Cuban Flute Style: Interpretation and Improvisation

SUE MILLER
Lanham, MD, Scarecrow Press, 2014
xxix + 324pp., ISBN 978-0-8108-8441-0 (£44.95, hardback)

Sue Miller’s monograph on Cuban flute style will be of interest to ethnomusicologists

and flautists alike. It is a clearly written, highly musical book that serves as both a guide
to performance practice and an academic text. Miller brings together performance as a
research technique, interviews with musicians, lessons with renowned flautists, and
detailed and extensive transcription and analysis of recordings to create a ‘musical
archaeology’ (246) of creative processes, interpretation and improvisation in Cuban
charanga flute performance.

Charanga ensembles usually consist of a wooden five-key flute (or less often a metal
Boehm-system flute), violins, double bass, piano, timbales, congas, güiro and vocals.
While early twentieth century ensembles performed danzones, these ensembles are
particularly associated with mid-century cha-cha-chás and mambos. Chapter 1 traces the
history of the charanga, its primary exponents and renowned flute soloists. In Chapter 2,
Miller documents charanga flute style performance techniques for both the wooden five-
key flute and the metal Boehm flute pointing to similarities and differences. Charanga
flute style is characterised by its high tessitura and Miller provides relevant fingerings for
altissimo notes on the Boehm flute, as well as diagrams of three alternative sets of
fingerings for all notes of the five-key wooden flute (as executed by Joaquín Oliveros of
Orquesta Jorrín, Polo Tamayo of Charanga de Oro, and Eddy Zervigón of Orquesta
Broadway). The book is thus a wonderful resource for flautists wishing to learn this style.
It also provides insights into how classical method books are employed in distinct
contexts: for example, Miller describes how nineteenth-century method tutors have
contributed to the transmission of this part-oral, part-written ‘tradition’, how their
exercises are practised both at pitch and an octave higher, and how extracts from these
exercises find their way into improvisations. Likewise, Miller documents how ‘classical’

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flutes have been adapted to suit the aesthetics of the genre (for instance, the five-key
flute’s blow and finger holes are often enlarged).

In Chapters 3, 4, 5 and 8, Miller provides transcriptions and analyses of recordings to

document shifts in performance style. She traces the transition from mere melodic
embellishment of composed danzón melodies in the early twentieth century to the solo
improvisations of renowned Cuban charanga flautists in the 1940s and 1950s with their
more extensive rhythmic, motivic and sequential material. Richard Egües (of Orquesta
Aragón) and José Fajardo (of Fajardo y sus Estrellas) are widely regarded as the two
exemplars of twentieth-century Cuban charanga flute improvisation, and in Chapter 5,
Miller compares their styles, primarily through transcription and analysis of recordings.
She complicates stereotypes of Egües as more melodic and Fajardo as more rhythmic
(dedicating a chapter to each), and excavates how each creates his own sound (notable is
how Fajardo maintains interest in his mambo improvisations over a single dominant
seventh chord via virtuosic rhythmic invention). Miller also probes the relationship
between written composition and improvisation by comparing Richard Egües’ written
score for Bombon Chá (1955) with his Bombon Chá solos during live and studio
recordings (Chapter 4). Quotation, borrowing, and arrangements of melodies from other
genres had been frequent in danzones from the nineteenth century (including excerpts
from sea shanties, Cuban and US popular songs, classical repertoire, other popular Cuban
genres and exercises from method books), and Miller analyses how this practice is
manifest both in written scores and in charanga flute improvisations in Chapter 6. She
draws upon Henry Louis Gates Junior’s concept of signifyin(g) and Samuel Floyd’s
adaptation of it, to argue that through these borrowings, charanga music ‘retains its
Cuban identity through its clave-based, communicative aesthetic’ (188).

One of Miller’s most insightful methods is her analysis of recordings of the same piece
over several decades. She compares recordings of Tres Lindas Cubanas from the 1920s,
1930s and 1950s in Chapter 3 to trace continuities and differences, pointing out how
improvisatory passages relate to composed material and outlining lineages of
performance practice. She dispels popular narratives in Cuba that early twentieth-century

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players performed in a ‘romantic’ style, suggesting that it was only in the 1930s and early
1940s that rubato and vibrato (in slower, lower register passages) were fashionable. In
Chapter 8, she again compares versions of the same piece – this time Richard Egües’ El
Bodeguero – to analyse renowned flautists’ sounds (on five-key and Boehm flutes)
including Egües himself (with the Orquesta Aragón in 1956, 1984, 1997 and 2001), José
Fajardo (1950s-1964), Joaquín Oliveros (with William Rubalcaba in 2002), and Eduardo
Rubio (with the Orquesta Aragón in 2003) in Cuba, and also Johnny Pacheco (of Fania
Records fame) in New York in 1960 (pointing to a distinctive New York charanga
aesthetic).

In Chapter 7, Miller turns to transmission processes, practice routines and her own
experience of learning the style with Richard Egües in the early 2000s before he died.
She documents both Egües’ pedagogy (which focused on imitation and adaptation), tips
she received from Egües and other renowned flautists on performance and practice
techniques (including Joaquín Oliveros, Polo Tamayo and Eddy Zervigón), how she
learned from copying and analysing recordings, and how she went on to develop her own
solos and create recordings with her UK-based charanga: Charanga del Norte (sample
scores of Egües’ Bombon Chá and El Bodeguero transcribed and arranged by Miller for
her charanga are provided in an appendix).

The book begins with a foreword by Robin Moore where he first, points to the famous
musicology versus anthropology ethnomusicological divide of the 1950s; second, laments
the lack of scholarly work on music performance and style; and third, commends Miller
for ‘documenting the virtuosity, complexity and creativity of Latin American music for
future generations’ (xiii). I concur, but if I had to criticise this book, I would wish for
slightly more socio-historical context, although these are covered to some extent by
books which complement this one, for example Moore’s Music & Revolution (2006), and
Madrid and Moore’s Danzón (2013). Moreover, with such beautiful transcriptions and
numerous illustrative photographs, it is a shame that the publisher could not have ensured
that the print quality was better (especially given the price of the book!). An
accompanying CD or web page would also have enhanced the book enormously. But

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these are minor quibbles in what is a really valuable contribution and a welcome
resource.

References
Madrid, Alejandro L., and Robin D. Moore. 2013. Danzón: Circum-Caribbean Dialogues in
Music and Dance. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Moore, Robin D. 2006. Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba. Berkeley:
University of California Press.

HETTIE MALCOMSON
University of Southampton, UK
Email: h.malcomson@soton.ac.uk
© 2015, Hettie Malcomson