Creolizing Contradance in the Caribbean

2 Cuba: From Contradanza to Danz

PETER MANUEL 2 / Cuba From Contradanza to Danzón I f in the last century Cuban music has been known primarily for the mambo, the chachachá, and the son that generated salsa, in the nineteenth century by far the most predominant and distinctively national music was the contradanza , in the diverse forms it took over the course of its extended heyday. The contradanza (or “danza,” as it was later called) was also the era’s most seminal genre, parenting the habanera that graced European opera and music theater , the elegant figures of the tumba francesa’s masón dance, and, albeit ultimately , the mambo and chachachá themselves, which evolved from the danza ’s direct descendant, the danzón. Even some of the figures of modern salsa dancing derive from the contradanza, as do musical features of early-twentiethcentury genres such as the criolla, clave, and theater guajira. Finally, while the roots of the Cuban son itself have customarily been ascribed to rural folk music of eastern Cuba, considerable evidence suggests that they are better sought in 1850s urban contradanzas of Havana and Santiago, thus calling for a revision of standard Cuban music historiography. Indeed, it is in some respects easier to enumerate those Cuban genres—such as Santería music or neo-Hispanic punto—which were not generated by or directly related to the contradanza.1 Early History Despite its centrality to Cuban cultural history, many aspects of the contradanza ’s career remain obscure and contentious. Just as some European scholars disagree as to whether the contradance originated in England, France, or elsewhere , so do some Cuban musicologists differ as to whether the contradanza in Cuba should be traced primarily to input from Spain, Saint-Domingue (Haiti), France, the English West Indies, or elsewhere. 52 Peter Manuel The conventional scholarly and lay consensus, especially as established by novelist and musicologist Alejo Carpentier in his La música en Cuba ([1946] 2001), has been that the primary source of the Cuban contradanza was the French contredanse—whose form itself derived from the English longways country dance—as was introduced by refugees fleeing the Haitian Revolution (1791–1803). Carpentier’s thesis deserves close examination, both for its merits and its fundamental problems. The Haitian Revolution, which provoked prolonged chaos and destruction , precipitated the exodus of Saint-Domingue’s white population, along with many of their slaves and large numbers of free blacks and mulattos. Many refugees emigrated to New Orleans and other French Caribbean colonies, but over fifteen thousand settled in nearby eastern Cuba (then called Oriente), especially in and around its main city of Santiago de Cuba (whose population prior to that influx was less than ten thousand). Many took up cultivation of coffee, sugar, and cotton, while others established themselves as urban merchants and businessmen. In the decades preceding the Revolution, Saint-Domingue had hosted a lively cultural milieu, in contrast to provincial and sleepy Oriente and in keeping with its status as the economic dynamo of the Caribbean. The local French elite avidly cultivated the forms of dance and music—including the contredanse —that were popular among the Parisian bourgeoisie. Contemporary accounts indicate that many free blacks and even slaves adopted creolized forms of these arts, whether in the form of playing violin or flute or joining a contredanse , whose format of male and female lines replicated, with new figural variations, the Afro-Haitian calenda described in 1797 by Médéric Louis Elie Moreau de Saint-Méry (and cited in the previous chapter). As that keen observer noted, “Blacks, imitating whites, dance minuets and contradanzas. Their sense of attunement confers on them the first quality needed by a musician; for this reason many are good violinists, since this is the instrument they prefer” (in Carpentier 2001: 145 [1946: 125]). Once the diverse sorts of refugees had established themselves in eastern Cuba, they lost little time in fostering a more lively and cosmopolitan musical and artistic milieu than had existed previously on the island. Coffee plantation owners staged elegant soirées at their estates, with black musicians providing music on violin, flute, and other instruments. In Santiago de Cuba, as Carpentier (1946: 128–129) notes, their various activities included construction of a theater for staging dramas, comedies, and comic operas; the formation of a chamber orchestra and a black musical ensemble; the importation of pianos and other instruments; regular offerings of classical concerts, typically ending with a minuet; and, last but not least, the further popularization of the...