Guest Editor's Introduction: “Cuba y Puerto Rico son de un pájaro, las dos alas”

The issue you have in front of you is the result of a call for submissions of articles on Caribbean music topics that the editorial team conceptualized and disseminated in the summer of 2023. This call was met with an enthusiastic response, resulting in more than twenty abstract submissions. The selected entries, chosen through a blind review process, pointed to rather clear themes revolving around questions of stylistic and generic labels in music practices of Cuba and Puerto Rico. It was at this point that the editor of the journal, Nancy Yunhwa Rao, approached me to guest edit this special issue with Rachel Horner as associate editor. I was particularly excited about the prospect of guiding a group of established and emerging scholars in the field of Caribbean music studies whom I consider close and dear colleagues in the development of their essays. At the time I accepted the assignment, however, I knew little about the journal's publication history in terms of articles on Caribbean music topics. Upon reviewing this history, I was surprised (shocked) to learn that the pieces in this issue represent the first articles specifically dedicated to the music of Cuba and Puerto Rico in American Music's forty years of publication.2In a 2022 article that surveyed this journal's publication on Latin American and Latinx music, Eduardo Herrera drew upon Puerto Rican rapper René Pérez (better known as Residente, from the rap duo Calle 13) and his 2022 song and video “This Is Not America” to point out how the use of the label “America(n)” as equivalent to the United States has led to the omission of racial and ethnic groups outside the U.S. Black/White framework from music, professional societies, and journals that claim “America” as their field of study.3 In Herrera's survey of the journal's publication history, of the few articles on musics of Latin America or Latinx communities in the United States, none dealt specifically with musics from Cuba and Puerto Rico. This glaring omission becomes more shocking when we consider the historical connections between these two archipelagos and the United States. Cuba has a long history of political, economic, and cultural exchange with the United States, stretching back to colonial times when Cuban efforts helped the United States in their revolutionary fight against the British.4 Later, the Spanish-American War (1898) had long-lasting consequences for both Cuba and Puerto Rico and their relationship to the United States, Cuba effectively becoming a protectorate of the United States (through the 1903 Platt Amendment) and Puerto Rico a U.S. territory. Throughout the nineteenth century, cultural practices flowed between Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the United States, as touring musicians stopped at the ports of New Orleans, Charlotte, Havana, and San Juan. Sheet music by U.S., Cuban, and Puerto Rican composers also proliferated in these markets. With the advent of commercial sound recording and later radio broadcasting, these musics—especially popular music, jazz, and dance genres—circulated with even more frequency and fluidity than before. As Cuban and Puerto Rican musicians traveled and embedded themselves in the musical scenes of cities across the United States (most significantly, New York City), their musical practices would deeply influence U.S. composers and musicians.In the same journal issue as Herrera's aforementioned study, American Music's previous editorial team summarized the results of a statistical study of the journal's forty years of publication.5 Todd Decker, Daniel Fister, and Rachel Jones characterized the prevailing tendency of the journal's content as “almost one-third (30.5 percent) . . . about a White man in classical music. Forty-six percent of articles have been about White men.”6 Yet they note that “one strategy . . . has demonstrably diversified the content and authors of American Music: special issues.”7 Additionally, the current editorial board of American Music has modified the scope and objectives of the journal, aiming to make it inclusive and representative of the many definitions of “America(n).” Editor Rao specializes in Asian American musics, and several members of the current editorial board research music traditions that challenge the U.S. Black/White binary that Herrera critiqued. In my view, the journal's historical lack of articles on topics from the Caribbean stems from both the historical conflation between “American” and the United States, alienating scholars of Caribbean musical practices, and from these same scholars’ tendency to publish with journals that have demonstrated their support for Caribbean topics (most notably, the Latin American Music Review). Regardless of the possible contributing factors, the lack of articles on these topics from this journal is all the more concerning given that music academia in the United States has witnessed exponential growth in the number of scholars specializing in musics of Latin America and the Caribbean, from sacred music of the colonial era to avant-garde and experimental musics of the mid- to late twentieth century, as well as various folk and popular music traditions. Whatever the reasons for this historical lack of articles on Caribbean music topics from the pages of this journal, the current issue aims at addressing this gap and engaging with this growing field of music scholarship.8This issue opens with three essays that explore the sociocultural implications of Puerto Rican musics and musicians. In “Reconstructing the Taíno Past: Music, Indigeneity, and Colonialism in Puerto Rico,” Jaime Bofill Calero explores the musical traditions of the Taíno people, as described in various historical colonial sources, and the cultural resurgence of (reimagined) Taíno musical practices in contemporary Puerto Rico. Bofill demonstrates how music has served as a medium for reclaiming and reconstructing Taíno heritage, noting the implications of this heritage for modern Puerto Rican identities in the face of colonial history and cultural erasure since European colonizers’ encounters with the island's inhabitants. Bofill analyzes examples from costumbrista literature, classical music compositions that evoke Taíno themes, and popular music artists such as nueva trova singer-songwriter Roy Brown and rapper Residente. Bofill asks readers to focus less on the claims to authenticity of these Taíno musical reconstructions and more on how contemporary artists deploy Taíno symbols and themes to resist cultural oppression and colonization.In the second article on Puerto Rican music, “Styling Blackness as Artesano: The Intersection of Music-Dance, Race, and Class in the Club Mayagüezano,” Juan Eduardo Wolf examines the Club Mayagüezano as a complex site in which Black Puerto Ricans negotiated their racial and social class identities through music within a social club that granted members prestige and legitimacy. He delves into the representation and perception of Blackness and how these dynamics shaped cultural practices and social hierarchies within the club's setting and across other social institutions in Mayagüez, the westernmost municipality of Puerto Rico. Wolf focuses on the role of music and dance in expressing and negotiating racial and social identities, with particular attention to the Afro-Puerto Rican experience. He also examines how the material traces of performances by Club Mayagüezano members could both challenge and reinforce existing racial and class structures.Finally, in “‘The [Puerto Rican] Danza Is [Not] Dead’: National Music Revisited,” Noel Torres-Rivera problematizes the historical and cultural significance of the Puerto Rican danza, a salon music genre that proliferated not only through printed piano sheet music but also through listening and embodied experiences. Torres-Rivera develops this latter point through Puerto Rican composer Rafael Aponte-Ledée, one of the island's most recognized composers of the second half of the twentieth century. Torres-Rivera discusses the danza's history, as presented in most texts and narratives of Puerto Rican music, and its compositional conventions, such as structure, harmonic patterns and modulations, and melodic tendencies. However, by examining Aponte-Ledée's early musical experiences of listening to the danza on the radio and playing the clarinet in his hometown's municipal band, and later analyzing Aponte-Ledée's danza “Ciudad del Guamaní,” Torres-Rivera's analysis goes beyond the formal and harmonic elements of the danza to shed light on listening and performance practices that have sustained the genre, a focus that had previously been unexplored.The three articles on Puerto Rican music are complemented by three pieces on Cuban music that revisit well-known genres or themes through new lenses. In the first article on Cuban music, “Studying Classical Music to Play Popular Music: Musical Training in Cuba,” Sean Bellaviti provides an ethnographic study of Cuba's specialized classical music education system and its impact on musicians who later pursued popular music genres such as jazz, salsa, and timba. Bellaviti traces how these artists, who are currently based in Toronto, negotiated between purely classical music training within the very demanding state-run national music programs of Cuba and their desires to pursue careers performing popular music and jazz. Through a series of interviews, Bellaviti's interlocutors share their personal stories of being admitted to these schools, advancing in their programs through rigorous exams, and obtaining the highest levels of music education. The anecdotes reveal that musicians’ success often depended on both personal initiative and parental intervention, particularly since the system is known to be prone to bureaucratic inefficiencies and favoritism. As Bellaviti demonstrates, despite the classical focus, Cuba's music schools are pivotal in shaping the country's leading popular musicians, who learn to adapt classical techniques to their chosen genres. By focusing on Cuban musicians in Toronto, Bellaviti's essay implicitly questions dominant narratives that trace Cuban musicians’ movements to Miami, New York, Los Angeles, Mexico, and Spain.Bellaviti's article is followed by two articles on contemporary trends in Cuban popular music that provide a historical perspective on the evolving social, political, and economic conditions that affect Cuban artists. In “Lo antiguo está de moda (What's Old Is New Again): Current Trends in Contemporary Cuban Dance Music,” Benjamin Lapidus examines the enduring and evolving nature of Cuban music, highlighting the interplay between past traditions and contemporary trends that are mediated through technological developments. Through the themes of timelessness and modernity, technology, digital communication, social media, cultural exchange, and collaboration, Lapidus highlights how Cuban music continues to evolve as artists integrate new technologies and global influences while staying rooted in their rich cultural and spiritual heritage.In “‘I Have What I Had to Have’: Signifying the Afro-Cuban Experience in Three Musical Settings of Nicolás Guillén's ‘Tengo,’” Mike Levine focuses on the cultural and musical significance of Nicolás Guillén's poem “Tengo” through various musical interpretations over time that reflect evolving interpretations of Cuban identity and race relations. Taken at face value, the poem celebrates the newfound freedom of the Cuban people, particularly Afro-Cubans, after the Cuban Revolution. Although Guillén's “Tengo” emphasizes national unity through Afro-Cuban cultural expressions and argues that Black expression can encapsulate Cuban identity beyond racial distinctions, three musical reinterpretations of the poem contribute new layers of meaning to Guillén's original text: a setting by nueva trova singer-songwriter Pablo Milanés, a 2005 rap version by Hermanos de Causa, and a 2020 reparto track by El Taiger and El Yabo. Levine's analysis demonstrates Guillén's continued relevance to younger generations of Cuban popular music artists who turn to his poetry to negotiate ever-evolving notions of race, national identity, and socioeconomic conditions in Cuba.The six articles published in this issue reflect some of the approaches in Cuban and Puerto Rican music studies shared by a growing number of scholars who work in various roles within Puerto Rico, Cuba, the United States, Canada, and beyond. Questions of identity formation and belonging in local and diasporic contexts, across racial and social class lines, as well as of music genre definitions across historical periods emerge as unifying themes. There are some glaring omissions, such as the perspectives and voices of women within Cuban and Puerto Rican music scenes and scholarship (with the exception of some of Bellaviti's interlocutors and the present introduction). Perhaps the journal could dedicate subsequent issues to essays by and about women and music in Cuba and Puerto Rico, as a forthcoming issue of the journal guest-edited by my colleague Jessica Baker will do with articles on gender and sexuality in the Anglophone and Francophone Caribbean. Ultimately, it is my hope that special issues are no longer necessary to encourage article submissions on music topics beyond the United States. The present issue should communicate to the broader American music studies community that “América no es sólo USA, papá/Esto es desde Tierra del Fuego hasta Canadá” (America is not just the USA, man/This is from Tierra del Fuego up to Canada).9

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