collaborated on “There’s a Girl in Havana” with lyricist E. Ray Goetz. A year later, Berlin married Goetz’s twenty-year-old sister Dorothy, and they vacationed in Havana for their honeymoon. While there, Dorothy caught typhoid, and died five months later in New York (Sublette 2004a, 329). Although this trip ended tragically, it was also one of the few memories that Berlin had of his brief marriage to Dorothy. These experiences would help inspire his 1920 song “(I’ll See You in) Cuba.” This song was a direct response to the recent passage of the Eighteenth Amendment and alcohol prohibition in the United States, as it advertises the island where “wine is flowing.” It also reflects the status of Cuba as “America’s playground” at that time, which many Cubans would come to resent over the ensuing decades. Like most Tin Pan Alley songs, “(I’ll See You in) Cuba” features simple rhythms and melodies and no direct Cuban musical influences. Although most US consumers were not yet familiar with actual Cuban music, the tropical topic was appealing and the song was a success.

Perhaps the most influential song in terms of introducing US listeners to Cuban music and showing the potential for marketing Latin music to North American audiences was “El Manisero,” or “The Peanut Vendor.” Cuban pianist Moisés Simons wrote the song in 1928; he based it on a pregón or vendor’s call. It gained popularity among Cuban audiences after Rita Montaner recorded it for Columbia Records for distribution on the island. The real money at this time, however, was still in music publishing, not recording. After Herbert Marks, the son of music publisher E. B. Marks, purchased a copy of the song while in Havana for his honeymoon in 1929, he acquired the publishing rights from Simons. The song was released in the United States the following year (Pérez 1999, 203). “The Peanut Vendor” found huge success after being performed by Don Azpiazu and his Havana Casino Orchestra in 1930 at the Palace Theater in New York City. A costumed Antonio Machín, who had been billed as the Cuban Rudy Vallee, sang the piece as he pushed a vendor’s cart and threw peanuts into the audience. The popularity of the performance prompted a recording by the group for RCA Victor, which became an international hit in 1931. Marion Sunshine, who toured with Azpiazu’s group as a singer, wrote English lyrics for the song with the help of L. Wolf Gilbert, and “The Peanut Vendor” gained further popularity among non-Spanish speakers. The song was marketed as a rumba, although it was actually a Cuban son. It sold over a million copies of sheet music in the 1930s, and the E. B. Marks Company who published it made Latin songs a major part of their catalog. In his autobiography, E. B. Marks wrote: “The blow of the depression was softened, for our firm at least, by our introduction of a new popular musical genre—the rumba. … Although the catchiness of the Cuban rhythms was at once apparent, I had to get danceable arrangements and singable translations to put them over in the United States” (Marks 1934, 219). The song’s success encouraged multiple publishing companies to open offices in Havana for the purpose of signing Cuban composers, and a songwriting industry reminiscent of New York City’s Tin Pan Alley quickly gained a foothold in Cuba’s capital. Most of the songs that came out of Cuba’s Tin Pan Alley, however, did not find significant popularity on the island even if they became hits abroad.

The presence of US tourists in Cuba during Prohibition also created a demand for dance bands both from Cuba and the United States. North American jazz bandleaders such as Jimmy Holmes, Max Dolin, Ted Naddy, and Earl Carpenter all led groups in Havana in the 1920s, and they began hiring Cuban musicians to perform with them; they found they could get away with paying them less than their US counterparts. At the end of the 1920s and through the 1930s, the number of American bands in Cuba would drop off and be replaced by Cuban groups. Moisés Simons had been leading a jazz band in Havana’s Plaza Hotel from the mid-1920s until the release of “El Manisero” changed his career. Even Roldán occasionally played violin with some jazz bands and Caturla was a huge jazz enthusiast, leading a jazz band while at the University of Havana (Acosta 2003, 18–30). Geographic proximity, instantaneous radio broadcasts, and the ease of travel between Havana and New York City allowed popular tunes to appear in Cuba shortly after they premiered in the United States, and Cuban musicians used those songs as a point of reference to entertain visiting North American tourists (Acosta 2003, 57).

The genre of Latin or Afro-Cuban jazz developed simultaneously and gradually in both New York and Havana, although in Cuba it was an almost imperceptible process because no one was intentionally seeking a new fusion. Alternatively, in New York, Latin jazz exploded in the 1940s because the musicians were consciously bringing these musical styles together, and the music they created was widely disseminated and popularized through records and broadcasting.² The musicians who fused these styles included Cuban and Puerto Rican immigrants as well as black and white US citizens already living in New York City. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, a number of Cubans moved to New York City and impacted the city’s popular culture. While the influx of Cubans to the city was much smaller than the growing Puerto Rican population, they established an identifiable Cuban community, which made the city more attractive to jazz musicians, including Machito, Mario Bauzá, and Chano Pozo, who hoped to have successful recording careers (Abreu 2015, 58–61; Sublette 2004a, 459–64). Through the first half of the twentieth century, there was a large influx of Puerto Ricans migrating into New York City. Puerto Ricans had already appropriated Cuban dance music into their own traditions, so Puerto Rican jazz musicians like Juan Tizol, who wrote “Caravan” for Duke Ellington’s band, brought those influences with them (Manuel 1994, 249–61).

Established New York jazz musicians began working with these Cuban and Puerto Rican performers, and they brought Cuban elements to the fore-front of their music. Together they popularized the genre that eventually became known as Latin jazz. Bebop pioneer Dizzy Gillespie was central to this process. Gillespie had the opportunity to form a big band in the mid-1940s, and when he was looking for a conga player in 1947, Mario Bauzá recommended Chano Pozo. With Pozo in the group they performed Latin tinged pieces like “Cubana Be, Cubana Bop” and “Manteca,” which became Gillespie’s biggest selling record. Pozo, who could not speak English, composed “Manteca” by singing out the individual lines for the instrumentalists and the arranger, and Dizzy wrote the bridge, creating a fusion of aesthetics in the piece. After “Manteca,” bongos and congas became standard in jazz bands, and the addition of Latin jazz pieces to repertoires was widespread (Sublette 2004a, 536–42).

While Latin jazz was developing in the United States, Arsenio Rodríguez and Pérez Prado were experimenting in Cuba with son to include jazz orchestration. Prado divided his band into two registers that provided ongoing counterpoint while emphasizing melody and rhythm over harmony (Acosta 2003, 88–89). The mambo emerged from Prado’s arrangements, which in-corporated rumba and son rhythms around a constant clave, and it enjoyed broad popularity in the United States shortly after emerging in Cuba. In fact, mambo’s marketability in North America, led by musicians like Machito, Tito Rodríguez, and Tito Puente, far outweighed its appeal in Cuba in the early 1950s. New York City’s Palladium Ballroom became the center of the mambo craze, and it was the place to be seen for aspiring socialites (Garcia 2006, 64–65). Couples danced the mambo competitively at the Palladium, and it was thoroughly covered by the nation’s media. There was a mambo section in West Side Story, and Desi Arnaz appeared with his Cuban band on I Love Lucy. Cuban music and dance expanded well beyond New York City in the early 1950s and could be found all over the country. The connection between Cuban musical elements and Latin music had been cemented in the minds of the American public.

Records by Cuban artists and music production in Cuba were flourishing, but the profits from record sales were largely going to North American companies such as RCA Victor and Columbia. By the 1950s, US corporations controlled the majority of radio, television, and record distribution in Cuba, and they used Cuban media to disseminate North American songs instead of Cuban genres (Moore 2006). The domination of the US culture industry exacerbated anti-US sentiments on the island, which had been particularly strong since 1952, when Fulgencio Batista organized a successful coup to reassume control of the country. Batista was backed by the United States during his rule, but his right-wing dictatorship polarized Cuban society. Musical diplomacy was being used to counter growing leftist ideologies elsewhere in Latin America, but any perceived threat to US interests in Cuba was seen as a military issue for the Batista regime to deal with and not a cultural or social issue. The revolutionary movement that would eventually topple Batista began on July 26, 1953, when charismatic revolutionary Fidel Castro staged a failed attack on the Moncada military barracks in Santiago de Cuba. Almost two-thirds of his revolutionary force was captured or killed, and Castro himself was arrested within a week of the attack. He was given a fifteen-year prison sentence but was released in 1956 under a general am-nesty granted by the Batista government. Castro traveled to Mexico, where he met Ernesto “Che” Guevara, an Argentine doctor and ardent socialist; together they reorganized the 26th of July Movement. In December of that year, Castro led a force of just over eighty dissidents back to Cuba on the yacht named the Granma. While only twelve individuals survived the landing and initial clash with the Batista military, they were able to flee to the Sierra Maestra Mountains. For the next three years they instigated a bloody guerrilla war while spreading socialist ideology across the Cuban countryside. On December 31, 1958, Batista fled the country for the Dominican Republic, and Fidel Castro took control of the capital shortly thereafter. Following his victory, Castro gave a speech in Santiago de Cuba outlining the foundation for the new government that, at that time, he said would guarantee civil liberties, including freedom of speech and the press, and be based upon the popular will of the Cuban people.³ However, it soon became clear that Castro would be in direct control of this new government and those who opposed the new totalitarian regime were jailed or killed.

Within months of the revolution, the fledgling Cuban government established new centers of music, film, theatre, and literary production. They instituted a free educational system with a curriculum including the arts, worked to preserve Cuba’s folklore, and allocated a significant amount of money to training professional musicians and organizing and sponsoring musicological research. Enterprises were created for contracting and programming the nation’s musicians, who were guaranteed steady employment and pay. These organizations initially fell under the auspices of the Consejo Nacional de Cultura or the National Culture Advisory, which was later replaced by the Ministry of Culture. Cuba’s government organizations enacted various initiatives like the Amateurs’ Movement as an effort to democratize music and the other arts. Castro and the socialist thinkers he surrounded himself with came to believe that there was a divide between artists and workers, and they tried to correct it by encouraging as many people as possible to participate in the arts (Moore 2006). The institutionalization of music, however, led to various complaints from musicians about bureaucratic delays and restrictions on the ensembles with which they could perform or the number of live concerts permitted. Unlike many other socialist states at the time, the Cuban government actively promoted popular music because Cuba had its own vital popular music styles, while in the Soviet bloc, popular music consisted mostly of styles imported from the capitalist West. Cuban authorities banned North American and British rock and pop for the first decade of the revolution; by the late 1970s international popular music was accepted and even broadcast on Cuban radio in order to keep young fans from tuning into US-based stations that could be picked up on the island (Manuel 1987).

The US government under the Eisenhower administration (1953–1961) was initially ambivalent regarding the changes taking place in Cuba—until Castro’s leadership started to seize property and nationalize American companies. These actions followed a speech in 1960 in which Castro openly rejected US Pan-Americanism and announced Cuba’s alliance with the Soviet Union.⁴ As a result, direct, reciprocal US-Cuban musical interaction stopped. Eisenhower declared an economic embargo against Cuba in October 1960. The revolutionary government began instituting greater socialist and anti-imperialist reforms, and many of the country’s most prominent musicians fled the island nation to continue their careers abroad. International travel for Cubans became difficult if not outright impossible, and “foreign” music was shut out of the Cuban media (Moore 2006, 13). During Fidel Castro’s tenure as head of the Cuban government, he faced off against ten different US presidents. While specific policies toward Cuba would vary between administrations, allowing for occasional musical interactions, the overall antagonistic relationship between the United States and Cuba remained in place.

US-CUBAN RELATIONS FROM KENNEDY TO FORD

US-Cuban relations underwent some of their tensest moments during President John F. Kennedy’s administration (1961–63). As a result of Cold War–fueled antagonism from both sides, the United States strengthened its embargo against Cuba and instituted a travel ban. In April 1961, executing a plan conceived during the Eisenhower administration, Kennedy oversaw the failed mission by CIA-trained exiles attempting to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs. The hopes were that the Cuban people would rise up against Castro and aid the invasion, but the exiles grossly underestimated Castro’s popularity at the time and instead of initiating a revolt, the invasion actually bolstered his support. The attempted invasion resulted in a radicalization of the revolutionary government as Castro quickly began rounding up and imprisoning suspected counterrevolutionaries. In November of that year, as Soviet weapons and military advisors began arriving on the island, Castro declared that he had always been a socialist and affirmed Cuba’s relationship with the Soviet Bloc.

On September 26, 1962, Congress passed a joint resolution giving the president the right to intervene militarily in Cuba if US interests were threatened. The Trade Expansion Act of 1962 followed on October 11, which extended the Cuban embargo and prohibited the US government from pursuing diplomatic relations with Cuba until it was “no longer dominated or controlled by the foreign government or foreign organization controlling the world Communist movement” (Crandall 2008, 169). Days later, US reconnaissance planes discovered Soviet missile construction sites in Cuba, setting off the Cuban Missile Crisis. The tense thirteen-day confrontation ended with an agreement between Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev that th...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• Dedication
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. US-Cuban Musical Relations before and after the Revolution
• 2. A New Beginning: US-Cuban Relations in the Obama Era
• 3. The Politics of Cuban Music in the United States
• 4. Jazz as Intercultural Dialogue at the Havana Jazz Plaza Festival
• 5. New Musicians and Travelers in Cuba
• 6. 2016 and the Sounds of Normalization
• Epilogue: Dissonance and Diplomacy under Donald Trump
• Notes
• References
• About the Author