Music & Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba (review)

How did the Cuban Revolution change that island's famously rich and diverse popular music, and vice versa? These are the central questions explored in this deeply-researched and insightful book. Moore offers an evenhanded analysis of both the revolutionary regime and the popular music that has grown under its vigilant gaze—a growth stunted in some ways by censorship and repression, fomented in others by arts training programs and a strong ideological investment in popular music as an expression of revolutionary vitality. The result is a compelling analysis of major genres and styles such as timba, songo, nueva trova, and Afro-Cuban sacred music, delving into the musical complexity of each and revealing the ways their growth over the past fifty years has been shaped by and has influenced political transformations and state policies.

Havana's music scene on the eve of the revolution was dominated by nightclubs marketing Afro-Cuban allure to foreign tourists, in an atmosphere where extravagant descargas—ecstatic drum passages—were designed to serve as a soundtrack for drunkenness and prostitution. Not surprisingly, the stern cadres of the new regime did not look kindly on such practices and moved to scour the nightclub scene, nationalizing a few clubs while stifling others through policies curbing prostitution and gambling. The regime went so far as to censor PM, the 1961 Sabá Cabrera Infante and Orlando Jiménez Leal film shot in the teeming nightclubs—its depiction of their seedy vitality was deemed strictly counterrevolutionary.

But popular music had deeper roots than the revolution and could not be forced to conform entirely to new political exigencies. From the improvised conga refrains sung by participants at Fidelista rallies, turning them into celebrations beyond the regime's control, to the persistence of neighborhood comparsas, or carnival street bands, in contravention of revolutionary guidelines, Cubans insisted on a celebratory power of popular music that transcended narrow politics.

In one of the strongest chapters of the book, Moore traces the evolution of "Dance Music and the Politics of Fun" under 40 years of regime policies. The early 1960s were a grim period for the bands that had flourished in the 1950s, many prominent stars fled the island, the regime broke with copyright conventions, separating Cuban artists from the international recording market, and the domestic music industry languished under mismanagement and ideological restrictions. But by the early 1970s, dance bands had begun to recover and evolve. Their sound changed, influenced both by international trends like the rise of album-oriented rock—despite the regime's characterization of such influences as antinational and counterrevolutionary—and by the regime's investment in expanded access to conservatory training. New bands like Los Van Van and Irakere incorporated drum kits, keyboards, and electric basses, melding funk influence and more traditional Afro Cuban rhythms into a dense, propulsive polyrhythm, and experimented with extended harmonies and complex arrangements. Their creations paralleled and were influenced by New York salsa but created a distinct local sound that served as the basis for the flowering of timba and songo in the 1980s and 1990s. The domestic and international appeal of this music persuaded the regime to look more kindly upon it without ever creating an entirely harmonious relationship.

The regime has been more closely identified with the nueva trova of songsters like Pablo Milanés and Silvio Rodriguez, and in a fascinating chapter Moore shows how a genre that was initially critical of regime abuses was adopted as a form of propaganda—more persuasive internationally than domestically—and its most famous proponents rewarded by the state with luxurious perquisites. Moore also carefully tracks evolving state policies towards folkloric and sacred music, from targets for socialist uplift into staples of a cultural tourism economy.

Havana's music scene is once again dominated by nightclubs marketing Afro Cuban allure to foreign tourists, but this does not mean the music has come full circle. All of the experiments of the past fifty...