Blackness with a Cuban Beat
Hernandez-Reguant, Ariana
Esa muisica que heredamos hijos y nietos de los africanos, la que mezclamos con la espafiola, con la francesa y la portuguesa, la que fundimos bien con la inglesa... -Los Van Van, "Somos...
...Indeed, timba's disidentificational stance is heavily male-centered...
...The subject was central in performances at the tourist clubs, where bands catered to a mixed public...
...The negro calesero was a common character in the early 20th century burlesque theater of white authors...
...An informal economy quickly developed to cater to tourists' needs beyond those provided by the state-controlled tourist industry...
...However, timba's explosive popularity in 1990s Cuba was only possible precisely due to Cubans' emergent imagining of the global: the newly acquired expectations, among previously disenfranchised groups, of life beyond revolutionary socialism...
...Los Van Van, "Somos Cubanos" from the CD Lleg6 Van Van (Habana Caliente, 1999...
...and suck my lollipop" or "don't touch it so hard / be careful with my instrument" and "going down on you, no way...
...Rather, it opened a field of possibilities in which the strategic use of difference was fair game...
...Mauricio Vicent, "Pasaporte Conyugal," El Pats, July 22, 2001...
...La Charanga Habanera, "Hagamos un Chen...
...Still, it is often considered a pejorative term in Cuba...
...6 As the extemporaneous deliverance escalates in intensity and fervor, concertgoers emotionally raise their arms and echo the chorus line: "Ay Dios amparame" ("Oh God, protect me...
...As tourists and entrepreneurs joined inner city youth in embracing the craze, timba's commercial success-however modest by international standards-launched a group of AfroCuban musicians and their entourage to what in the understated socialist society amounted to stardom...
...In this period of increasing globalization, black men rewrote the script and the negro calesero was no loser...
...Timba musicians, some of them internationally known recording artists, became symbols of an incoming capitalism that, unlike the socialist revolution, did not purport to be race-blind...
...Bands like Los Van Van, La Charanga Habanera, NG La Banda, Klimax, Manolin, Bamboleo, Bakuleyd, Tamayito and Paulito FG were regular fixtures at La Tropical, where people knew every song even before its release...
...Timba's luscious dance moves were often credited with smiting tourists with lovesickness while scorned as evidence of blacks' perfidious lewdness...
...In the most graphic way, a 1997 album cover by La Charanga Habanera sexualized the black male bodyfrom head to fingers-in clear "disidentification" with prevailing ideologies of race and gender inherited from colonial times...
...The bands, which welcomed the hard currency bonus to supplement their meager peso salaries, would use phrases in English and Italian, and call out for the countries represented in the audience: Italy, Spain, the United States, Mexico, Brazil, etc...
...After sharing that his mulata, a beautiful woman of "hazel eyes, black hair and a mouth like a ripe mango," left him for an Italian, he warned that mulatas-ultimately representing all Cuban women-are not to be trusted, for they wear a mask both on their face and on their back...
...6. The Spanish "niche" could be translated to the English "nigger" or "niggah...
...As his placement on the back cover suggests, he was the last to laugh...
...In this dance, the woman performs a body shake based on a relentless circular rotation of the pelvis with arms up, chest shaking and head moving sideways...
...Broadly speaking, even a dark-skinned woman might be referred to as mulata (viewed as a flattering term), whereas mulato men might be included in the broader reference of black...
...The economic opening of the mid-1990s facilitated new avenues for upward mobility that circumvented the rigid structures of post-colonial socialist society...
...La Charanga Habanera...
...Typically a slave, he was a shoddy yet harmless character that would make advances towards light-skinned ladies traveling in his vehicle...
...4. NG La Banda, "Santa Palabra" from the CD -chale Limdn (Artex, 1992...
...In 1999, the National Folkloric Ensemble of Cuba included the tembleque in its repertoire-its performance invariably causing respectable theater audiences to break into laughter...
...For instance, as one of many palliatives to the crisis following the loss of Soviet support, a state-run radio station introduced commercial advertisements in conjunction with timba programming...
...His phallocentrism is a statement of superiority vis-a-vis not only white men, but also black women, whose independent strategies of survival he belligerently rejects...
...Media exposure also contributed to the emergence of a new farandula (celebrity elite) of musicians and their entourage of agents and managers...
...But now manhood was sublimated in the game of heterosexual seduction symbolically simulated in the tembleque and its "booty call"-defined by Paul Gilroy as the "androcentric and phallocentric presentation and representation of heterosexual coupling...
...Hence, she would seek to "advance" both in terms of race and class, preferring an illicit relationship with a white man to an honest one with a fellow Afro-Cuban...
...8 In a socialist society, in which value and identity hinged on labor and political citizenship, black males were representing themselves not as forces of production but of pleasure...
...IN MUSICAL TERMS, TIMBA IS A HARD-EDGED FORM OF salsa, but unlike New York-style salsa it is based as much on Cuban son as it is on rumba, bata and other traditional Afro-Cuban rhythms...
...Barely 100 years after the abolition of slavery and national independence, La Charanga Habanera mocked this well-known guise-itself a mockery--by explicitly and proudly emphasizing the black man's sexuality, undomesticated by the servant's uniform...
...Amid the material scarcity and urban decay, foreigners-for the first time in decades-roamed Havana's streets, bringing a holiday feel to the inner city and befriending the impoverished urban dwellers...
...5. NG La Banda, "Papa Chang6" from the CD En directo desde elpatio de micasa (Caribe Productions, 1995...
...and 4,169 in 2000...
...4 Other early hits include xuality...
...La Charanga Habanera, "Hagamos un Chen" from the CD Tremendo Delirio...
...For :rafted example, "Santa Palabra," considered the first full-fledged timba track, enumerates Yoruba deities...
...Timba was black people's music...
...In song after song, she is a "shopping maniac," "super-touristy," "a witch without feelings," quick to exchange a man's love for cheap thrills...
...One of the band members asked the men in the audience to Insert for La Charanga Habanera's Pa que se entere La Habana, released in 1995, depicts their song "Super turistica...
...Timba developed at the beginning of the decade, when Afro-Cuban conservatory graduates turned to popular music catering to inner city youth, but its growth followed that of the music and tourist industries as the state implemented economic reforms to confront the post-Soviet world...
...Live, with the feedback of an involved audience, the song becomes a long charismatic sermon in both Yoruba and Spanish, asking the Lord to protect the Cuban people and especially, "the people of this color: the niche, the brown, who have arisen from the bottom struggling against so much hardship...
...What's more, timba also advocated for transnational connections, international travel and individual entrepreneurship-all values seemingly antithetical to Cuba's revolutionary socialism...
...11 Middleclass prejudice, weighing heavily in such characterizations, often portrayed the black party as a hustler, the white foreigner as either a dupe or a pervert, and the entire interracial relation as invariably linked to selfinterest and illicit profit...
...When it comes to the Afro-Cuban woman, timba offers no salvation...
...Thus many songs refer to black men's conquests, and include boastful proclamations such as "They say that we niches are finishing up / with all the women in Havana / absolutely all the women / And nothing happens...
...They also commonly highlighted the male sexual attributes that sustain Afro-Cuban manhood and its naturalized power over women, with allusions such as "this little thing I have that gets up and not down," and demands such as "open your mouth baby...
...UNDER A POLITICAL REGIME THAT REJECTED DISPLAYS OF identity based on race, religion and the like, timba boldly paid tribute to Afro-Cuban heritage, both religious and secular...
...The mulata is materialistic to the point of bringing her man to bankruptcy, indigence and even death...
...There, in places like El Palacio de la Salsa and the Cafe Cantante, Cubans were only admitted if accompanied by foreign patrons, so young black men and women typically crowded the entrance to find a paying date...
...Papa Chang6," which praises this saint as "the most super-stereophonic saint of the Yoruba religion," and "Extrafios Ateos," which critiques zealous bureaucrats for defending atheism while secretly lighting candles to the saints when things go wrong.5 More recently, Los Van Van's "Soy Todo" can be considered a religious performance in itself...
...Most strikingly, unlike earlier generations of up-and-coming artists, these were mostly black and unapologetic about their success...
...raise their hands if a mulata had ever left them for a foreigner, only to obtain a loud ovation in response...
...9. La Charanga Habanera, "Cristobalina" from the CD El Charanguero Mayor (JML, 2000), a live performance on Havana's malec6n in August 1997 that led to a six-month suspension, and "Sube y Baja" from the CD El Charanguero Mayor 10...
...But timba songs defended such transatlantic love affairs, particularly when the Cuban party was male...
...3 It glorified AfroCuban heritage as central to Cuban identity, along with racial pride, machismo and sexuality...
...La Charanga Habanera, "Lo Siento Por Ti," from the CD Tremendo Delirio (Magic Music, 1997...
...Niche describes a dark-skinned black male...
...Elements of the rumba and Santeria traditions are present in instrumentation, rhythmic patterns, dance moves and lyrical themes, making allegiance to fi h c Af se Afro-Cuban religion a prime element of both racial and national identity On stage, bands routinely praise their members' religious initiation, and musied cians visibly display ritual protective beads, eritage which until then were typically worn inconspicuously under clothing...
...Eventually, she may attempt to return, seeking the unparalleled sexual abilities of the black man she left behind, but by then he will have found another woman, black or white, Cuban or otherwise...
...1 0 In reference to a song promoting condom use-a concession by the band to government pressure-the front cover shows a cheerful black man carrying flowers in his hand and an oversized condom on his head...
...7 Indeed, timba was a populist genre...
...For both Cubans and foreigners, timba was a symbol of Ariana Hernandez- Reguant is a cultural anthropologist and music critic...
...Los Van Van expressed this collective trauma during a concert before thousands on Havana's Malec6n...
...At tourist nightclubs"like El Palacio de la Salsa and El Caf6 Cantante, the steep cover charge of $15-$20 was affordable only to foreigners, but free concerts were routinely sponsored by the Union of Communist Youth and similar institutions in neighborhoods and on Havana's popular seaside promenade, the Malec6n...
...In so doing, it also provided an alternative discourse of empowerment to young inner city black men--even at the expense of gendered and racialized "others": black women...
...There, dance bands tested their latest tunes and dancers rehearsed new steps...
...31NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS REPORT ON RACE, PART 1 change: of capitalist enterprise and upward mobility beyond the constraints of revolutionary hierarchies...
...She lived in Havana from 1995 to 1999...
...Some of the bands' front men were hired to advertise consumer products like beer, rum and tobacco...
...1 2 She allows the black man to shower her with 35NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS REPORT ON RACE, PART 1 love and affection only to extend a bill for services rendered, payable "by check, credit card or cash...
...a narrative Every day through 1999, the most male hypers popular music show on Cuban radio, "De 5 a 7," provided listings of timba shows, which were particularly abundant on weekends...
...3. Although people in Cuba recognize a broad spectrum of shades in the whiteblack color continuum, the categories more widely used are those of white, black and mulato...
...Severe travel restrictions imposed by the socialist administration on the population meant that marriage was-as it had been in the former Soviet bloc-a common strategy for legal emigration...
...By the end of the 1990s, its once-thriving scene eventually shrunk as the Cuban state bureaucracy withdrew its support and the international music industry concentrated on traditional genres allegedly untouched by consumerism...
...but there were 670 in 1993...
...The "New 33NACLA REPORT ON THE AMERICAS REPORT ON RACE, PART 1 Man" was now quite different from the one defined by Che Guevara as committed to socialist austerity after the revolutionary victory Manhood still hinged on the ability to make ends meet and provide for the family-now by all means necessary, socialist ethics notwithstanding...
...Timba became associated with a world of optimism and capitalist consumption...
...Amor de subasta...
...Raise your hands...
...Although in some areas of the Spanish-speaking world both terms are equivalent, in Cuba it lacks the U.S...
...Los Van Van, "La Shoppingmaniaca" from the CD Tepone la cabeza mala (Caribe Productions, 1997...
...Jos6 Esteban Muiioz, Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics (University of Minnesota Press, 1999...
...But timba's undisputed cathedral was La Tropical...
...Bands proliferated along with the newly revamped hard-currency clubs...
...1 3 The mulata's love is up for auction, and in the end, she commits the worst affront: she leaves the black man, not for a white Cuban, but for a foreigner, a temba (an older man), a papirriki con guanikiki (a sugardaddy with dough) that can fulfill her frivolous needs and perhaps take her with him to his country...
...Accordingly, those involved in the performance and popularization of timba crafted an ethos of black machismo and a narrative of male hypersexuality to accompany timba's so-called "macho" sound...
...Associations between mostly white foreigners and black Cubans were the subject of intense moral debate, but the debate on their unequal and exploitative character ignored the effect of these relationships on the consciousness and world views of those involved...
...Los Van Van, "Somos cubanos" Dicen que se comenta por toda La Habana, Que estos niches estAn acabando con todas las mujeres de La Habana toditas las mujeres Y no pasa nada...2 -La Charanga Habanera, "Lo siento por ti" T IMBA WAS THE SOUND OF THE 1990S...
...But no studio recording would do justice to timba's live intensity...
...BLACKmESS WTmH A CUBAN BEAT 1. "The music we inherited / Africans' children and grand children / which we mixed with the Spanish / the French and the Portuguese / which we fused well with the British...
...With their flashy because in timba, love looks and conspicuous was hard to come by-the spending, they became fault for this being the disloyalty of the Afro- symbols of incoming Cuban woman who, since capitalism...
...And even though timba seemed to be Cuba's new music revolution, it barely transcended the island, failing to become a global genre...
...Ah, everyone likes that...
...It features complex polyrhythmic arrangements, an aggressive brass sound, synthesizers, a standard drum set in addition to a Latin 32 percussion section and several lead vocalists...
...The graphic can be interpreted as forging a link between affection, symbolized by the bouquet, and recreational sex...
...Rather, it almost exclusively refers to women, whereas "black" (negro) is most often used to refer to men...
...He cited consular officials saying that in 80% of these cases, Spanish men, usually middle-aged, wedded much younger women, "beautiful and mulata," often with "a technical or university degree...
...Or perhaps the image implies that the main sexual organ is housed in the head...
...2. "Everyone in Havana is talking / They say that these niches are finishing up / with all the women in Havana / absolutely all the women / And nothing happens...
...Their meteoric rise from humble origins to national stardom, along z ctSEPTEMBER OCTOBER 2004 REPORT ON RACE, PART 1 with their flashy looks and conspicuous spending, turned them into popular symbols of upward mobility and capitalist plenty...
...Often, these new relationships were sealed on the dance floor...
...Borrowing from Jose Esteban Mufioz, disidentification describes the way playful incorporations of negative stereotypes are used as positive qualifiers...
...And many songs Cuban are dedicated to religious themes...
...La Tropical was, indeed, a marked space in terms of race and class...
...Klimax typically started its concerts that way, then praised the virtues of the Cuban mulata, urging the foreign audience to sing along with the line "mulata, take me home with you" (the only option for intimacy since Cubans were not allowed in tourist hotels...
...In a context where overt political critique was severely castigated, dissension was channeled through public displays of race and sexuality that subverted the normative social relations sustaining state power...
...White Cubans tended to stay away, especially on timba night, when brawls were said to erupt as easily as cheap rum circulated around the dance floor...
...9 Such statements often enraged the 34 Federation of Cuban Women, and were officially labeled as chabacanos (in bad taste) and banned from public broadcast...
...With a contagious dance beat, this music chronicled the daily hardships of Cuba's so-called "Special Period in Times of Peace," the period of economic crisis following the demise of Soviet state socialism...
...The rise in prostitution captured widespread attention in Cuba and abroad as the shameful side of capitalism for some--or of socialism, for others...
...La Charanga Habanera, "Superturistica" from the CD Pa'que se entere La Habana (Magic Music, 1995...
...Standing close to her, in front or behind, the man, with Members of the timba band La Charanga Habanera on stage in San Jose, California...
...Spontaneous exchanges between performers and audience often culminated in the blurring of the two, with singers descending to the dance floor and people climbing on stage...
...And those who want health, money and a trip abroad...
...Furthermore, timba questioned the model of racial (in)equality and normative sexuality promulgated by the Revolution, implicitly critiquing the social hierarchies upon which the post-colonial nation and the socialist state were predicated...
...colonial times, has been depicted by male writers and artists as socially calculating and the embodiment of mestizaje...
...Beyond short-lived sexual transactions, seducing a tourist could be more than a matter of instant gratification...
...But in timba, the solar is exalted as the living bedrock of Cuban popular culture and entrepreneurial inventiveness ("where the dollar value goes up and down," "where love is made in colors"), and the niches are praised as pillars of Cuban society Unorthodox wheeling-and-dealing is portrayed as proof of the resilience and resourcefulness of black men in the face of material adversity and historical disadvantage...
...According to a report by Mauricio Vicent, the Cuba correspondent for the Spanish daily El Pals, only 15 Spanish-Cuban marriages were registered at the Spanish consulate in 1990...
...Additionally, many young Cubans consulted believed niche is a derivative of nigger...
...However, most whites I consulted confirmed that their use of the term as an appellative would be "inappropriate" for white people...
...Times have changed, and the black man's options are now broader because, unlike in the 19th century when migration from Europe was mostly male, foreigners of both genders now come to Cuba...
...It infused inner city lifestyles, identified as lumpen marginality by official media, with cultural pride...
...The strategic association of blackness and sexuality that catered to the desires of white foreigners, in sum, offered disenfranchised groups new avenues for upward mobility and the possibility of access to transnational networks of commerce and travel beyond the rigid structures of post-colonial revolutionary society But by the end of the decade, most economic reforms were stalled or reversed and the timba scene was in steep decline-labels bankrupt, bands censured, clubs closed and some of the music's stars in exile...
...They found instant promotion on new radio and TV shows, and signed record deals with small foreign independent labels then appearing in Cuba...
...1,190 in 1996...
...Yet timba-referred to, simply, as la mtisica cubana (the Cuban music)-was at once hailed by Cuban musicologists as Latin music's highest development and welcomed by cultural bureaucrats for its export-revenue potential...
...The whole orchestra would then kick in as the audience seconded the chorus "Yo lo que quiero es salud, dinero, y un viaje pa'I extranjero" ("What I want is health, money, and a trip Timba musicians were abroad...
...The tremor of timba was now carefully choreographed by a professional troupe, and the social history of Afro-Cuban performance repeated itself in this trajectory from marginal chabacaneria (crassness) to folkloric spectacle...
...connotations of racial violence...
...While its music, choreographies and aesthetics incorporate elements of hip-hop, reggae, rock and even flamenco, its lyrics mostly deal with the everyday urban experiences of black Cubans in the context of the economic crisis, often using humorous language filled with neologisms and double-meanings...
...And with the increasing influence of African American popular music, particularly rap, people are becoming aware of the phonetic similarity between nigger and niche, and investing in niche the contextual North American meanings of nigger...
...In other words, under a regime that negated social fragmentation along lines of race, class and gender, emerged a musical genre that rallied a massive audience precisely on these bases...
...In timba, as in Cuban colonial literature, the mulata is a conniving character with a deviant sensuality, one that "melts ice" but lacks a heart...
...The back cover, in turn, depicts an older and dark-skinned band member dressed as a negro calesero (a colonial carriage driver) waving the fingers on his left hand...
...Indeed, timba representations were not solely to be used for deployment within Cuba...
...Also, La Tropical was the only dancehall accessible with Cuban pesos at a rate only costly enough to make the occasion special for its mostly Afro-Cuban patrons...
...8. Cuban musicians often refer to timba's macho sound due to both the inclusion of a "macho" drum used in Santerla performance and their bands' aggressive brass sound, which they contrast to the "hembra" ("feminine") sound of North American and Puerto Rican salsa...
...Assuredly, black men's conquests-their "finishing up with all women in Havana"-particularly those white and for36 eign, boosted their egos, and in broadcasting these relationships, timba musicians sent shockwaves through Cuban society, ending the societal silence on race and in the process challenging revolutionary discourses on the nation and social equality DURING THE 1990S, TIMBA BECAME IMMENSELY POPULAR among Afro-Cuban youth, rallying a mass public around a discourse of racial pride and capitalist opportunity of transnational proportions...
...Thus, while the symbol of the post-colonial nation was a synthesis represented in the figure of the mulata, and that of manhood was the heroic white revolutionary, timba situated the niche as the epitome of both machismo and Cubanness and, at the same time, as the emblem of a nation open to the world...
...Catchy chorus lines lend themselves to a call-and-response play between singers and audience, and sudden rhythmic breaks encourage dancers to improvise and freely engage in el tembleque (the tremor...
...NG La Banda, "La bruja" from the CD La Bruja (Caribe Productions, 1994...
...THE MASS ARRIVAL OF WHITE EUROPEAN AND CANADIAN tourists in the early 1990s opened new horizons for a population with little previous contact with foreigners from capitalist countries...
...it increasingly led to a relationship culminating in marriage and migration abroad...
...La Charanga Habanera, "Extrahios Ateos" from the CD Me Sube La Fiebre (Havana: EGREM, 1993...
...officers routinely frisked customers and infiltrated the crowds on the lookout for fights and drugs...
...In timba, the term "mulato" is hardly used in its masculine form...
...Furthermore, the opening of the Cuban economy to foreign stakeholders fostered alternative public spheres around leisure activities that highlighted race as a marker of both cultural identity and social hierarchy, contradicting revolutionary ideology...
...1 4 In so doing, she obviously abandons the project of the mestizo nation, committing a national betrayal...
...She is assistant professor of media studies at the University of California in San Diego...
...From the CD Pa'que se entere La Habana...
...7. Los Van Van, "Soy Todo" from the CD Ay Dios Amparame (Caribe Productions, 1995...
...At the end of the twentieth century, the subservient negrito represented himself as a successful and proud niche, the embodiment of male power, and broadcast his "booty call" to the entire country and beyond...
...Therefore, in the new dollar economy, black male empowerment could take place through alternative channels like the bolsa negra (black market...
...Love was con- unapologetic about their spicuously absent from the wish list, perhaps success...
...Their asset lay in their currency vis-a-vis an interpretative community that extended beyond the island, one that could be seduced by the promise of interracial romance possibly leading to marriage and migration...
...Then, the singer would address the Cubans in the house and empathize with their hardships: "Those here who want health and money, raise your hands...
...his legs apart and knees slightly bent, extends his arms outward, as if surrounding her space with his four limbs without actually touching her, while he rhythmically and frenetically shakes his crotch, mimicking the frenzy of sexual climax...
...Moreover, foreign women from other racial and cultural backgrounds are perceived to be free from historical prejudices and immediate social referents to racial conflict, and they are believed to be more willing to provide their interracial relationship with bureaucratic legitimacy through marriage...
...But the disidentification with the stereotype U 0 5 0SEPTEMBER OCTOBER 2004 REPORT ON RACE, PART 1 does not reside in its endorsement, nor in its rejection, but in its full disclosure...
...In a friendly environment, its use is considered acceptable by blacks, even if used by whites...
...In a revolutionary society still ruled by a Creole elite, the upward mobility of the black man was promised through his labor and political participation, but hardly realized...
...Inside, under dim lights, dancers enjoyed ample dance room, clean bathrooms and designer drinks...
...They are highlighted in red and shaped like erect male organs in reference to his primary motive with women...
...The term was only infused with pride when timba bands began to use it...
...That is not a place where decent people go," they would say...
...And perhaps to validate their fears, La Tropical's gate was permanently flanked by police vans...
...The solar-a crowded inner city tenement typically inhabited by poor blacks-for example, is officially either chastised as a cradle of immorality and crime or represented as a stage for the performance of Afro-Cuban folklore...
...Although viewed with apprehension by some, they became Timba gloril heroes to their inner city audience, to Afro-Cuban whom they remained loyal-playing for free in their neighborhoods, and defend- as central to ing Afro-Cuban culture and lifestyles as identity and key to both national belonging and transnational opportunity...
...A live version can be viewed in DVD: Los Van Van, Live at Miami Arena (Habana Caliente, 2003...
Vol. 38 • September 2004 • No. 2
