Olavo
Alén Rodriguez:
Report from the Centre for the
Research and Development of Cuban Music
Havana, Cuba
Olavo
Alen Rodriguez is Director at the Center for the Research and Development of
Cuban Music
(address: G No. 505 Ent. 23 Y 21, Vedado, Havana, Cuba).
This report was first published in Worldbeat: An International Journal
of Popular Music,
Ottawa and Berlin, 1991, pp. 186-191. Page turns in the original edition are
shown thus: |186-187|.
Homepage
(P Tagg) | Online
texts
.
One
of the characteristics of music in the Caribbean has been the development
of a kind of music which I prefer to call professional popular music.
This music has had a lot to do with the preservation of authentic musical
attitudes and expressions derived from the folk music of our peoples but
imbued with technical elements — both in composition and interpretation-that
link it to the academic professional music of Europe.
The development
of a professional music with very deep popular root — which in the
Caribbean is especially linked to the development of popular dancing —
is a phenomenon that has managed to coexist with a thriving analogue in
folk music. And yet, it is this professional music — as opposed to |186-187| the authentic folk expressions
— that serves as the perfect bridge for aesthetic communication with
people of different musical cultures, perhaps as a result of its association
with certain technical elements of European music.
However,
this is only valid for those people whose musical tastes are conditioned
to the systems of sound organization and characteristic timbres originating
in Europe. For anyone who is not an expert in the music of this area it
may at times be difficult to understand the differences between an expression
of folk music and its professional popular music analogue. Sometimes,
indeed, even the experts have their doubts in certain very complicated
cases. Whether a son, a merengue, a calypso or aplena fall into one category
or the other is often determined by the function it is to carry out at
a particular moment not by any clear-cut definition of those genres.
In any case,
it is the field of professional popular music that facilita- tes a quick
understanding of many of the elements and attitudes of folk music for
the foreign listener. In their pure or original state these elements would
be a great deal more difficult to interpret. Another important characteristic
of professional popular music (as opposed to folk music) is that its elements
are easily transferrable to all kinds of mass media. This characteristic
may have led to an exaggerated com- mercialization of these elements and
therefore, in certain cases, to an undermining of the genuine values derived
from folk music.
Professional popular music has so developed in Cuba that for a number
of decades it has been the sphere that has attracted the greatest number
of artists from all spheres of music and from all the arts in general.
But it is not only this attraction that makes this sphere of music one
of fundamental importance. Through it, the world has become familiar with
a great many genres of Cuban music, like the son and the rumba,
that were born within the framework of folk music. New genres were also
born in the sphere of professional popular music as a result of the process
of combining the aesthetic and musical output of the popular creator with
the use of compositional and interpretive techniques drawn from the academic
professional music of Europe. This is the case for the danzon, a number
of different types of songs (the trova song, the bolero and others), and for the mambo and cha-cha-cha.
The study
of such a broad and complex sector of music was no easy task for the Center
for the Research and Development of Cuban Music in Havana when, in January
1980, it drafted a research project entitled: 'Diagnostic Blueprint of
the Musical Production Cycle in Cuba'. There were, before this project,
individuals and institutions that broached the study of popular music,
but in every case they were partial research projects that limited themselves
to the desciption of a few musical genres; monographies on the artistic
interpretation and composition of given individuals, or historical studies
of certain stages of musical composition in Cuba. The 1980 project was
a comprehensive study designed as a production diagnosis and centreed
on Cuban music. The premise on which the project was based was that popular
music constituted a system of different degrees of complexity for the
production of certain spiritual and material goods. The components which
made up this production system were assumed to be relatively independent
from each other, and even to have different growth and development rates.
One of the
most general objectives was to identify the behavior of the relations
that exist between the production processes of the music itself, processes
of distribution, and the way the music is consumed by the different and
diverse strata of the Cuban population. Another general objective was
the detection of the different factors that, while alien to it, nevertheless
condition the production cycle. The most important of |187-188|
these are the different aspects of technical and technological develop-
ment, the economic factors linked to the cycle, scientific discoveries
that influence it, and the administrative organization within which all
these factors interact.
A diagnosis of all the events that determine the production of music in
Cuba would allow us to have an exact and precise view of each and every
element that makeup the spectrum of professional popular music in Cuba:
each with the positive and negative factors influencing them at a given
stage in their development. The most important thing, however, was that
with the sequence of diagnostic studies we were able to observe —
for once with an acceptable level of accuracy — the statistically
derived trajectory curvers of the evolution of the different parameters
that make up the system. Thus, we began to have a real possibility of
predicting events, that is, of developing forecast studies with much greater
dependability.
The project
was aimed, in its more particular aspects, at detecting the strata that
demonstrate particular behaviour patterns within the field of professional
popular music as a whole. Thus, independent studies were done of music
students, music teachers, members of musical groups of all kinds, soloists,
composers, reearchers, music programmers and disseminators, and the administrative
officials involved in this field. The last stratum to be studied was that
of the consumers.
The first
studies were based on statistically small samples, but sample sizes grew
as the research team improved its implementation and processing methods.
New topics for research appeared, and contributed to the improvement of
our questionnaires. Thus, besides ascertaining the different age groups
in each of the strata analyzed, we also ascertained the different educational
levels and the levels of musical training in the different groups. We
were careful to check the number of years of experience and the specific
kind of work undertaken by the different specialists, as well as each
specialist's salary level. We also studied aspects such as the social
origins of families, and the stability of the ensembles. As a result of
all these studies, we obtained a rather comprehensive individual and collective
overview of the people devoted to professional popular music in Cuba.
Other CIDMUC
research projects were also directly linked to the study of different
aspects and facets of professional popular music. One such study was entitled:
'Musical Tastes and Preferences of the Cuban Population'. Research in
this area has so far been centreed on the young |188-189| people. They were divided into age groups in different strata to detect
more or less similar behaviour in the consumption of music. Two important
projects have been lauched to satisfy the pressing need for information
in this area: one is devoted to the observation and study of the influence
of Salsa music coming from other Latin American countrie as compared to
that of the Salsa music of Cuba the other is devoted to ascertaining the
impact of rock music on the young people.
The Center
is also working in the field of the psychology of music. It has undertaken
studies to determine musicality in Cuban children (i.e., the abilities
that the child develops spontaneously and that have a direct influence
on their aesthetic personality through musical behaviour). The finding
of these studies have been implemented by the National Music Teaching
System, especially in the test they use to identify future music professionals
at very early ages.
The second research line within the field of the psychology of music began
with a joint research project undertaken with the psychologists and neurologists
of the Institute for Basic Brain Research of the Cuban Academy of Sciences.
In the early stages the studies were limited to the characteristic auditive
laterality of Cuban individuals, and mainly to compiling information on
the processing of auditive events in the different hemispheres of the
brain.
In late 1987,
however, our researchers, together with the team form the Institute for
Basic Brain Research, began to do studies on the use of music — and
specifically Cuban music — for therapeutic objectives. So far we
have identified music that is useful against anxiety, against depression
and for conditioning intellecutal receptivity. Another area included in
the Center's studies is the relation or feedback process existing between
folk music and professional popular music. This relation is of importance
to the development of Cuban popular music. The two most studied aspects
of this area are the development of musical instruments, and the shaping
of musical genres.
It might
also be useful in this report to refer to the work being done by other
institutions in the field of researching professional popular music. The
Seminário de Música Popular (The Popular Music Seminar)
was founded in 1949 in Havana. It was originally called the Musical Institute
for Folklore Research. For over 30 years the researchers of this Institute
— whose director is the Cuban musicologist 0dilio Urfe — have
studied danzon and rumba, the many variants of Cuban song,
the many genres of son, and musical expressions linked to the Cuban
lyrical |189-190| theatre. This institution
periodically offers recitals and concerts with presentations on different
aspects of popular music. It also organizes exhibitions and invites outstanding
musicologists - from Cuba and abroad - to give lectures on the most widely
ranging aspects of popular music. The researchers of this institution
frequently participate in popular music festivals and contests as jurors,
lecturers or consultants.
The Ignacio Cervantes Center for Professional Music Upgrading was founded
in Havana in 1964. It is a teaching institution specializing in the training
and certification of professional musicians who want to enhance their
academic training. This centre has branches in 11 of the country's 14
provinces.
The Higher
Institute of Art has a music faculty and has had musicology as one of
its specialities since it was founded in 1976. Many of our present popular
Cuban musicologists are graduates of this Institute. The graduation theses
of a number of these musicologists (the theses are required to obtain
the degree of 'licenciado' [roughly equivalent to a BA]) have centreed
on the most varied aspects of professional popular music. They have covered
topics such as new musical dissemination and communication media, the
rumba, Ernesto Lecuona, and an analysis of professional popular music
in the period following the triumph of the Cuban Revolution. Others have
broached the question of popular music from different angles. These studies
are an important source of informa- tion for the research and development
of professional popular music of Cuba.
Together
with the development of Casa de las Americas we find the birth and development
of what is perhaps the most mature expression of the Cuban song: The Nueva
Trova movement. The importance of the work done by Casa de las Americas
with the Nueva Trova movement was not limited to the promotion
of the artists that founds their way into it. Casa de las Americas also
did important work in fostering the observation and study of this movement,
a movement which is so important in Cuban popular music today.
For many
years the José Marti National Library has had a staff of researchers and
musicologists in its Music Department that has done important work, particularly
on the son complex. The library's lecture ball has hosted many concerts
with presentations and lectures on the most varied aspects of Cuban professional
popular music.
The National Music Museum was founded in 1971 and has done research work
linked essentially to objects of historical value such as |190-191| musical instruments and scores. The main objective of its work has been
the restoration of originals and the preparation of materials to be exhibited
in numerous halls for the education of the population. The Museum holds
exhibits, concerts, lectures and musical presentations with commentaries.
They too have approached the field of professional popular music and possess
a number of very important documents relating to it. The director of the
Museum, M. T. Linares, has written a book Introdución a Cuba:
la música popular, which is an important document for the understanding
of this important field of Cuban music.
In 1986 the
first issue of Clave appeared. Clave is a quarterly publication
on current events in the musical world of Cuba. Clave devotes a
considerable number of pages to infomation on the development and evolution
of Cuban professional popular music. Its director, Idalberto Suco, is
a musicologist who has investigated and studied professional popular music
in Cuba. A large amount of the material published in this journal comes
from the research findings of the aforementioned institutions.