Diaspora, de/reterritorialization and negotiation of identitary music practices in “La Rumba de Pedro Pablo”: a case study of Cuban traditional and popular music in 21st Madrid

The dance and music project known as “La Rumba de Pedro Pablo” brings those who are interested in Cuban popular music face to face with a revitalized field of study. The re-significance of Caribbean cultural codes that shows its growing hybridization of music-dance genres and styles (son, timba, flamenco, jazz, rock, reggaeton…) reveals the complex dynamics of negotiation encountered by rumba –one of the most representative practices of the cultural and musical Cuban heritage- in its adaptation to a new space of welcome: the 21st century Madrid music scene. The interest of the present text is centered, on the one hand, on the conditions that give origin to this transterritorial project, founded in Madrid in 2010 and, on the other hand, on the discursive treatment that it provides to the Cuban rumba as an artistic, festive and de-territorialized dance-music manifestation. With this aim, we have conducted personal interviews with Pedro Pablo Rodriguez, founder and director of the project and we have also consulted weekly journals and newspapers as well as theoretical proposals of authors such as Frith (1996), Brah (2002), Braziel and Mannur (2003), Fabbri (2006), Garcia Canclini (2008) and Haesbaert (2013).