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 Periodical article |
 Leiden University catalogue |
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| Title: | Roots in Reverse: 'Cubanismo' in Twentieth-Century Senegalese Music |
| Author: | Shain, Richard M. |
| Year: | 2002 |
| Periodical: | International Journal of African Historical Studies |
| Volume: | 35 |
| Issue: | 1 |
| Pages: | 83-101 |
| Language: | English |
| Geographic terms: | Senegal Cuba |
| Subjects: | music popular music History and Exploration Architecture and the Arts Peoples of Africa (Ethnic Groups) Equality and Liberation Ethnic and Race Relations |
| External link: | https://www.jstor.org/stable/3097367 |
| Abstract: | In the historical consideration of modernity in 20th-century Senegal, the expansion of Islam and the formulation of negritude loom large. This essay remaps the 'terrains of contestation' of Senegalese modernity by looking beyond the realms of religion and literature. Crucial contributions to fashioning conceptions of modernity and cosmopolitanism also came from Senegalese musicians and their audiences. Drawing on Cuban cultural materials, they largely bypassed Europe. Their contributions demonstrate that in Africa modernity often came as much from 'below' as from 'above' and that Europe or North America did not provide the only reference points. Although the Senegalese tend to call all Afro-Cuban music 'rumbas', historically it has been the Cuban 'son montuno' that has transformed African music to the exclusion of nearly every other Cuban musical form. Two types of Afro-Cuban 'son' ensembles have particularly influenced Senegalese musicians: the brassy big bands of the 1930s, and the flute and fiddle 'charanga' groups of the 1950s and 1960s. The essay traces the routes of transmission of Cuban music to Senegal, the reasons why this type of music in particular became so important, and changing performance styles since the 1930s. Notes, ref. [ASC Leiden abstract] |
