Mode, melody, and harmony in traditional Afro-Cuban music: from Africa to Cuba.

Afro-Cuban traditional music constitutes one of the richest musical heritages of the Americas and has received a commensurate amount of scholarly attention. Published research on Afro-Cuban music has tended to focus on drumming (Amira and Cornelius 1992), biography (Velez 2000), relations to issues of national identity formation (Moore 1997), folkloricization under the Cuban Revolution (Hagedorn 2001), and general ethnography and religion (Ortiz 1975, 1985). Surprisingly, none of these studies makes more than passing mention of the modal and melodic aspects of Afro-Cuban music. (1) Study of these features is overdue. The melodic practices of Afro-Cuban music constitute a rich and in many ways internally consistent style system. Rather than simple reciting tones or ditties borrowed from Western music, melodies of the extensive corpus of songs are typically distinctive in style, with dramatic leaps, bold contours, coherent modal features, and expressive and appealing characteristics. Their study can be significant not only for its own sake but also for broader implications it may suggest for discovering relationships of Cuban music to African sources, as well as for a better understanding of the extent and nature of creativity and, alternately, conservatism in Afro-Cuban music culture.

In this article, we present a preliminary overview of melodic and modal aspects of traditional Afro-Cuban music, focusing on those genres that might be called neo-African in the sense that they have tended to retain African-derived stylistic features and have, in most respects, largely resisted overt Western influence. These genres, for purposes of this article, comprise in particular the corpus of songs associated with the syncretic religions or sects of Santeria (also known as Regla de Ocha and Regla Lucumi), Palo, Iyesa, and Arara, as well as the secular genre rumba columbia. After making various observations about melodic conventions, modality, and tonicity, we explore harmonization techniques and make tentative comments about relationships to related genres and practices in Africa and about the nature of the musical transculturation and consolidation that occurred in Cuba as different African-derived music traditions interacted with each other and with European music.

The analysis of Afro-Cuban melodic style involves certain challenges that, although hardly unique to this subject, remain significant. No traditional emic terminology for modal or melodic features exists, nor are there extant conventions of articulating principles of such technical features. Such practices as harmonization of melodies are far from standardized, and even ascertaining the tonal center of a given melody (or the sense to which that tonicity is important) may be difficult. Conventions and aesthetics have to be gleaned primarily from practice and from informal emic discourse, while taking care not to impose inappropriate musicological conceptions. However, increasing numbers of performers of traditional Afro-Cuban music have some sort of formal training in or knowledge of Western music, as is the case with Orlando Fiol and such people as David Oquendo, who is both a virtuoso jazz guitarist and a director of a folkloric ensemble. Of course, as Oquendo (2006) points out, singers lacking such technical knowledge may nevertheless be expert musicians: "They may not be able to tell you what the tonic of a song is, but they know the repertoire perfectly and will tell you if you sing incorrectly or out of clave."

In this regard, the authors' backgrounds may merit brief mention. Orlando Fiol, born in New York to Puerto Rican parents, has an extensive background in Afro-Cuban music and may be considered an effective insider to this tradition. As a bata drummer initiated to the sacred, consecrated bata fundamento of Cuban master Pancho Quinto, he has performed in the New York and Philadelphia areas regularly and professionally for over twenty years. In the course of that experience, through a visit to Cuba and through ongoing close musical and spiritual friendships with Cuban musicians, he has acquired a considerable knowledge of songs in all the genres relevant to this article. He is also quite conversant with Western music, trained in classical piano and playing that instrument professionally in Latin bands throughout his adult life. For his part, Peter Manuel brings to this study a long-standing and active interest in Latin music and in the confluences of modal and harmonic music systems.

Extant documentation of traditional Afro-Cuban music is growing, despite the persistence of major lacunae. One useful compendium is Thomas Altmann's Cantos Lucumi a los Orichas (1998), which contains transcriptions of 262 Santeria songs. The song corpus of Santeria (or ocha music) is also well documented on commercial recordings, including the Abbilona series and Lazaro Ros's Orisha Aye set. Recordings and transcriptions of Palo, Arara and Iyesa songs are far less extensive, while isolated rumba columbia songs can be found on various recordings. For purposes of this study, these sources have essentially served to supplement Fiol's first-hand knowledge of the repertoire.

Afro-Cuban Vocal Music

The most extensive, the most formalized, and arguably, the richest corpus of neo-African music in Cuba is that associated with Santeria, which may be regarded as a Cuban version of interrelated Yoruba practices and beliefs, with a thin veneer of Roman Catholicism. The Cuban Yoruba and their language were traditionally called Lucumi; it was not until the latter nineteenth century that the term Yoruba became a common designation for the linguistically related peoples (traditionally identifying themselves as the children of Odudua) of the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Oyo kingdom in present-day Nigeria.