Music in Latin America and the Caribbean: An Encyclopedic History. Volume 2: Performing the Caribbean Experience.

Garcia, David F.

Music in Latin America and the Caribbean: An Encyclopedic History. Volume 2: Performing the Caribbean Experience. Edited by Malena Kuss. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2007. [xiii, 537 p. ISBN 978-0-292-70951-5. $65.00]

Performing the Caribbean Experience is the second volume of the proposed four-volume work Music in Latin America and the Caribbean. This multi-volume work is a project of The Universe of Music: A History, initiated by and developed in cooperation with The International Music Council. The editor, Malena Kuss, is Professor Emeritus of Musicology at the University of North Texas and a well-respected scholar of Latin American 20th century art music. Kuss gathered many scholars of Caribbean music to contribute essays discussing the music and instruments of this culturally diverse region. The essays are substantive, informative, and representative of the scholarly breadth of the contributors.

The volume begins with the Nobel Lecture given by the St. Lucian-born recipient of the 1992 Nobel Prize in Literature, Derek Walcott. Though he does not address music, Walcott uses stark and colorful imagery to introduce the reader to the historical, cultural, and social contradictions that define the Caribbean landscape. Malena Kuss and Hazel Campbell follow with an overview of the colonial history and legacy of Caribbean culture and society, and more recent events and trends in technology, politics, and culture. The next chapter, written by the late Cuban musicologist Argeliers Leon (1918-1991), introduces the reader to the African contributions to the Caribbean. The next seven chapters focus on the musical cultures of Cuba, beginning with Carmen Maria Saenz Coopat and Maria Elena Vinueza's essay on oral traditions. This essay covers music associated with popular Catholic rituals, Africanbased syncretic religions, spiritism, and secular folkloric traditions. Juan Mesa Diaz's and Maria Elena Vinueza's contributions detail Ocha-Ifa, popularly known as Santeria (a neo-African religious system derived from Yoruba traditions of spiritual and ancestral worship and divination), and its musical system, respectively. Victoria Eli Rodriguez discusses the organology of the drums constituting the guiro and bata ensembles utilized in Santeria rituals. The next chapter by Argeliers Leon and Maria Teresa Linares provides an overview of Cuba's comparsa or secular processional traditions. Theatrical traditions of the Chinese minority ethnic group in Cuba, a relatively little studied group, is the topic of the following essay written by Linares. Kuss contributes "Cuba: A Quasi-Historical Sketch," the final chapter covering Cuba in which the editor discusses at length the intersections of Cuban political history, nationalist literary and art musical movements of the mid-twentieth century, and Cuban institutions of musical scholarship and production.

The next three chapters cover Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Kuss discusses Puerto Rico's folkloric traditions (musica jibara, bomba, popular Catholic rituals, danza, and plena), art music of the latter half of the 20th century, and institutions of musical education and production. With two chapters Martha Ellen Davis provides a comprehensive introduction into the Dominican Republic's rich and complex musical landscape, beginning with a thoughtful discussion of this nation's unique conceptions of its national identity as expressed racially and musically. Davis's first chapter covers in detail oral musical traditions (sacred and secular, African- and Hispanic-derived), while her second chapter provides a historical perspective on these same traditions.

Gerdes Fleurant contributes the next two chapters on Haiti: the first is a detailed explanation of Vodou's religious and musical systems and its impact on Haitian folk, art, and popular music; the second offers a broader perspective on Haitian music beyond Vodou. Dominique Cyrille writes an insightful discussion of music-making in Martinique from the colonial period through the post-colonial era, all the while situating this island's musical traditions in its unique and complex ideological, political, and literary contexts. Olive Lewin follows with two chapters on the rich African heritage in Jamaican musical traditions, including practices associated with Jamaica's four major "cult" groups (Maroon, Kumina, Revival, and Rastafarianism), mento, Jonkunnu, ska, and reggae. The music of Barbados and The Bahamas are the topics of the next two chapters, written by Trevor G. Marshall, Elizabeth F. Watson and Veronica Ingraham, who detail the long struggle of Barbadians and Bahamians of African descent to retain and revive the musical traditions of their ancestors while also incorporating the music (e.g. calypso, soca, and reggae) of their Caribbean neighbors. Several co-authors, including Jocelyne Guilbault, contribute the next two chapters consisting of comprehensive surveys on the music of St. Lucia, St. Kitts and Nevis.

The following two chapters, written by Peter Manuel and Scofield Pilgrim respectively, cover the music of Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, and Suriname. Manuel focuses on the musical traditions of East Indian populations, and Pilgrim discusses the history of the steelband. The Netherlands Antilles are the focus of the next three chapters. Jos Gansemans writes on the traditional instruments, folk festivals, art and popular dance music of Aruba, Bonaire, and Curacao. Rose Mary Allen contributes an oral history of an 85-year-old Curacaon man of African descent who retells stories of learning songs from his father and elders. Kuss provides a historical sketch of the music of Curacao, Bonaire, Sint Maarten, St. Eustatius, and Saba. The volume concludes with two chapters written by Max H. Brandt and Susana Friedmann, respectively, on African-Venezuelan percussion ensembles and Colombian traditional cumbia of the Caribbean coasts of these two South American nations.

Each chapter includes a list of references, and most include a discography and a list of audiovisual materials. An index for easy reference and list of recordings are included. Most chapters also include black and white figures of musicians and instruments as well as transcriptions of music and song lyrics (with translations). Despite its value as a reference book, the volume presents several drawbacks. First, Cuba receives seven essays in total (eight if you include Zobeyda Ramos Venereo's "Haitian Traditions in Cuba"), whereas most other islands such as Puerto Rico receive only one. This imbalance, which the editor does not address, suggests a bias toward Cuba. Also, though the editor eventually confirms that volume four will cover popular music including salsa (p. 174), the absence of discussion of popular music, mostly in the Cuban chapters, is particularly problematic. For instance, Kuss makes no mention of popular music in her chapter "Cuba: A Quasi-Historical Sketch"; this is ironic since popular music is greatly integrated in Cuban history, not to mention in the music of those classical composers discussed by Kuss. Elsewhere, Kuss and Campbell even suggest an outmoded attitude toward the mass media, globalization, and "culture" when they state that "... neither modern economics ... nor the all-pervasive proselytizing effect of the mass media and other forces of globalization have yet managed to destroy the vibrant cultures of Caribbean peoples" (p. 13). This sentiment is not shared by all of the volume's contributors, since Jocelyne Guilbault and others are leading scholars and theorists in Caribbean popular music and globalization. Martha Ellen Davis, for example, includes a discussion of Dominican urban popular music for the simple reason that "Popular music subsumes dance and song, crossing the permeable boundaries between written and oral traditions" (p. 227). Finally, there are recorded examples for most of the chapters but not all; again, Cuba receives 21 examples but none are available for Barbados, Trinidadian steelband, or the Netherlands Antilles.

The entries in this volume are well written, detailed, and geared toward a broad readership. As a reference book it provides both important introductory information to students of all relevant disciplines and less-readily available data to specialists and educators. It is a welcomed addition to the Garland Encyclopedia of World Music Volume 2: South America, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean (Garland Publications, 2000) as an important English-language encyclopedia of Caribbean and Latin American music. The final two projected volumes of this encyclopedic history are titled Latin America--Islands of History: From Pre-contact Civilizations to 20th-century Composition (Volume 3) and Urban Popular Musics of the New World (Volume 4).

David F. Garcia

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill