Translation from the original Spanish by Rebecca Bodenheimer
It has become increasingly difficult to recognize the typologies that characterize and differentiate the various journalistic genres. Hybridity has achieved particular importance in the present moment. Even the interview—which, due to its particularities by virtue of the testimonial value and psychological impact that it entails, at its core remains tied to the question-answer format—has experimented with multiple written variants when it comes time to face an interviewee. In this vein, a valid option (albeit rarely utilized, given the existence of prejudices and quite a few detractors) is the self-interview, which has also become an efficient vehicle for transmitting information and opinions, or offering a portrait of a personality.
Because we at Cuba Counterpoints opt for an open-minded approach, and correspondingly don’t cling to a singular concept of the interview, nor to its conventional classifications, this is an ideal medium for introducing the reader to a conversation in which I dialogue with myself.
You often comment that in your approaches to popular music you act like a “scholar-fan.” What do you mean by that?
The term “scholar-fan” refers to the sociologists, musicologists and historians from Britain active in the 1980s who were interested in addressing the serious (read: academic) study of popular music—those genres and styles that had impacted them as adolescents. Therefore, I address the analysis of musical phenomena not so much from a scientific perspective as from a subjective one. That is, I am more influenced by the actual works of rockers, singer-songwriters and jazz musicians that I much admired in my youth, than by traditional academic writing. I admit that with such an approach, the sacrosanct notion of objectivity might not always guide my observations, but I take responsibility for that.
Nonetheless, you approach the study of music from a sociological and philosophical perspective. Why this eagerness to explore the production context?
This has to do with my training as a journalist. I am not a musicologist. If I have been able to achieve some knowledge about music, it has not been through a purely technical analysis, thought it is valid and necessary. But cultural dynamics—among which are musical phenomena—are more complex and all-encompassing. Umberto Eco has written that to understand contemporary society, one has to study what happens in an apparently trivial spaces such as a dance club. Similarly, in researching and analyzing various issues in the field of music, one also has to study the cultural expressions that correlate with a given musical performance. One must formulate a sociocultural perspective in which different fields of scientific knowledge may be combined. These types of approaches (i.e., inter-, trans-, and multi-disciplinary) are not widespread in Cuba. Though there is a proliferation of good analyses in the field of musicology, they lack the integrative perspective to which I am referring.
When speaking about Cuban music or music made in Cuba, there are basically two prevailing discourses: the popular and the academic. Do you think there is a point of convergence? Are Cuban intellectuals interested in bringing together academic discourse and music?
In my opinion, the convergence between popular and academic discourse about music should be undertaken by the press in its various modes of representation (such as the daily paper, the weekly, the monthly), each according to its distinct characteristics and methods for conducting journalistic work—that is, from purely informative to critical analysis, whether it is specialized or not. But for various reasons, the structure I am suggesting doesn’t work in present-day Cuba; or if it works, it is done badly, at least in relation to the topic of music. On the other hand, generally Cuban intellectuals are not interested in academic discourse about music, and in many cases don’t even know it exists, because they underestimate the role of music in national culture and they value it only as entertainment.
The analysis of sonic expression is plagued with stereotypes, reductionisms, and silences. The term “Cuban music” is often restrictive in the sense that its meaning is applied only to the arena of popular dance music, and tends to leave out the wide range of sounds that define the Cuban concert. Do you share this notion of the existence of “uncomfortable sounds”?
Yes. It seems to me that this expresses exactly the type of reductionism to which the question refers. One has to remember that among Cuban social scientists there has always been a major concern with the tradition of folkloric music, in particular that of African origin, canonized as spaces of artistic or inherited “purity.” The urban ambit tends to be seen as a space of mixture and outside influence—less pure, let’s say—where people assume that commercial objectives are paramount.
What do you think are the main difficulties that music-makers face in Cuba?
The first is the absence of a national market for music. This creates a situation where records and recording apparatuses are sold at prohibitive prices, and in a currency that is not the same as that which is paid to the average citizen. Therefore, it is almost impossible for a Cuban musician to have his/her records bought by the public or by the intended recipient for which the sonic creation is produced. In addition, there are too many musicians in relation to the State’s limited capacity to produce records. The topic is extremely complicated because at the same moment that the global record industry is disappearing, in Cuba it is only now beginning to be developed, but still has not managed to be profitable.
Secondly, the state-run music agencies, which for many years supported musicians, are currently ineffective because they don’t respond well to the demands of contemporary music creation. So they have become a sort of warehouse of artists, and they cannot figure out how to promote them. It’s not only about the lack of material conditions, since that could be solved with the diversification of organizational models. Rather, it’s about the lack of training in conceptual terms. The current relationship between institutions and musicians is characterized by organizational, legal and intellectual deficits. In large measure because of these absences, in this sector (as happens more generally in the Cuban cultural apparatus), people don’t know how to negotiate with artists who explicitly promote themselves as “outsiders” or those who love to work on the margins; if they did this, these types of artists could even be absorbed [into the cultural sector], as international experience has shown.
As a third major difficulty, I would mention the absence of [music] criticism, which has lagged far behind the creative explosion in Cuban music; in practice, this means that music criticism is not capable of analyzing contemporary phenomena.
One last question. Who is afraid of music in Cuba? Why is there still little to no visibility for studies of rock, rap, reggaeton, electronic music, etc.?
I would respond with a phrase by Silvio Rodríguez: “the limiters of the spring.” These include what I would call the guardians of tradition, who forget that Cuban culture has always been open to the world and has shown an incredible capacity to assimilate foreign cultural patterns. This is something expressed today in the transnational sensibilities of so many artists. This sensibility carries a different logic, erasing the conventional boundaries to which the guardians of tradition, and those who are afraid of music, cling.
Original photo of Joaquín Borges-Triana by Karen Dubinsky.