User:Connor.Sprouse/Afro-Cubans

Since the mid-nineteenth century, innovations within Cuban music have been attributed to the Afro-Cuban community. Genres such as son, conga, mambo, and chachachá combined European influences from Cuban Spanish roots as well as sub-Saharan African elements. Over the course of the development of Cuban music, there has been a marked departure away from the traditional European model and towards the improvisational African traditions. Afro-Cuban musicians have taken pre-existing genres such as trova, country, and rap and added their own realities of living in a socialist country and as a black person in the country. Genres like Nueva Trova are seen as live representations of the revolution and have been affected by afro-Cuban musicians like Pablo Milanes who included African spirituals in his early repertory.

Music in Cuba is encouraged both as a scholarly exercise and a popular enjoyment. To Cubans, music and the study of it is an integral part of the revolution. Audiences are proud of mixed ethnicity that makes up the music from the Afro-Cuban community despite there being a boundary of distrust and uncertainty between Cubans and Afro-Cuban culture.

Afro-Cuban music involves two main categories of music, religious and profane. Religious music includes the chants, rhythms and instruments used in rituals of the above-mentioned religious currents, while profane music focuses largely on rumba, guaguancó and comparsa (carnival music) as well as several lesser styles such as the tumba francesa. Virtually all Cuban music has been influenced by African rhythms. Cuban popular music, and quite a lot of the art music, has strands from both Spain and Africa, woven into a unique Cuban cloth. The son is a typical example of this. African son music combines African instruments and playing styles with the meter and rhythm of Spanish poetic forms. While much of the music is often performed in cut-time, artists typically use an array of time signatures like 6/8 for drumming beats. Clave, on the other hand, uses a polymetric 7/8 + 5/8 time signature. Afro-Cuban arts emerged in the early 1960's with musicians such as Enrique Bonne and Pello de Afrokan spearheading a movement of amateurs in music bringing African-influenced drumming to the forefront of Cuban music. Enrique Bonne's drumming ensembles took inspiration from Cuban folklore, traditional trova, dance music, and American Jazz. Pello de Afrokan created a new dance rhythm called Mozambique that increased in popularity after his predominantly afro-Cuban folklore troupe performed in 1964.

Afro-Cuban religious music had historically been thought of as a lesser form of culture by authorities in prerevolutionary Cuba, with religious drummers persecuted and their instruments confiscated. Afro-Cuban music after the revolution was allowed to be practiced more openly but with suspicion due to its' close relationship with the various Afro-Cuban religions. The government created the Conjunto Folklórico Nacional as the first revolutionary institution devoted entirely to the performance of "national folklore" a title given to Afro-Cuban music and traditions. Despite official institutional support from the Castro's regime, Afro-Cuban music was treated mostly with ambivalence throughout the second half of the twentieth century. Audiences looked down on traditional and religious music from the Afro-Cuban community as primitive and anti-revolutionary, music educators continued prerevolutionary notions of indifference toward afro-Cuban folklore, and the religious nature of afro-Cuban music lead to criticisms of the government's whitening and de-Africanization of the music. Religious concerts declined, musical instruments related to Santería were confiscated and destroyed, afro-Cuban celebrations were banned outright, and strict limits were placed on the quantity of religious music heard on the radio and television. Intolerant attitudes regarding afro-Cuban music softened in the 1980's and 70's as the afro-Cuban community began to fuse religious elements into their music. Artists Carlos and Ele Alfonso fused ritual chants with rock, adding elements of afro-Cuban drumming to their music as well.

afro-Cuban music in the 1990's became a mainstay of Cuba's tourism economy. Members of religious groups earned their living by performing and teaching ritual drumming, song, and dance, to tourists visiting the country. Rap was adopted by afro-Cubans and in 1999, became a solidified genre within Cuba with the rise of hip-hop group Orishas. Cuban hip-hop differed from its American influencers due to the focus on criticism of the Cuban state and the global economic order. Racism, colonialism, imperialism, and global capitalism were topic consciously covered by Cuban hip-hop artists as a medium for social critique.