Geographies of Cubanidad: Place, Race, and Musical Performance in Contemporary Cuba by Rebecca M. Bodenheimer (review)

Rebecca Bodenheimer's Geographies of Cubanidad examines the intersections of place and race as they manifest in different musical practices throughout Cuba. Her ethnography analyzes nationalist discourses involving race in eastern and western regions, as well as in the cities of Havana and Matanzas, that point to cultural antagonisms between distinct locations. By tracing the historiography of divisions that were formed as a result of Spanish colonial rule and the sugar trade, she demonstrates that race was an intrinsic component of the kind of representation each region attained. Over time, Havana gained the upper hand in such discursive struggles because of its centrality to the spheres of economics and politics, while Oriente (the eastern part of the island) "often function[ed] as a discursive stand-in for rural and/or poor blackness, and backwardness generally" (35). Bodenheimer's ethnography therefore challenges unified notions of cubanidad (Cubanness) as presented in the writings of Martí and as supported by the current government, thus revealing ongoing divisions between groups associated with distinct areas.

Although Bodenheimer's work is not the first scholarly critique of regionalist discourses on race and place in Cuba, she is the first author to carry out a detailed ethnography of this nature. Her detailed exploration, supported by interviews and musical analyses, is an important contribution to understanding the contemporary music scene of the country. She examines a wide range of musical practices that include popular dance music, Afro-Cuban folkloric and sacred music, and rumba. She analyzes the lyrics of popular songs that contain messages of regionalism. One example, "La Habana no aguanta más" (Havana Can't Take Any More) by Los Van Van (a Havana-based band), shows the tensions resulting from an overpopulated capital filled with immigrants from other regions. The lyrics associate immigrants with delinquency, poverty, and blackness. A band from the eastern part of the country, the Orquesta Original de Manzanillo, responded to Los Van Van with "Soy cubano y soy de Oriente" (I Am Cuban and I Am from the East). The latter asserts the eastern provinces' extensive musical contributions to Cuban popular music and challenges the notion that Orientales always move to Havana. The tensions demonstrated in the lyrics of these two songs underline regionalist sentiment and hegemonic struggles between the two regions.

Bodenheimer underscores Santiago's identity with the traditional folklore from which many Havana-based genres derive. She notes how national folkloric traditions typically align Santiago with Eurocentric, black/white categories, therefore overlooking indigenous and Haitian influences. In a later chapter, Bodenheimer deals with racialized discourses that describe Matanzas as the "cradle of Afro-Cuban culture." In colonial times, Matanzas was home to the largest population of black slaves. This led to the belief that Afro-Cuban genres were mainly derived from the area and later incorporated into more hybrid forms in Havana. Although it is difficult to trace the origin of individual styles, Bodenheimer points out that many accounts refute the claim and suggest instead that Mantanzas is not "the 'cradle of Afro-Cuban culture', but rather a 'cradle of Afro-Cuban culture'" (151). She argues that Havana also "has a long history of African-derived religious and musical practice that calls in question the notion that Matanzas is the unequivocal source of Afro-Cuban traditions" (151). Yet the suggestion that Havana is a more hybridized city while Matanzas is more "authentic" or "pure" does inform musical practices that emerge from both locations.

The author shows how hybridity in Cuba is a phenomenon that has been displayed in different ways depending on location. In Havana and Mantanzas, innovations in rumba performance have resulted in the emergence of new genres such as batarumba (the fusion of batá drumming and rumba) and guarapachangueo (a Havana-based rumba percussion genre). Bodenheimer focuses on how musicians have made choices regarding which genres to fuse on the basis of social and cultural histories...