An examination of the Changui genre of Guantanamo, Cuba.
Item
-
Title
-
An examination of the Changui genre of Guantanamo, Cuba.
-
Identifier
-
AAI3047237
-
identifier
-
3047237
-
Creator
-
Lapidus, Benjamin Lindsay.
-
Contributor
-
Adviser: Stephen Blum
-
Date
-
2002
-
Language
-
English
-
Publisher
-
City University of New York.
-
Subject
-
Music | Folklore | History, Latin American
-
Abstract
-
This dissertation is concerned with a regionally specific genre of Cuban music, changui, and with how its practitioners transmit historical consciousness through song and dance. Changui is a unique and dynamic music that thrives in Guantanamo, the easternmost province of Cuba. For approximately a century before the revolution of 1959, a changui was a rural party with eating, drinking, dancing, and musical duels. Many changuiseros distinguished themselves as vocal improvisers and instrumentalists; songs by and about these musicians form a large part of the current changui repertoire and include references to past musical gatherings, local history, instrumentation, and changui itself. In this way, changui is a continuously self-referencing genre.;Closer to Haiti than to Havana, Guantanamo has been the conduit and crucible for some of the most important and seminal aspects of Cuban musical culture. The Guantanamo province and the larger surrounding Oriente region (eastern Cuba) have been the area of Cuba where white French creole and Afro-Haitian culture flourished since the time of the Haitian Revolution in 1791. For Cuba, the immediate musical effects of this Haitian presence begin with the contradanza craze of the nineteenth century and continue to be incorporated into the son, Cuba's national genre. A number of distinctive and little-researched genres still flourish in the region; these include changui, tumba francesa, montompolo, tajona and many others.;Changui is important and interesting for a number of reasons. First, it has many unique musical features best described as a dense melodic and rhythmic complexity that emphasizes upbeats and syncopation; the beautiful accompanying dance embodies the music's sophistication. To date, both the music and the dance have been understudied or studied inadequately. Second, a close examination of changui adds new perspectives to the study of mainstream Cuban music by focusing on how non-Cuban contributions have enhanced the development of Cuban music, particularly the Haitian role in the development of the son. Third, a study of changui stresses the importance of regional variety, highlighting the larger, complex and problematic relationship of regional musical culture to national musical culture. Finally, an investigation of changui reveals some of the weaknesses of the current Cuban genre classification, because it does not neatly fit into established categories thus questioning other genre relationships in Cuba.
-
Type
-
dissertation
-
Source
-
PQT Legacy CUNY.xlsx
-
degree
-
Ph.D.
