William Luis

Review
Reviewed Work(s): From Afro-Cuban Rhythms to Latin Jazz by Raúl A. Fernández
Review by: Robert Nasatir
Source: Afro-Hispanic Review, Vol. 25, No. 2 (FALL 2006), pp. 218-220
Published by: William Luis
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23055351
Accessed: 09-12-2019 02:36 UTC

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Robert Nasatir

hubiesen enriquecido aun mas la polivalencia de la recopilacion. Pero en definitiva

nos encontramos ante una publicacion brillantemente orquestada al proveer a la
academia de fecundas e interconexas contemplaciones en torno a una obra de cali
dad literaria canonica.

Pablo Martinez Diente.

Vanderbilt University.

Fernandez, Raul A. From Afro-Cuban Rhythms to Latin Jazz■ Berkeley, CA: U of

California FJ 2006. 199 pp.

Much of the research behind Raul A. Fernandez's From Afro-Cuban Rhythms

to Latin Jazz comes from the author's participation as a consultant to the
Smithsonian Institution's Jazz Oral History Program from 1994 to 2000. While
working in this capacity, Fernandez interviewed Afro-Cuban musicians in the
United States and throughout the world. His access to these musicians—Celia
Cruz, Mongo Santamarfa, and Israel "Cachao" Lopez, to name just a few—is both
the greatest asset to his short book and, unfortunately, underscores its most signif
icant weakness. While the study tries to assess the influence of Afro-Cuban music
over the course of the twentieth century, and Cuban son in particular, the result is
an unevenly divided introduction to Cuban dance music: one third historical and
theoretical analysis, two thirds biographical sketches with rich anecdotal testimo
ny.

As Fernandez organizes the book, chapters one, two, and three are devoted
to the roots of Cuban son, undeniably, and unquestionably, the foundation of
Cuban popular music in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. Fernandez seems
to feel it necessary to prove this point, along with others like the importance of
dancing in Cuban music, as if there were ever a debate over the subject.
Nonetheless, the historical information provided is accurate, if not new, and does
offer a concise overview of the genealogy of Cuban dance music from African
drumming traditions through the rumba, culminating in the son of the early 1900s.
What is presented, however, has already been explored in greater detail in works
by Cristobal Diaz Ayala, Helio Orovio, Natalio Galan, Leonardo Acosta, Peter
Manuel and John Storm Roberts. This shortfall could be mitigated significantly if
the book were clearly geared toward a popular, that is, non-academic, audience.
Unfortunately, Fernandez embraces terminology such as "transculturation," and
"imagined communities" without explanation or even acknowledgment of
Fernando Ortiz or Benedict Anderson, a move that likely alienates the popular
reader.

218 ~AHR

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 Book Reviews

After the historical background of son, the remainder of the first part focus
es on the what Fernandez calls, following the lead of Willie Colon, "the salsa con
cept." While there is room for such a discussion—one that distinguishes a unique
attitude and point of view identifiable with salsa—the author never really gets
there, instead referring vaguely to ethnic identity and "Latino pan-ethnic music"
without coming any closer to a definition of salsa than his predecessors (17). Salsa
has always been a slippery term, and for good reasons that at least initially were
more political and economic than aesthetic. In fact, the cornerstone of any
attempt at a definition of salsa must begin with its development in the United
States in the late 1960s and 1970s, a period after the Cuban Revolution when this
permutation of Cuban son, performed by Cuban, Dominican, and Puerto Rican
emigres, was distanced from its Cuban roots and guilt-by-association with Fidel
Castro in order to sell records during the Cold War. An argument can be made that
two unique strands of dance music based in the Cuban son developed soon after
1959. One remained on the island and is typified by Los Van Van, Irakere, and,
recently, NG la Banda. Likewise, another strand developed in exile, mostly in the
United States, and is performed by Cubans and Cuban-Americans, as well as other
Latin American immigrants and their children. This music, salsa, is represented by
Celia Cruz, Tito Puente, Mongo Santamarfa, Willie Colon, Ruben Blades, Johnny
Pacheco, and many others associated with the Fania record label. Fernandez, how
ever, elects not to address this important historical and cultural development.
Except for a few cursory references, the book barely mentions the 1959 revolution
and its impact on Cuban dance music on and off the island.
The reasons for this omission become obvious in the second half of the book,
where Fernandez relies most on his work for the Smithsonian Institution Jazz Oral
History Program. Because the book is based in great part on those interviews, and
because those artists featured in the second part all left Cuba just before or after
the Revolution—not all for political reasons—the perspective is not as balanced
as it should be. Rather, the study at no point makes clear that its subject is the
development of Cuban son up to the 1950s and its subsequent transformations off
the island, which at least is what this book is about.
The book picks up considerably in the second part. Through a series of biog
raphical sketches, Fernandez chooses not only the most well-known musicians but
also the most influential, categories that do not always overlap. Chapter four,
"Magic Mixture," is an appreciation of Israel "Cachao" Lopez, bassist, composer,
and innovator. Part of a dynasty of Cuban bass players, Cachao contributed to the
development of various off-shoots of the son, especially the charanga and descarga,
but had fallen in obscurity by the mid 1980s. Thanks to the appreciation and sup

AHR ~ 219

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Robert Nasatir

port of Andy Garcia, Cachao enjoyed a renewed interest in his compositions and
his contributions throughout the 1990s. Chapter Five, "Drumming in Cuban," is
an equally overdue study of percussionist Mongo Santamaria. Unlike Cachao,
Santamaria had an innate sense of trends in popular music and adapted to the
times. Popularity often opened him to charges of commercialization and Fernandez
does much to contextualize Santamarfa's success and his tremendous contribution
to popular music. The Santamaria chapter and chapter six, "Lords of the Tambor,"
are of particular interest as well because of the importance of the Afro-Cuban reli
gious drumming tradition in the development of Cuban dance music and Latin
Jazz. Chapter six offers brief studies of four percussionists: Armando Peraza, Carlos
"Patato" Valdes, Francisco Aguabella, and Candido Camera. Chapter seven,
"Chocolate Dreams," is dedicated to the life of trumpeter Alfredo "Chocolate"
Armenteros, known for his work with Arsenio Rodriguez, Beny More, Machito,
and his own ensembles. Chapter eight, "The Taste of iAzucar!" concludes the book
with a discussion of both the obvious and lesser-known qualities that made Celia
Cruz the brilliant and beloved one-of-kind artist that she was.
As a whole, From Afro-Cuban Rhythms to Latin Jazz falls short as a thorough
study of the development of the Cuban son over the course of the twentieth cen
tury. Simply put, it tries to be too many things. The first third of the book is unfo
cused and imprecise. Because it is too academic for the popular reader, much of the
historical information comes across as rehashing work that has already been done.
The last two thirds of the book, however, is an enjoyable and often illuminating
collection of biographical studies of some of the major contributors to Cuban
dance music. Because there is such a notable difference between the two parts of
the book, it is a shame that Fernandez did not include more sketches based on his
interviews for the Smithsonian Institution Jazz Oral History Program. One won
ders, for example, what insights he could offer about Bebo Valdes, Chucho Valdes,
and Carlos del Puerto, whom he also interviewed. Despite the book's shortcom
ings, Fernandez did have the rare opportunity to get these performers' stories first
hand, preserving for posterity a unique generation of artists the likes of which we
will never see again.

Robert Nasatir
Fisk University

Moore, Robin D. Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba. Berke
CA: U of California R 2006. 350 pp.

In his compelling and beautifully written new study, Music and Revolutio

~ AHR

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