The methodology of "Generic Complexes" and the analysis of autochthonous Cuban music PDF

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1 The methodology of "Generic Complexes" and the analysis of autochthonous Cuban music The methodology of "Generic Complexes" and the analysis of autochthonous Cuban music. Armando Rodríguez Ruidíaz The Generic Complexes One of the greatest paradoxes of Cuban musicology in the 20...

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1 The methodology of "Generic Complexes" and the analysis of autochthonous Cuban music

The methodology of "Generic Complexes" and the analysis of autochthonous Cuban music. Armando Rodríguez Ruidíaz

The Generic Complexes One of the greatest paradoxes of Cuban musicology in the 20th century is that which concerns the methodological organization of indigenous Cuban popular music in generic complexes, which was based mainly on the works of Cuban musicologist Argeliers León. In his book Del Canto y el Tiempo, León divided the study of Cuban popular music into various sections that were presented in the following order: Yoruba music, Bantu music, Abakuá music, Guajira music, The son, The rumba, The guaracha, The song, The bolero, Instrumental music, From contradanza to danzón, to chachachá and Towards the present, in the present. It is possible to perceive at a first glance that Argeliers León did not follow a logical and organized methodology in his cataloging of the Cuban popular music generic groups, as corroborated by his disciple Dr. Olavo Alén Rodríguez when he says: “Both in his book Folkloric Cuban music as in his masterpiece Del canto y el tiempo, he [León] presents an overview of our music primarily based on a description of the genres originated in Cuba. But those divisions proposed by Argeliers did not seek to have the rigor of a scientific system that was consistent with the classification principles of coherence, exclusivity, completeness and, above all, dichotomy.” And Alén continues to explain in reference to the text of Argeliers León: “The index of subjects that Argeliers established for Del canto y el tiempo even included chapters that are not properly musical genres. Such is the case of "Yoruba Music", "Bantu Music" and "Abakuá Music". Nor is he consistent with this criterion when he titled his fourth chapter "Guajira music", or even when he chose "Instrumental music" and "Towards the present, in the present" to designate chapters nine and eleven of the mentioned book. Of course, the genre concept did not have to be, nor it was, a “straitjacket” for Argeliers to elaborate his panoramic presentation of the music of Cuba, but it was an ideal way for him to undertake the history of this Cuban artistic form, without having to utilize the historical or chronological systems. A single story became several different ones, which only converged in that they were dedicated to describe the music that was born in Cuba. Even in those chapters where Argeliers used terms that indicated an order of the information based on the musical genres born in our country, he failed to compartmentalize homogeneous levels of musical events. Thus, "El son" and "La rumba" cover much higher levels than "La guaracha", while "The song and the bolero" unites two totally different levels of musical events as equals. Remember that all Cuban boleros are songs, while all songs are not necessarily boleros. This fact may serve as an indicator to show that this last

Armando Rodríguez Ruidíaz

genre is not only at a lower level of organization than the song, but also that it can be seen as a subset belonging to it.”1 It is surprising to observe how Argeliers León, a professed and enthusiastic Marxist, and a deep connoisseur of dialectical materialism, approached the analysis of Cuban popular musical genres by arbitrarily isolating generic groups in sealed compartments, as if they were individualized entities unrelated to each other, instead of being part of a continuous flow that developed coherently in time and space. The following definition of the Marxist dialectic principles highlights the great difference that exists between its basic concepts and those that were applied to the analysis of the generic complexes by Leon and his disciples: “In opposition to metaphysics, the dialectic does not consider nature as a casual conglomerate of objects and phenomena, separated and isolated from each other and without any relationship of dependence with each other, but as an articulated and unique whole, in which objects and the phenomena are organically linked to each other, depend on each other and condition each other. Therefore, the dialectical method claims that no phenomenon of nature can be understood if taken in isolation, without connection with the phenomena that surround it, since every phenomenon from any field of nature can become absurd if it is examined without connection with the conditions around it, detached from them; and on the contrary, every phenomenon can be understood and explained if it is examined in its indissoluble connection with the surrounding phenomena and conditioned by them.”2 Despite the obvious methodological and conceptual deficiencies of the generic complex system, the controversial theory was adopted and developed by some disciples of León, such as Olavo Alén, and became sort of a dogma or official doctrine within Cuban musicology, which is not surprising if we consider the enormous influence that Argeliers León possessed, as a representative of the ideological-cultural apparatus within the Cuban revolutionary government from the sixties decade. Between 1961 and 1970, León served as Director of the Institute of Ethnology and Folklore of the Academy of Sciences of Cuba and also directed the Folklore Department of the National Theater of Cuba, the Music Department of the José Martí National Library and the Department of Music of the House of the Americas. In that same period of time, León served as a professor at the Municipal Conservatory of Havana, taught African Cultures in Cuba, at the University of Havana, and musicology at the Instituto Superior de Arte (ISA).

1

Alén Rodríguez, Olavo: Historia y teoría de los complejos genéricos de la música cubana, Revista Clave, Publicación del Instituto Cubano de la Música. ISSN 0864-1404. Año 12, Número 1, 2010, p. 50. 2

Vissarionovich Stalin, Joseph: Sobre el materialismo dialéctico y el materialismo historico. De la colección: J. V. Stalin, Cuestiones del leninismo. Septiembre de 1938. Ediciones en lenguas extranjeras, Pekin. Primera edición: 1977. p. 852. http://www.marx2mao.com/M2M%28SP%29/Stalin%28SP%29/DHM38s.html

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3 The methodology of "Generic Complexes" and the analysis of autochthonous Cuban music

Regarding the generic complexes Olavo Alén have stated: “It was in the eighties, during the preparation of the classes that I taught in various conservatories, universities and musicological research centers in very different places in the world, that I tried to apply some elements of analysis, taken from the set theory of mathematics, to the study and organization of our country's music. Thus I arrived to the idea that there are five ways to make Cuban music, each one very different from the other. Since the guiding element to conduct a systemic observation had been the musical genres that were born in Cuba, I decided to call each of the five groups that I had detected a generic complex…" “… I individually named the five generic complexes of Cuban music as: son, rumba, Cuban song, danzón and punto guajiro. Later, I identified a sixth who is not totally Cuban, because many of its essential components were not born on the Island, but in Africa. But due to the intense process of evolution of this music in our country, many other features were born here over time. We should recall that for more than three centuries, hundreds of thousands of Africans were forced to populate Cuba as slaves, without the slightest possibility of returning to their country of origin. With them, some typologies of music emerged that are not totally African or Cuban. Here too, for better or worse, I used a term already known, but used by many experts with other meanings: Afro-Cuban music.”3 The methodology of generic complexes has long been questioned. The well-known Cuban musician and instrumentalist Leonardo Acosta, says about it in his article On generic complexes and other issues “Fortunately, the theology [sic] of generic complexes has been viewed with skepticism in musicological circles of several countries, including Cuba , where quite a few musicologists have oscillated between rejection, disbelief and disdain ... "4 Alejo Carpentier, in his book Music in Cuba, intuits the dialectical unity of the indigenous Cuban music genres, in his analysis of the contradanzas of Manuel Saumell; although his conclusions in this regard suffer from a teleological projection that diverts them from their final objective. According to Carpentier, “Saumell is absolutely prophetic in regard to identifying certain rhythms, which were going to be utilized under new names in the future. The notion that Miguel Faílde, the mulatto musician from Matanzas, "created" the danzon, launching it in 1879, collapses when you read a Saumell contradance, belonging to the most popular group, which is titled La Tedezco. All the Cuban danzón is already enunciated in the eight initial bars of this piece. Nothing will be added – apart from an aggregation of sections - until the year 1920, when the decline of that dance of such a good Cuban flavor began. But there is more: in the second [sections] of his contradances in six by eight, Saumell insistently uses a rhythm composed of one quarter, two eighth notes, one quarter (the coriambo), which in the future was going to be inseparable from genres to which it has been attempted to bestow an autonomous life. The clave,

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4

Alén Rodríguez, 2010: 52.

Acosta, Leonardo: De los complejos genéricos y otras cuestiones, en Otra visión de la música popular cubana, Ediciones Museo de la Música, 2014, p. 49.

Armando Rodríguez Ruidíaz

the guajira, the criolla, which were going to be composed by musicians of good popular inspiration like Anckermann, Mauri, Casas Romero, and others, are not based in any other rhythm. If a difference between clave, guajira and criolla could be noticed, it is merely superficial: melody, tempo, harmonic atmosphere – are simpler in a clave, more ambitious in a criolla; but the rhythmic and tonal basis is the same. Hence, Saumell is not only the father of contradance, as he has been called. He is the father of the habanera (first of La Amistad), of danzón (La Tedezco), of the guajira (second of La Matilde), of the clave (La Celestina), of the criolla (second of La Nené), and of certain modalities of the Cuban song (second of Sad Memories). All that was done after him was to expand and particularize elements that were already fully exposed in his work.”5 In the previous fragment it is possible to distinguish a tendency to perceive history in reverse motion (from cause to effect instead of effect to cause), which is evidenced in Carpentier's analysis, which attributes a mysterious prophetic quality to the music of Saumell when he uses rhythms that were to be utilized in the future, without realizing that it was not Saumell who was anticipating the creation of certain later musical genres, but it was the composers of more recent times who used elements of previous styles that were already part of our cultural tradition, thus establishing an organic continuity between the antecedent and consequent styles. That teleological tendency (which assigns a predetermined destination to certain existential events) of some of our musicologists, also becomes evident when Argeliers León asserts that the evolution of Cuban son began in the 18th century, as if the first composers of guarachas and Cuban rumbas would already had the purpose of composing sones in that distant era. The son, in its classical form, popularized by the tríos, sextetos and septetos from the twenties in Havana, was the result of a long evolutionary process that began approximately in the 18th century; when the first Creole modifications were introduced in European formal patterns, that were developed at a later time through various genres such as the guaracha and the rural and urban rumbas. Instead of the disarticulated and chaotic structure proposed by the generic complexes theory, the autochthonous Cuban popular music is indeed similar to a macro-organism in which all its components descend from a common origin and are related, in one way or another, through its entire evolutionary process, which is shown as the development of a formal and stylistic primeval prototype; the common ancestor of all posterior generic forms.

A necessary clarification Before beginning to explain the origin and evolution of the genres included in the concept of autochthonous Cuban popular music, we believe it is appropriate to make some comments.

5

Carpentier, Alejo: La música en Cuba, Editorial Letras Cubanas, 1979, p. 151-154.

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5 The methodology of "Generic Complexes" and the analysis of autochthonous Cuban music

Although, particularly in Cuba, the terms popular music and classical music have been widely questioned and frequently discussed, it is our opinion that, to arrive to a successful analysis of the subject matter, we must establish a clear distinction between the two categories; because there are obvious differences between them that could cause great confusion and compromise the objectivity of this work. That is why we must begin by clarifying that this study is dedicated to the so-called Cuban popular music, and not to the classical, academic or concert music. Secondly, we must mention that, in a very general sense, the musical production related to the Island of Cuba can be objectively divided into five different categories: 1 - Music created in Cuba by individuals born on the Island, which includes original structural elements that identify it as a native Cuban national product, such as in the case of Manuel Saumell's contradances and the sones of Ignacio Piñeiro. 2 - Music created in Cuba by individuals born on the Island, which does not include elements that identify it as a Cuban national product, such as certain works by Nicolás Ruíz Espadero, José White, Ignacio Cervantes, José Ardévol and Juan Blanco. 3 - Music created in Cuba by individuals born on the Island, which show structural elements that identify it as belonging to other cultures, such as the famous Malagueña by Ernesto Lecuona. 4 - Music created in Cuba by individuals that were not born on the Island, which includes structural elements that identify it as a national product, such as the Guaracha El cuarto de Tula by the Galician-Cuban performer-composer Sergio Siaba, or the Sonata for Guitar of the Catalan José Ardévol. 5 - Music created in Cuba by individuals that were not born in Cuba, which does not include elements that identify it as a national product, such as the Fourth Sonata a Tres by José Ardévol, and the Anthem of Galicia, by the Galician composer José Veiga. In the specific case of this essay, we will only consider the works composed in Cuba or outside Cuba, by Cuban or foreign composers, which show structural characteristics that identify them as works of autochthonous Cuban popular music.

The Prehistory of Cuban popular music If we define the term prehistory as a period of time where the necessary resources to preserve a narrative or description of historical events did not exist, we could consider that the prehistory of Cuban folk music extends from the discovery of the Island, on the 27th of October 1492, until the beginning of the 19th century, when the first printed scores appear in Cuba; because although some mentions of certain musical activities have been preserved until now, we do not have any information that allows us to form an objective idea of how Cuban music sounded before that time.

Armando Rodríguez Ruidíaz

The first European songs and dances heard on the Island of Cuba after their discovery, were obviously the same ones that were played and danced in Spain and other European countries during that same time; as Natalio Galán tells us: "... by investigating what was danced in Spain in 1500 we can imagine its correspondence in Cuba."6 In Spain, between the end of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century, certain dance songs were performed in addition to the vocal and instrumental music used in religious ceremonies. That music was utilized in the most refined as well as the most popular environments, and corresponded to the styles called basse dance (low dance) where the dancers moved their feet close to the floor, and the haute dance (high dance), which included leaps, heel strokes, stomps and pirouettes. Some of those dance songs such as the pavanas, the allemandes, the gallardas, the saltarellos and the corrantos belonged to a widespread style throughout Europe, in which the onbeats of the measure were generally stressed; while in other songs-dances of the same period such as the zarabanda, chacona, canarios, zambapalo, retambico and gurumbé, it was possible to appreciate another peculiar rhythm, with strong African influence, called hemiola or sesquiáltera; which may be defined as the alternation or superposition of rhythmic groups with a binary and ternary accent and equal duration, or as the consecutive or simultaneous execution of a measure in 6/8 and another in 3/4, or vice versa. As can be seen in the following example:

One of the most important characteristics of the African music becomes evident in the sesquiáltera rhythm, its rhythmic flexibility, which radically differ from the European style that tends to the strict coincidence of the voices on the measures' beats.7 That rhythmic ambiguity present in the sesquiáltera provides the African music and its derivatives with a fluctuating and sensual quality that distinguishes it from many other musical styles. Apparently, that peculiar rhythmic pattern of the sesquiáltera was already present in Spain long before the conquest of America,8 and was enthusiastically adopted by the population

6

Galán, Natalio: Cuba y sus sones, Pre-Textos, Artegraf S.A., Madrid, España, 1997, p. 21.

7

Rodríguez Ruidíaz, Armando: El origen de la música cubana. Mitos y Realidades, 2015. https://www.academia.edu/4832395/El_origen_de_la_m%C3%BAsica_cubana._Mitos_y_realidades, p. 13-14. 8

Rodríguez Ruidíaz, 2015: 19

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7 The methodology of "Generic Complexes" and the analysis of autochthonous Cuban music

of the new world, which took it as the basis for the creation of new styles and musical genres. Hence, many of these songs-dances with the sesquiáltera rhythm were associated to the Americas by the Spanish people and mentioned in important literary works, such as the novel La Ilustre Fregona by Ignacio Cervantes, where the author mentions the chacona as an indiana amulatada (indigenous mulatto girl), as well as in El amante agradecido by Lope de Vega, in which it the author affirms that this musical genre came to Spain through the frontier.9 The following excerpt taken from a very popular anonymous song during the 16th century in Spain, called Danza del Hacha, is representative of the European style where the onbeats are predominantly stressed.10

Fragment of Danza del Hacha, anonymous Spanish song.

Unlike in the previous example, in the following section of the song Un Sarao de la Chacona by Spanish Renaissance composer Juan Arañés, the rhythmic flexibility of the sesquiáltera is highlighted.11

9

Auserón, Santiago: El ritmo perdido. Sobre el influjo negro en la canción española. Editorial Universitaria. Universidad de Guadalajara. Editorial Planeta Mexicana, 2013, p. 220. 10

Savall, Jordi y La Capella Reial de Catalunya: Villancicos y Danzas Criollas, CD, track 2. Transcription by the author. 11

Savall, Jordi y La Capella Reial de Catalunya: Villancicos y Danzas Criollas, CD, track 1. Transcription by the author.

Armando Rodríguez Ruidíaz

Fragment of Un sarao de la chacona, Juan Arañés, 17th century.

We can also perceive in the previous example of Juan Arañés another element through which Africans introduce in their music a feeling of rhythmic elasticity and ambiguity. This is the so-called syncopation, ...