The premise of this chapter is that an examination of the Cuban son provides important insights into Cuban history and society, into Caribbean race relations, and ongoing processes of cultural fusion involving Afro-descendant and Euro-descendant practices, among others. The chapter focuses primarily on early son history, its antecedent forms, the African-influenced aesthetic sense that gave rise to it, and the popularization of the music and dance in the early twentieth century. Later it briefly considers changes to son music in the 1930s and beyond.

Music schools and conservatories in the United States and abroad focus primarily on training performers; one of the reasons ethnomusicologists have had such difficulty expanding their employment opportunities in such institutions is because they have not given enough thought to how they can productively contribute to performance curricula. The field of ethnomusicology has engaged creatively with many subdisciplines in the humanities and social sciences, of course. But while this focus has resulted in insightful publications, it has typically held little immediate relevance for performers. A surprising number of ethnomusicology programs do not encourage applied music-making of any sort as a required part of training in the discipline. In general, ethnomusicology does not dialogue sufficiently with applied music faculty or students. This chapter begins with reflection on what aspiring performers of the twenty-first century need to know in order to be professionally successful and continues with a consideration of how coursework offerings by ethnomusicologists can be retooled so as to contribute directly to the requirements of students in BM programs: to ear training, music theory, orchestration, junior and senior recitals, and so on. Lastly, the chapter covers an approach to teaching world music courses that focuses both on applied performance and on pressing contemporary issues (community outreach, social justice, financial exploitation, etc.) that link world traditions to other repertoires and make their relevance immediately apparent.

Many authors in recent years note threats to humanistic studies within higher education. They express concern about the overproduction of PhD graduates, the increasing costs of higher education, and other topics. Ethnomusicologists are undoubtedly aware of such issues, yet as a society SEM has not engaged with related publications, nor has it collected much data on specific challenges to our own field. This essay synthesizes literature on trends within the humanities and considers its potential relevance for ethnomusicology. Then, based on interviews with faculty, as well as a 2018 survey circulated to current and former students on the SEM LISTSERV, it briefly considers the state of our discipline in terms of core training, student support, student placement, and other topics. The data suggest that many issues confronting ethnomusicologists resonate with those in other disciplines and that we would benefit from engagement with nationwide dialogues involving the future of graduate studies. Suggestions proposed are many and include an orientation of research toward issues impacting communities near one’s university, greater focus on team-based inquiry rather than individual scholarship, more active collaborations across disciplines, diverse professional training, more attention to shaping the content of K–12 education, communication with diverse audiences, and a research focus on areas of broad public concern whenever possible.

A identidade de cidades, como Havana, estao ligadas a processos historicos, incorporadas em narrativas de pessoas e recriadas atraves das praticas cotidianas da vida cultural. A musica pode ser usada por interpretes para reinventar seus arredores, colocando em circulacao novas projecoes da experiencia. Os lugares construidos atraves da musica podem ser influenciados por estilos musicais do exterior; frequentemente eles criam ou reforcam fronteiras sociais de varios tipos e enfatizam maneiras alternativas de conceber si mesmo e o outro. Muitas destas tendencias sao evidentes na obra do trovador cubano Gerardo Alfonso. Um artista afro-cubano, Alfonso usa musica como meio de comentar sobre a vida em Havana, apresentando constantemente referencias musicais e textuais exclusivas para esse local. Liricamente, as cancoes de Afonso lidam com temas tais como vadiagem e turismo. Musicalmente, a sua reelaboracao inteligente de generos tradicionais cria tensoes entre concepcoes de localismo e globalismo, modernismo e tradicao.

Fernando Ortiz is recognized today as one of the most influential Latin American authors of the 20th century. Amazingly prolific, his publications written between the 1890s and the mid-1950s engage with a vast array of subjects and disciplines. Perhaps Ortiz’s most significant accomplishments were the creation of the field of Afro-Cuban studies and major early contributions to the emergent field of Afro-diasporic studies. Almost everyone else associated with similar research began their investigations decades after Ortiz and in dialogue with his work. Ortiz was one of the first to seriously examine slave and post-abolition black cultures in Cuba. His studies became central to new and more positive discourses surrounding African-derived expression in the mid-20th century that embraced it as national expression for the first time in Latin America. This essay considers Ortiz’s academic career and legacy as regards Afro-Cuban musical study beginning in the early 20th century (when his views were quite dated, even racist) and gradual, progressive changes in his attitudes. Ortiz’s work on music and dance have been underrepresented in existing academic literature, despite the fact that most of his late publications focus on such topics and are considered among his most valuable works. His writings on black heritage provide insight into the struggles within New World societies to overcome the racial/evolutionist ideologies that justified colonial subjugation. His scholarship resonates with broader debates throughout the Americas over the meanings of racial pluralism and the legacy of slavery. And his changing views over the years outline the trajectory of modern Western thought as regards Africa and race, specifically the contributions of Afro-diasporic peoples, histories, and cultures to New World societies.

This essay proposes a way of understanding the formation of jazz as part of a broader transnational exchange of culture. It argues that the processes by which jazz came into being closely resemble others taking place in Cuba and elsewhere, and thus calls for analysis that positions jazz as part of a hemispheric exchange of cultural influences that extend beyond the United States. Second, it reviews and critiques existing scholarship on New Orleans jazz from a transnationalist perspective. It suggests that such literature presents turn-of-the-twentieth-century New Orleans culture as insular, with little or no recognition of the international movement of artists and musical forms. Finally, it suggests that the cultural projects associated with jazz in the United States have necessitated a strong emphasis on the contributions of black US artists to the exclusion of Hispanics.

This chapter maps out the ways in which contemporary classical, jazz, and popular musicians have resignified the danzón beyond the dance context. The chapter pays attention to the different cultural and historical circumstances that inform the reception of these danzones for listening, focusing on how they become meaningful for new generations in Mexico, Cuba, the U.S., and beyond.