Rumba

Using dance anthropology to illuminate the values and attitudes embodied in rumba, Yvonne Daniel explores the surprising relationship between dance and the profound, complex changes in contemporary Cuba. From the barrio and streets to the theatre and stage, rumba has emerged as an important medium, contributing to national goals, reinforcing Caribbean solidarity, and promoting international prestige. Since the Revolution of 1959, rumba has celebrated national identity and cultural heritage, and embodied an official commitment to new values. Once a lower-class recreational dance, rumba has become a symbol of egalitarian efforts in postrevolutionary Cuba. The professionalization of performers, organization of performance spaces, and proliferation of performance opportunities have prompted new paradigms and altered previous understandings of rumba.

Captivating study of the flowering of Congo music, during the fight to consolidate their hard-won independence.

Kalif Brown is an inspiring basketball star, who has what it takes to make it to the NBA. He's a high school senior with big dreams. But his off the court lifestyle of drugs and guns, may land him in jail or dead. Growing up in a drug infested neighborhood filled with junkies, and criminals, doesn't make his situation any better. And like most young black men and women he's living in a single parent home with his mother. He doesn't have a father figure; therefore he turns to a local dealer to fill that image of a father. Kalif must make a choice. Will it be "Hustling or Hooping"? And he must make this decision fast because his dreams and life may depend on it. Many young inner city athletes and those not into sports, deal with the pressures of everyday life. And many find it hard to deal with especially if they don't have anyone to talk to. Hustling or Hooping may be a fictional book, but there is a Kalif Brown in every urban city in the U.S. Many young black men grow up fatherless, and turn to the streets for a family. The out come is usually negative. But many do make it out of their situations. This book is highly recommended for any young man, or woman who is growing up in a negative environment, and feels as though he or she cannot make that change for the good. This book can be a tool, to make that negative situation a positive one. But also this book reveals the consequences of not making that change for the better.

Interact and Learn is the overriding theme of this outstanding book and companion online audio. This progressive self-study course is designed to exposethe percussion student to the seductive and complex Cuban rumba style knownas guaguanco. The author offers a generous dose of text and percussion charts to be used with the recorded exercises. The rumba ensemble typically includes: claves; low, midrange, and high-pitched conga drums; the madruga (shaker) palitos (sticks applied to a hollow wooden cylinder), and vocal elements. The comprehensive quality of this book might best be illustrated by the author's emphasison using the three conga drums as pitched, melodic instruments. Sitting and hand positions and drum techniques are clearly illustrated with photographs as is the convenient instrumental glossary.This book also provides useful courseand lesson objectives for self-evaluation. The companion Audio presents percussion concepts and instruments individually and in conversation. All in all, this Book/Audio package offers a fabulous introduction. Includes access to online audio

Examining social and popular dance forms from a variety of critical and cultural perspectives

There had always been music along the banks of the Congo River-lutes and drums, the myriad instruments handed down from ancestors. But when Joseph Kabasele and his African Jazz went chop for chop with O.K. Jazz and Bantous de la Capitale, music in Africa would never be the same. A sultry rumba washed in relentless waves across new nations springing up below the Sahara. The Western press would dub the sound soukous or rumba rock; most of Africa called in Congo music. Born in Kinshasa and Brazzaville at the end of World War II, Congon music matured as Africans fought to consolidate their hard-won independence. In addition to great musicians-Franco, Essous, Abeti, Tabu Ley, and youth bands like Zaiko Langa Langa-the cast of characters includes the conniving King Leopold II, the martyred Patrice Lumumba, corrupt dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, military strongman Denis Sassou Nguesso, heavyweight boxing champs George Foreman and Muhammad Ali, along with a Belgian baron and a clutch of enterprising Greek expatriates who pioneered the Congolese recording industry. Rumba on the River presents a snapshot of an era when the currents of tradition and modernization collided along the banks of the Congo. It is the story of twin capitals engulfed in political struggle and the vibrant new music that flowered amidst the ferment. For more information on the book, visit its other online home at rumbaontheriver.com-an impressive resource.

The music of the peoples of South and Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean is treated with unprecedented breadth in this multi-volume work. Taking a sociocultural and human-centered approach, Music in Latin America and the Caribbean gathers the best scholarship from writers all over the world to cover in depth the musical legacies of indigenous peoples, creoles, African descendants, Iberian colonizers, and other immigrant groups that met and mixed in the New World. From these texts, music emerges as the powerful tool that negotiates identities, enacts resistance, performs beliefs, and challenges received aesthetics. More than two decades in the making, this work privileges the perspectives of cultural insiders and emphasizes the role that music plays in human life. Volume 2, Performing the Caribbean Experience, focuses on the reconfiguration of this complex soundscape after the Conquest and on the strategies by which groups from distant worlds reconstructed traditions, assigning new meanings to fragments of memory and welding a fascinating variety of unique Creole cultures. Shaped by an enduring African presence and the experience of slavery and colonization by the Spanish, French, British, and Dutch, peoples of the Caribbean islands and circum-Caribbean territories resorted to the power of music to mirror their history, assert identity, gain freedom, and transcend their experience in lasting musical messages. Essays on pan-Caribbean themes, surveys of traditions, and riveting personal accounts capture the essence of pluralistic and spiritualized brands of creativity through the voices of an unprecedented number of Caribbean authors, including a representative contingent of distinguished Cuban scholars whose work is being published in English translation for the first time in this book. Two CDs with 52 recorded examples illustrate the contributions to this volume.

"An examination of Cuban society through the music of the 1920s-30s when it began to embrace Afro-Cuban culture. Traces how the African element of Cuban society became associated with national identity. Among topics examined are carnival bands, son music, cabaret rumba, and blackface theater shows. The highly documented volume is enhanced by the inclusion of relevant legislation concerning music, and a listing of sextets in Havana between 1920-45 by barrio"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.