Author: Geoffrey Baker
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822349590
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 426
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Book Description
Geoffrey Baker traces the trajectory of the Havana hip hop scene from the late 1980s to the present and analyzes its partial eclipse by reggaet&ón.
Author: Wim Wenders
Publisher: Te Neues Publishing Company
ISBN: 9783823854449
Category : Buena Vista Social Club (Motion picture)
Languages : en
Pages : 0
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Book Description
Following up on the successful CD and movie that brought renewed fame to this Latin band is this book of photographs, film stills, and text featuring the performing artists and scenes of Havana. The material is compiled by Cooder and the directors of the documentary film of the same name. 150 color and duotone plates. Coincides with a Spring 2000 band tour.
Author: Maya Roy
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 266
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Book Description
Native Americans supplied the maracas. African slaves brought drums and ritual music, and Spaniards brought guitars, brass instruments, and clarinets along with European ballroom dancing. The advent of blues and jazz gave new forms to styles of songs, notably feeling songs, which joined the more traditional styles of trova and bolero. Cuban culture represents a convergence of these diverse backgrounds, and the musical heritage presented in this book reflects these traditions as well. In colonial times, African ritual sounds mixed with Catholic liturgies and brass bands of the Spanish military academies. Ballroom dances, including French music from Haiti popular in 18th-century Havana society, existed side by side with the cabildos (guilds and carnival clubs) and the plantations. The son, considered the expression of Cuban musical identity, had its origins in a rural setting in which African slaves and small farmers from Andalusia worked and played music together, developing many variations over the years, including big band music. Cuban music is now experiencing a major renaissance, and is enjoyed throughout the world.
Author: Miguel Arnedo-Gómez
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 9780813925424
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 236
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Book Description
Arising in the heyday of the music recently made famous by the Buena Vista Social Club, afrocubanismo was an artistic and intellectual movement in Cuba in the 1920s and 1930s that tried to convey a national and racial identity. Through poetry, this movement was the first serious attempt on the part of mostly white Cuban intellectuals to produce a national literature that incorporated elements from the Afro-Cuban traditions of lower-class urban blacks. One of its main objectives was to project an image of Cuban identity as a harmonious process of fusion between black and white people and cultures. The notion of a unified nation without racial conflicts and the idea of a mulatto Cuban culture and identity continue to play a prominent role in the Cuban imagination. The first book-length treatment of the poetry of this movement, Writing Rumba: The Afrocubanista Movement in Poetry questions the assumption that the poetry did manage to symbolize racial reconciliation and unification. At the same time it reveals a process of literary transculturation by which the dominant literature of European origins was radically transformed through the incorporation of formal principles from Afro-Cuban dance and music forms. To make his case, Miguel Arnedo-G mez establishes the nature of the movement s connections to Cuban blacks during this time, analyzes the poetry's links with the represented cultures on the basis of anthropological and ethnographic research, and explores the thought of leading figures of the movement, tying their discourse to specific sociocultural factors in Cuba at the time. Relating the poetry to music and dance, he further illuminates the interplay of power and culture in a social context. Essential for understanding Cuban nationalism and race relations today, Writing Rumba will appeal to an interdisciplinary audience not only in regional, cultural, and anthropological fields but also in the fields of music, dance, and literature.
Author: Ada Ferrer
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1501154575
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 436
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Book Description
WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY WINNER OF THE LOS ANGELES TIMES BOOK PRIZE IN HISTORY “Full of…lively insights and lucid prose” (The Wall Street Journal) an epic, sweeping history of Cuba and its complex ties to the United States—from before the arrival of Columbus to the present day—written by one of the world’s leading historians of Cuba. In 1961, at the height of the Cold War, the United States severed diplomatic relations with Cuba, where a momentous revolution had taken power three years earlier. For more than half a century, the stand-off continued—through the tenure of ten American presidents and the fifty-year rule of Fidel Castro. His death in 2016, and the retirement of his brother and successor Raúl Castro in 2021, have spurred questions about the country’s future. Meanwhile, politics in Washington—Barack Obama’s opening to the island, Donald Trump’s reversal of that policy, and the election of Joe Biden—have made the relationship between the two nations a subject of debate once more. Now, award-winning historian Ada Ferrer delivers an “important” (The Guardian) and moving chronicle that demands a new reckoning with both the island’s past and its relationship with the United States. Spanning more than five centuries, Cuba: An American History provides us with a front-row seat as we witness the evolution of the modern nation, with its dramatic record of conquest and colonization, of slavery and freedom, of independence and revolutions made and unmade. Along the way, Ferrer explores the sometimes surprising, often troubled intimacy between the two countries, documenting not only the influence of the United States on Cuba but also the many ways the island has been a recurring presence in US affairs. This is a story that will give Americans unexpected insights into the history of their own nation and, in so doing, help them imagine a new relationship with Cuba; “readers will close [this] fascinating book with a sense of hope” (The Economist). Filled with rousing stories and characters, and drawing on more than thirty years of research in Cuba, Spain, and the United States—as well as the author’s own extensive travel to the island over the same period—this is a stunning and monumental account like no other.
Author: Eugene Robinson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1439138095
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 349
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Book Description
In power for forty-four years and counting, Fidel Castro has done everything possible to define Cuba to the world and to itself -- yet not even he has been able to control the thoughts and dreams of his people. Those thoughts and dreams are the basis for what may become a post-Castro Cuba. To more fully understand the future of America's near neighbor, veteran reporter Eugene Robinson knew exactly where to look -- or rather, to listen. In this provocative work, Robinson takes us on a sweaty, pulsating, and lyrical tour of a country on the verge of revolution, using its musicians as a window into its present and future. Music is the mother's milk of Cuban culture. Cubans express their fondest hopes, their frustrations, even their political dissent, through music. Most Americans think only of salsa and the Buena Vista Social Club when they think of the music of Cuba, yet those styles are but a piece of a broad musical spectrum. Just as the West learned more about China after the Cultural Revolution by watching From Mao to Mozart, so will readers discover the real Cuba -- the living, breathing, dying, yet striving Cuba. Cuban music is both wildly exuberant and achingly melancholy. A thick stew of African and European elements, it is astoundingly rich and influential to have come from such a tiny island. From rap stars who defy the government in their lyrics to violinists and pianists who attend the world's last Soviet-style conservatory to international pop stars who could make millions abroad yet choose to stay and work for peanuts, Robinson introduces us to unforgettable characters who happily bring him into their homes and backstage discussions. Despite Castro's attempts to shut down nightclubs, obstruct artists, and subsidize only what he wants, the musicians and dancers of Cuba cannot stop, much less behave. Cubans move through their complicated lives the way they move on the dance floor, dashing and darting and spinning on a dime, seducing joy and fulfillment and next week's supply of food out of a broken system. Then at night they take to the real dance floors and invent fantastic new steps. Last Dance in Havana is heartwrenching, yet ultimately as joyous and hopeful as a rocking club late on a Saturday night.
Author: Salvador Jiménez Murguía
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1538107740
Category : Performing Arts
Languages : en
Pages : 411
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Book Description
With the recent shift in Cuba-US relations stemming from the relaxing of travel restrictions and an influx of American visitors, interest in Cuba and its culture has increased substantially. A new emphasis has been placed on the island country’s many cultural and artistic achievements, specifically in film. Cuban cinema is recognized around the world as having produced some of the most celebrated works originating from Latin America—such as Fresa y Chocolate and La Muerte de un Burócrata—as well as many prominent artists—including directors Tomás Gutiérrez Alea and Humberto Solás. In A Cuban Cinema Companion, editors Salvador Jimenez Murguía, Sean O’Reilly, and Amanda McMenamin have assembled a collection of essays about more than100 films across six decades, including feature films, documentaries, and animation. These entries also provide information on directors, actresses, and actors of Cuban cinema. Entries range from films like Retrato de Teresa to Buena Vista Social Club and include descriptions of each film’s plot, themes, and critical commentary, as well as comprehensive production details and brief suggestions for further reading. Beginning with the victory of the Cuban revolution—from the first ten years of what is often referred to as Cuba’s “Golden Age” of film to the present—this volume offers readers valuable insights into Cuban history, politics, and culture. An indispensable guide to one of the great world cinemas, A Cuban Cinema Companion will be of interest to students, academics, and the general public alike.
Author: Julia Cooke
Publisher: Seal Press
ISBN: 1580055311
Category : Travel
Languages : en
Pages : 250
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Book Description
Change looms in Havana, Cuba's capital, a city electric with uncertainty yet cloaked in cliché, 90 miles from U.S. shores and off-limits to most Americans. Journalist Julia Cooke, who lived there at intervals over a period of five years, discovered a dynamic scene: baby-faced anarchists with Mohawks gelled with laundry soap, whiskey-drinking children of the elite, Santería trainees, pregnant prostitutes, university graduates planning to leave for the first country that will give them a visa. This last generation of Cubans raised under Fidel Castro animate life in a waning era of political stagnation as the rest of the world beckons: waiting out storms at rummy hurricane parties and attending raucous drag cabarets, planning ascendant music careers and black-market business ventures, trying to reconcile the undefined future with the urgent today. Eye-opening and politically prescient, The Other Side of Paradise offers a deep new understanding of a place that has so confounded and intrigued us.
Author: Vincenzo Perna
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1351539086
Category : Music
Languages : en
Pages : 370
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Book Description
Cuban music is recognized unanimously as a major historical force behind Latin American popular music, and as an important player in the development of US popular music and jazz. However, the music produced on the island after the Revolution in 1959 has been largely overlooked and overshadowed by the Buena Vista Social Club phenomenon. The Revolution created the conditions for the birth of a type of highly sophisticated popular music, which has grown relatively free from market pressures. These conditions premised the new importance attained by Afro-Cuban dance music during the 1990s, when the island entered a period of deep economic and social crisis that has shaken Revolutionary institutions from their foundations. Vincenzo Perna investigates the role of black popular music in post-Revolutionary Cuba, and in the 1990s in particular. The emergence of timba is analysed as a distinctively new style of Afro-Cuban dance music. The controversial role of Afro-Cuban working class culture is highlighted, showing how this has resisted co-optation into a unified, pacified vision of national culture, and built musical bridges with the transnational black diaspora. Musically, timba represents an innovative fusion of previous popular and folkloric Afro-Cuban styles with elements of hip-hop and other African-American styles like jazz, funk and salsa. Timba articulates a black urban youth subculture with distinctive visual and choreographic codes. With its abrasive commentaries on issues such as race, consumer culture, tourism, prostitution and its connections to the underworld, timba demonstrates at the 'street level' many of the contradictions of contemporary Cuban society. After repeatedly colliding with official discourses, timba has eventually met with institutional repression. This book will appeal not only to ethnomusicologists and those working on popular music studies, but also to those working in the areas of cultural and Black studies, anthropology, Latin American st
Author: Patrick G. Redford
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781636840031
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :
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Book Description
Inside "Sleightly Out of Order" (a much anticipated second volume of the "Out of Order" series), you'll discover card plots, both classic and new. The magic routines range from spellers to triumphs. Tricks that tell stories to mentalism that messes with the audience's minds. You'll discover gambling demonstrations and even worthwhile approaches to the Sellers Diary effect. You'll also find creative versions of the Tommy Wonder Elizabeth series along side interesting applications of principles both Gilbreath and Kruskal. The routines in this volume explore the iconic Si-Stebbins system (which the Redford stack effortlessly transforms into with a quick overhand shuffle sequence), memorized deck orders, the Power/Parallel Stack, Heinlein Hold'em Stack, and more! All arrangements that this book explores are quickly accessible when using from the Redford stack! You'll also read a mix of routines that may be performed with any memorized stack order along side card miracles that wont require any sort of learned memorization. Of course, no Redford stack book would be complete without unlocking more of the built in features specific to the Redford Stack! Whether you're a seasoned stack worker or your first adventure exploring the wonderful world of a stack deck, this book is a must have.
