Roots in reverse: Cubanismo in twentieth-century Senegalese music

International Journal of African Historical Studies

Volumn 35, Issue 1, 2002, Pages 83-101

  Shain, Richard M ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33646383514     PISSN: 03617882     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.2307/3097367     Document Type: Review

References (65)

1. A vast literature exists on both figures. For Cheikh Ahmadu Bamba, see Donal Cruise O'Brien, The Mourides of Senegal (Oxford, 1971).
2. For literary studies of Léopold Senghor, see Abiola Irele, The African Experience in Literature and Ideology (Bloomington, 1990), 67-88,
3. and Edris Makward, "French-Language Poetry, " in Oyekan Owomoyela, ed., A History of Twentieth-Century African Literatures (Lincoln, 1993), 198-227.
4. For an analysis of his cultural policies, see Tracy D. Snipe, Arts and Politics in Senegal 1960-1996 (Trenton, N.J., 1998), 43-61.
5. Irele, The African Experience,
6. and Makward, "French-Language Poetry."
7. For an informative overview of the cultural history of francophone Africaduring the colonial and postcolonial periods, see Patrick Manning, Francophone Sub-Saharan Africa 1880-1995 (Cambridge, 1998), 86-109.
8. Anthropologist Johannes Fabian uses this phrase in his discussion of"popular culture" in the Congo. See Johannes Fabian, Moments of Freedom: Anthropology and Popular Culture (Charlottesville, 1998), 120-24.
9. Néstor Garcia Canclini, Hybrid Cultures (Minneapolis, 1995), 46.While Hybrid Cultures is an anthropological study of the interpenetration of thetraditional/"folkloric" and the modern in Latin America, its insightsshed light as well on African cultural history.
10. W. Jeffrey Bolster, Black Jacks: African American Seamen in the Age of Sail (Cambridge, 1997), 11.
11. See also Julius Sherrard Scott, III, "The Common Wind: Currents of Afro-American Communication in the Era of the Haitian Revolution" (Ph.D.thesis, Duke University, 1986). I am indebted to Luis Martínez Fernández for this reference.
12. Bolster, Black Jacks, 50-53,
13. and Scott, "The Common Wind, " 6-59.
14. See Marcus Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea: Merchant Seamen, Pirates and the Anglo-American Maritime World, 1700-1750 (Cambridge, 1987), 189-90,
15. Rediker, Between the Devil and the Deep Blue Sea, 189,
16. and Scott, "The Common Wind, " 65.
17. Alan Cobley, "Migration and Remigration between the Caribbean and Africa, " in Alan Gregor Cobley and Alvin Thompson, eds., The African-Caribbean Connection: Historical and Cultural Perspectives (Bridgetown, 1990), 61.
18. For more on Don Azpiazu and "El Manisero, " see John Storm Roberts, The Latin Tinge: the Impact of Latin American Music on the United States (Tivoli, N.Y., 1985), 76-79.
19. According to the music historian John Collins, the major record companiessold 8 million records in West Africa alone between 1930 and 1933. It is safeto assume that "El Manisero" accounted for a significant proportion ofthese sales. See John Collins, Highlife Time (Accra, 1994), 245.
20. See Christopher Alan Waterman, Jùjú: A Social History and Ethnography of an African Popular Music (Chicago, 1990), 47-48, for the impactof these G.V. series of recordings on Nigerian musicians.
21. Further research needs to be done on the role of dry good and music shopsin the early development of a Senegalese entertainment industry. Such emporiumsalso were important in the creation of Congolese show business in the 1940s and1950s. For two informative accounts of the role these shops played in thecreation of modern Congolese music, see Graeme Ewens, Kongo Colossus (Norfolk, 1994), 58,
22. and Wolfgang Bender's liner notes for the CD Ngoma, The Early Years(Pamap 101, 1996).
23. R. Arnold Gibbons, "Francophone West and Equatorial Africa, " in Sydney W. Head, ed. Broadcasting in Africa: A Continental Survey of Radio and Television (Philadelphia, 1974), 112-13.
24. For an ambitiously broad historical survey of radio broadcasting in Africa, see A.-J. Tudesq, La Radio en Afrique Noire (Paris, 1983).
25. For more on the popularity of Indian musicals in Africa, see Brian Larkin, "Indian Films and Nigerian Lovers: The Creation of Parallel Modernities, " Africa 67, 3 (1997), 406-440. Larkin persuasively explainsthe popularity of these films as emanating from their treatment of the clashbetween "modern" and "traditional" values and the 'Visualsimilarities" between Indian and Hausa cultures. What he fails to mention, though, is how familiar Indian film soundtracks are to African ears alreadysensitized to Arab and Persian musics. In the same manner that Indian Oceantrading networks and the Mogul presence in India led to the incorporation of Persian and Arab elements in Indian music, Arab cultural influence in Africahelped shape the development of many musical styles, such as Swahili Taarab. For Senegalese audiences, Indian film music has sounded only one or two stepsremoved from their own local musical traditions, simultaneously both exotic andcommonplace.
26. Danzon music relied on stately dance rhythms like the foxtrot and wasroughly equivalent to the early jazz/ragtime music of the United States. It hada distinct, self-consciously European ambience. The term charanga in Cuban usageactually refers to the type of ensembles that play the modernized danzónform as opposed to the musical repertoire. Outside Cuba, however, the same termhas frequently been applied interchangeably to both the music and the dancebands. For a succinct analysis of charanga, see Peter Manuel, Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music from Rumba to Reggae (Philadelphia, 1995), 34-49.
27. For a superb history of Cuban music in the first part of the twentiethcentury, see Robin D. Moore, Nationalizing Blackness: Afrocubanismo and Artistic Revolution in Havana, 1920-1940 (Philadelphia, 1997).
28. For a magisterial study of all of Cuban music, see Alejo Carpentier, Music in Cuba [1946] (Minneapolis, 2001).
29. Interview with Medoune Diallo, August 2, 1997, New York City.
30. The British ethnomusicologist Lucy Duran, an expert on the music of Maliand Guinea, argues that the Cuban clave derives from the music of the Mandingpeoples in West Africa. See Simon Broughton, Mark Ellingham, David Muddyman, and Richard Trillo, eds., World Music: The Rough Guide (London, 1994), 250.
31. Interview with Boncana Maïga, July 18, 1997, New York City.
32. Ibrahima Thioub, "Local Modernities and Senegalese Musical Creativity, 1960-2000, " presented at the conference on "Contesting African Cities: Authority, Social Movements, Cultural Expressions, " Rutgers University, March 29-31, 2001.
33. Naomi Ware, "Popular Music and African Identity in Freetown, Sierra Leone, " in Bruno Nettl, ed., Eight Urban Musical Cultures: Tradition and Change (Urbana, 1978), 303.
34. Gary Stewart, Rumba on the River: A History of the Popular Music of the Two Congos (London, 1999), 14.
35. IFAN documentary film on "Cuban Music in Senegal, " Dakar, 2000.
36. Broughton et al., eds., World Music, 250.
37. Emmanuel Kwaku Akyeampong, Drink, Power, and Cultural Change: A Social History of Alcohol in Ghana, c.1800 to Recent Times (Portsmouth, N.H., 1996).
38. See, for example, Phyllis M. Martin, Leisure and Society in Colonial Brazzaville (Cambridge, 1995).
39. The academic literature on these young men called sapeurs is extensive.For three important but differing statements, see Jonathan Friedman, Cultural Identity and Global Process (London, 1994), 105-116;
40. Ch. Didier Gondola, "Dream and Drama: The Search for Elegance among Congolese Youth, " African Studies Review 42, 1 (1999), 23-49;
41. and Janet Mac Gaffey and Rémy Bazenguissa, Congo-Paris: Transnational Traders on the Margins of the Law (Bloomington, 2000).
42. Richard M. Shain, "'Primpin': Circulating Urban Images of Male Elegance in Bamako, Kinshasa, and Dakar, 1940s-1970s, " paper presented at West African Research Centre, Dakar, May 16, 2001.
43. Youth posing as musicians on record covers occurred elsewhere during thesame period in the Black Atlantic. See Robin D.G. Kelley, "A Jazz Genius inthe Guise of a Hustler, " New York Times, May 13, 2001, for an analysis ofthe same phenomenon in the United States.
44. Arnold Krupat, quoted in Timothy Brennan, At Home in the World:Cosmopolitanism Now (Cambridge, 1997), 15.
45. The historical study of African cosmopolitanisms is still developing.Although Philip S. Zachernuk does not situate his history of nineteenth- andtwentieth-century Nigerian intellectuals in the current debates oncosmopolitanism, his work provides a foundation for future research. See Philip S. Zachernuk, Colonial Subjects: An African Intelligentsia and Atlantic Ideas(Charlottesville, VA, 2000).
46. The volume Globalization, edited by Arjun Appadurai (Durham, 2001), alsocontains useful material.
47. Some of these bands had continental reputations. In 1958, M'Bengwe et son Cha-cha-cha Boys de Dakar toured the Congo and the ensemble's horn sectionrecorded with the famous Congolese guitarist and band leader "Franco"Luambo Makiadi. See Graeme Ewens, Congo Colossus: The Life and Legacy of Francoand OK Jazz (North Walsham, 1994), 80.
48. For an elegant historical survey of Senegalese music of this period, see Ibrahima Thioub and Ndiouga A.L. Benga, "Les groupes de musique 'moderne'des jeunes Africains de Dakar et de Saint-Lous, 1946-1960, " in Odeile Goerg, ed., Fêtes urbaines en Afrique: Espaces, identités etpouvoirs (Paris, 1999), 213-27.
49. A similar appropriation process of Cuban music took place in the Congo.See Roberts, "Afro-Cuban Comes Home."
50. Some of this material has been re-issued on Baobab, Roots, and Fruits, Popular African Music, ADC, 304.
51. Highlife music and concert party theatre performances played a similarrole in Ghana in the 1950s and 1960s. See Catherine Cole, Ghana's Concert Party Theatre (Bloomington, 2001).
52. Youssou N'Dour has attracted much scholarly attention, both in Senegaland abroad. An excellent analysis of his musical innovations is contained in Timothy D. Taylor, Global Pop: World Music, World Markets (New York, 1997), 127-36.
53. See also Lucy Duran, "Key to N'Dour: Roots of the Senegalese Star, " Popular Music 8, 3 (1989), 275-84.
54. For a novelistic treatment, see Mark Hudson, The Music in My Head(London, 1998).
55. To hear how N'Dour and his band reconfigured modern Senegalese dancemusic, listen to the two reissues Absa Gueye, Stern's African Classics STCD3004, and Thiapathioly, Stern's African Classics STCD3006.
56. Anthropologist Bob White has documented an equivalent but musically verydifferent "re-Africanization" of Congolese dance music during the sameperiod with the rise of the atalakus, band members who punctuate the music withshouts and catchphrases. See Bob White, "Modernity's Spiral: Popular Culture, Mastery, and the Politics of Dance Music in Congo-Kinshasa" (Ph.D.thesis, Department of Anthropology, McGill University, 1998), 141-56.
57. For the Islamic turn in Senegalese popular culture, see Fiona McLaughlin, "Islam and Popular Music in Senegal: The Emergence of a 'New Tradition', " Africa 67, 4 (1997), 560-81.
58. For a Cuban musician's perspective on participating in these recordings, see John Child's interview with the violinist Alfredo De La Fé. John Child, "Plenty of Latitude: In Conversation with Alfredo De LaFé, " www.descarga.com., October 17, 2000.
59. Le Super de Cayor et Son Salsa, Mbalax Sopenté, Pan African Music206 (1996).
60. For an enthusiastic if not always well-informed discussion of the Africando project, see Sue Steward, Musical: The Rhythm of Latin America (San Francisco, 1999), 161.
61. Africando, Trovador, Sterns African Music STCD1045 (1993) and Tierra Tradicional, Stern's African Music STCD 1054 (1994).
62. Africando, Mandali, Stern's African Music STCD1092 (2000).
63. and Bambay Gueej, Nonesuch/World Circuit 79570-2 (1999).
64. Ulf Hannerz, Transnational Culture Flows and National Cultures(Stockholm, 1988), 5-6.
65. Yandé Codou Sène and Youssou N'Dour, Gainde: Voices fromthe Heart of Africa, World Network 58.391.