Fernando Ortiz on Music: Selected Writing on Afro-Cuban Culture

by Robin D. Moore (Editor)

Overview

Fernando Ortiz (1881–1969) is recognized as one of the most influential Latin American authors of the twentieth century. Although he helped establish the field of Afro-diasporic studies, his writings are still relatively unknown to the English-speaking world. In Fernando Ortiz on Music, accomplished ethnomusicologist Robin Moore has collected and translated an essential selection of Ortiz’s publications. These essays on Afro-Cuban expressive culture, music and dance are now available for the first time in English.

Ortiz’s writings are accompanied by an extended introduction that contextualizes the author’s life, intellectual influences, and collaborators as well as his fieldwork and interviews. Fernando Ortiz on Music also charts the writer’s changing views of black heritage through the years. This comprehensive anthology, which includes examples of his early scholarship as well as publications from the 1940s and ’50s, extends the life and legacy of this important and under-known scholar of Latin American and Caribbean music. 

Contributors include: David Garcia, Sarah Lahasky, Cary Peñate, Susan Thomas, and the editor

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781439911730
Publisher:	Temple University Press
Publication date:	02/23/2018
Series:	Studies In Latin America & Car Series
Edition description:	1
Pages:	292
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.90(d)

About the Author

Robin D. Moore is a Professor of Ethnomusicology at the University of Texas at Austin.  He has received fellowships from the Rockefeller Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Humanities Center. He is the author of Nationalizing Blackness: Afrocubinismo and Artistic Revolution in Havana, 1920-1940; Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba; Music of the Hispanic Caribbean: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture; and (with Alejandro Madrid) Danzón: Circum-Caribbean Dialogues in Music and Dance; and the editor of Musics of Latin America and College Music Curricula for a New Century. He is also the editor of the journal Latin American Music Review.

Table of Contents

Preface vii

Introduction Fernando Ortiz: Ideology and Praxis of the Founder of Afro-Cuban Studies Robin D. Moore 1

Part I Early Writings

1 The Future of Cuban Witchcraft Robin D. Moore 45

2 Afro-Cuban Cabildos Robin D. Moore 68

Part II Instrument Essays

3 Makuta David F. Garcia 99

4 Arará Drums David F. Garcia 113

5 The Chekeré, Ágbe, or Aggüé Gary Peñate 138

6 The Conga Sarah Lahasky 153

Part III Ethnographic Essays

7 Kongo Traditions Robin D. Moore 163

8 The Religious Music of Black Cuban Yorubas Robin D. Moore 186

9 The "Tragedy" of the Ñáñigos Susan Thomas 212

10 Satirical and Commercial Song Robin D. Moore 236

Appendix

Selected Publications by Fernando Ortiz on Afro-Cuban Music and Cultural History 251

Glossary 259

References 267

Contributors 277

Index 279

Editorial Reviews

01/01/2018
Editor Moore (ethnomusicology, Univ. of Texas; editor, Latin American Music Review; Nationalizing Blackness) has performed a worthwhile act of homage to one of the founders of modern Afro-Cuban studies. Cuba's Fernando Ortiz (1881–1969) was an essayist, anthropologist, ethnomusicologist, and influential scholar of Afro-Cuban culture. Prior to this title, there appears to have been only one book of his translated into English (Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar), but over 58 years of scholarship, Ortiz published a dozen books and 600-plus articles. He started out writing about Afro-Cuban witchcraft as a biological essentialist (Africans and their culture as degenerate or infantile). With time, he revised his views, championing the logic and merit of Afro-Cuban music and dance and praising Cuba's "racial stew." The first two articles in this collection express Ortiz's earlier preoccupation. The rest praise Afro-Cuban music and dance and offer detailed descriptions of native instruments (drums, chekeres) and dance rituals. Although he never wholly renounced the idea that race could be a cultural determinant, his insistence that there are no pure races undercut the notion's usefulness in ways that seem prescient today. VERDICT Given the level of detail, this work will be of interest primarily to scholars.—David Keymer, Cleveland

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