Polyrhtythmia in the Music of Cuba

COMPOSER’S CORNER Polyrhythmia in the Music of Cuba TANIA LEON U pon reflecting about the presence of polyrhythmia in the music of Cuba, I would like to elaborate on my thoughts of how to comprehend the forces that make this polyrhythmia what it is today and talk about the influences of African music as one of the basic conditions that makes this possible. It is natural for the people of the region to listen and dance to three and four different rhythms that are running simultaneously without defining and breaking down the notion of a structured pulse. These polyrhythmic complexities prevail not only in the music of Cuba but in the music of the Caribbean and some cultures of Latin America. In order to arrive at the polyrhythmic theories which I want to discuss, I feel it is necessary to synthesize my findings about the different influences of the cultures that were catalysts in the syncretic making of Cuban music. As Fernando Ortiz has pointed out, El extraordinario vigor y la cautivadora originalidad de la musica cubana es creacion mulata... poseemos una gloria de tangos, habaneras, danzones, sones y rumbas, amen de otros bailes mestizos que desde siglo XVI salian de La Habana con las flotas para esparcirse por ultramar. Hoy baila music afrocubana, es decir, mulata, de Cuba, el mundo entero. 1 The extraordinary vigor and original captivation of Cuban music is a mulatto creation [i.e, the offspring of black and white races]... we possess a glory of tangos, habaneras, danzones, sones and rumbas, besides other mixed dances since the 16th century when they left La Habana (Havana) with flotillas to disperse over the seas. Cuban music is a syncretic manifestation of a collision of cultural traditions merging and emerging, giving birth to the concept of criollo, also known as creole. At first rhythms and transplanted musical forms, later the subsequent fusions that begin to take their own shape. By the late nineteenth century, the musical expression in the cultures of Cuba and the Caribbean began to assert their own sovereignty. The music of Cuba has been the result of a great melange of influences from the African continent and European cultures, particularly Spain. Other cultural influences include Asia and to a very minimal or lesser known degree, the Amerindian cultures (the Indians that inhabited the region Fernando Ortiz, Estudios Etnosociologicos (Havana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales, 1991), 25.