Essays on Cuban Music: North American and Cuban Perspectives

This volume consists of 13 articles written by 9 authors including 4 Cuban scholars and 5 North American ethnomusicologists. The articles by Cuban scholars, translated from largely out-of-print publications, constitute a selection of Cuban research on their island’s music, and present a set of perspectives which complement those of the North American authors. The articles cover such areas as descriptions of the Afro-Haitian-derived rumba francesa, the traditional Afro-Cuban rumba, and the rural punto, as cultivated by peasants of Hispanic descent; aspects of the music bureaucracy in contemporary Cuba; the American music industry’s dissemination of Cuban-derived salsa in New York City; Afro-Cuban cult music; the history and current status of charanga dance bands; and others.