Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-gbm5v Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T12:34:09.319Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Black Feminist Rumba Pedagogies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 October 2021

Maya J. Berry Open the ORCID record for Maya J. Berry [Opens in a new window]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Rumba guaguancó, a sub-genre of Afro-Cuban popular dance, has been widely defined as a dance of courtship, characterized as a male pursuit of a woman's sex. The article analyzes alternative meanings of the sub-genre articulated in the pedagogical practices of black women rumba dancers. Insights were gleaned from the author's own dance training in Havana while conducting original ethnographic research between 2009 and 2018. What the author terms “a black feminist choreographic aptitude” taught by rumberas (women rumba dancers) speaks to the pointedly gendered valances of worsening racialized class inequality in contemporary Cuba. Building on Blanco Borelli's theory of “hip(g)nosis,” the article interrogates the racialized and gendered discourses historically reproduced through dominant definitions of rumba, limiting women of African descent to sexual objects. The study argues for increased critical attention to pedagogy as a hermeneutical tool, centering those subjects historically marginalized from the production of knowledge about their bodies.

Keywords

rumbaCubablack feminismpedagogyblack popular dancefolkloric dancedance ethnographypolitical economydevelopmentimprovisation
Type
Article
Information
Dance Research Journal , Volume 53 , Special Issue 2: Arms Akimbo: Black Women Choreographing Social Change , August 2021 , pp. 27 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2021. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Dance Studies Association

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Works Cited

Allen, Jafari S. 2011. ¡Venceremos?: The Erotics of Black Self-Making in Cuba. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Alvarez, Sonia E., and Caldwell, Kia Lilly. 2016. Meridians: Feminism, Race, Transnationalism 14 (1–2).Google Scholar
Álvarez Ramírez, Sandra. 2008. “Esclavitud y Cuerpos al Desnudo: La Sexualidad y la Belleza de la Mujer Negra.” Revista Sexolog í a y Sociedad 14 (37): 36–39.Google Scholar
Ana, Ruxandra. 2019. “Body Image and the Ambivalence of Sugar as Heritage among Cuban Dancers.” International Latin American Studies Review, no. 24 (2019): 53–73. doi: 10.36551/2081-1160.2019.24.53-73.Google Scholar
Arnedo, Miguel. 1997. “The Portrayal of the Afro-Cuban Female Dancer in Cuban ‘Negrista’ Poetry.” Afro-Hispanic Review 16 (2): 26–33.Google Scholar
Ayorinde, Christine. 2004. Afro-Cuban Religiosity, Revolution, and National Identity. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.Google Scholar
Barcia Zequeira, Maria del Carmen, Rodriguez Reyes, Andres, and Niebla Delgado, Milagros. 2012. del cabildo de “nacion” a las casa de santo. La Habana: Fundación Fernando Ortiz.Google Scholar
Bastian, Hope. 2018. Everyday Adjustments in Havana: Economic Reforms, Mobility, and Emerging Inequalities. Lexington Studies on Cuba. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books.Google Scholar
Beliso-de Jesús, Aisha. 2017. “Santeria Copresence and the Making of African Diaspora Bodies.” Cultural Anthropology 29 (3): 503–526. doi: 10.14506/ca29.3.04.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benson, Devyn Spence. 2016. Anti-Racism in Cuba: The Unfinished Revolution. Durham: University of North Carolina Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Benson, Devyn Spence. 2019. “Sara Gómez: Afrocubana (Afro-Cuban Women's) Activism after 1961.” Cuban Studies, no. 46 (2019): 134–158.Google Scholar
Berry, Maya J. 2010. “From Ritual to Repertory: Dancing to the Time of the Nation”, The Afro-Hispanic Review 29 (1): 55–76.Google Scholar
Berry, Maya J. 2016. “‘Salvándose’ in contemporary Havana: rumba's paradox for black identity politics”, The Black Diaspora Review. 5 (2): 24–54.Google Scholar
Berry, Maya J., Argüelles, Claudia Chávez, Cordis, Shanya, Ihmoud, Sarah, Estrada, Elizabeth Velásquez. 2017. “Toward a Fugitive Anthropology: Gender, Race, and Violence in the Field.” Cultural Anthropology 32 (4): 537–565.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blanco Borelli, Melissa. 2016. She Is Cuba: A Genealogy of the Mulata Body. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Blue, Sarah A. 2007. “The Erosion of Racial Equality in the Context of Cuba's Dual Economy.” Latin American Politics and Society 49 (3): 35–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bodenheimer, Rebecca M. 2013. “National Symbol or “a Black Thing”?: Rumba and Racial Politics in Cuba in the Era of Cultural Tourism.” Black Music Research Journal 33 (2): 177–205.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bodenheimer, Rebecca M. 2015. Geographies of Cubanidad: Place, Race, and Musical Performance in Contemporary Cuba. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi.10.14325/mississippi/9781628462395.001.0001CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1990. Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Suvbersion of Identity. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Cabezas, Amalia L. 2009. Economies of Desire: Sex and Tourism in Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Carrion, Ampara L. 1949. El Baile Folklorico y su importancia en la Educacion Fisica. La Habana: Editorial Lex.Google Scholar
Concha-Holmes, Amanda D. 2013. “Cuban Cabildos, Cultural Politics, and Cultivating a Transnational Yoruba Citizenry.”Cultural Anthropology 28 (3): 490–503. doi: 10.1111/cuan.12016.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crook, Larry. 1992. “The Form and Formation of Rumba in Cuba.” In Salsiology: Afro-Cuban Music and the Evolution of Salsa in New York City, edited by Boggs, Vernon, 31–42. New York: Excelsior Music Publishing.Google Scholar
Daniel, Yvonne. 1991. “Changing Values in Cuban Rumba, a Lower Class Black Dance Appropriated by the Cuban Revolution.” Dance Research Journal 23 (2): 1–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Daniel, Yvonne. 1994. “Race, Gender, and Class Embodied in Cuban Dance.” Contributions in Black Studies 12 (1): 70–87. doi: http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cibs/vol12/iss1/8.Google Scholar
Daniel, Yvonne. 1995. Rumba: Dance and Social Change in Contemporary Cuba. Indianapolis: Indiana University Folklore Institute.Google Scholar
Daniel, Yvonne. 2011. Caribbean and Atlantic Diaspora Dance: Igniting Citizenship. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de la Fuente, Alejandro. 2001. “Recreating Racism: Race and Discrimination in Cuba's ‘Special Period.’” Socialism and Democracy 15 (1): 65–91. Washington, DC.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de la Fuente, Alejandro. 2001. A Nation for All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth-Century Cuba. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
de la Fuente, Alejandro. 2008. “The New Afro-Cuban Cultural Movement and the Debate on Race in Contemporary Cuba.” Journal of Latin American Studies 40 (4): 697–720.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
de la Fuente, Alejandro. 2019. “Cuba's Struggle Between Racism and Inclusion.” New York Times, May 28.Google Scholar
DeFrantz, Thomas F. 2001a. “African American Dance: A Complex History.” In Dancing Many Drums: Excavations in African American Dance, edited by DeFrantz, Thomas F., 1–35. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Google Scholar
DeFrantz, Thomas F. 2001b. “Foreword: Black Bodies Dancing Black Culture—Black Atlantic Transformations.” In EmBODYing Liberation: The Black Body in American Dance, edited by Fischer-Hornung, Dorothea and Goeller, Alison D., 11–16. Hamburg: LIT.Google Scholar
DeFrantz, Thomas F., and Willis, Tara Aisha. 2016. “Black Moves: New Research in Black Dance Studies.” The Black Scholar 46 (1): 1–3. doi: 10.1080/00064246.2016.1119632.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Fernandez, Nadine. 1999. “Back to the Future? Race, Sex, and Women in Tourism in Cuba.” In Sun, Sex, and Gold: Tourism and Sex Work in the Caribbean, edited by Kempadoo, Kamala, 81–92. Lanham, MA: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers.Google Scholar
Fernández-Selier, Yesenia. 2012–2013. “The Making of the Rumba Body: René Rivero and the Rumba Craze.” Saragosso, no. 1–2 (2012–2013): 85–100.Google Scholar
Fleetwood, Nicole R. 2011. Troubling Vision: Performance, Visuality, and Blackness. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Frank, Mark. 2010. “Cubans Brace for “Reorganization” of Labour Force.” Reuters, July 20. https://www.reuters.com/article/2010/07/20/uk-cuba-layoffs-idUKTRE66J38O20100720Google Scholar
Frantz, Fanon. 1963. The Wretched of the Earth. Trans. Constance Farrington. New York: Grove Press.Google Scholar
Fusco, Coco. 1998. “Hustling for Dollars. Jineterismo in Cuba.” In Global Sex Workers: Rights, Resistance, and Redefinition, edited by Kempadoo, Kamala and Doezema, Jo, 151–161. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Garcia, David F. 2013. “Contesting Anthropology's and Ethnomusicology's Will to Power in the Field: William R. Bascom's and Richard A. Waterman's Fieldwork in Cuba, 1948.” MUSICultures 40 (2): 1–33.Google Scholar
Garcia, David F. 2017. Listening for Africa: Freedom, Modernity, and the Logic of Black Music's African Origins. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Gordon-Hazzard, Katrina. 1990. Jookin’: The Rise of Social Dance Formations in African-American Culture. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Google Scholar
Guillard Limonta, Norma R. 2016. “To Be a Black Woman, a Lesbian, and an Afro-Feminist in Cuba Today.” Black Diaspora Review 5 (2): 81–97.Google Scholar
Hagedorn, Katherine J. 2001. Divine Utterances: The Performance of Afro-Cuban Santeria. Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press.Google Scholar
Hansing, Katrin, and Hoffman, Bert. 2019. “Cuba's New Social Structure: Assessing the Re-Stratification of Cuban Society 60 Years after Revolution.” Working Papers GIGA Research Programme: Accountability and Participation, Hamburg, Germany.Google Scholar
Harding, Rachel. 2003. A Refuge in Thunder: Candomble and Alternative Spaces of Blackness. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Hicks, Anasa. 2019. “Domestic Service in a New Cuba.” NACLA Report on the Americas 51 (3): 262–267. doi: 10.1080/10714839.2019.1650506.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
hooks, bell. 1999. Black Looks: Race and Representation. Cambridge, MA: South End Press.Google Scholar
hooks, bell. 2014. “The Oppositional Gaze: Black Female Spectators.” In Black Looks: Race and Representation, 115–132. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hynson, Rachel. 2020. Laboring for the State: Women, Family, and Work in Revolutionary Cuba, 1959–1971. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jordan, Glenn H. 1997. “On Ethnography in an Intertextual Situation: Reading Narratives or Deconstructing Discourse?” In Decolonizing Anthropology: Moving Further toward an Anthropology of Liberation, edited by Harrison, Faye, 42–67. Arlington, VA: American Anthropological Association.Google Scholar
Jottar, Berta. 2013. “Rumberas.” Columbia College, Chicago, IL.Google Scholar
Kempadoo, Kamala. 2004. Sexing the Caribbean: Gender, Race, and Sexual Labor. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Kutzinski, Vera M. 1993. Sugar's Secrets: Race and the Erotics of Cuban Nationalism. Richmond: University of Virginia Press.Google Scholar
Lainé, Daniel, and Combroux, Pierre, dirs. 2013. Les Chemins de la Beauté, episode 1, “Cuba, la saveur des Caraïbes.” https://boutique.arte.tv/detail/chemins_beaute_serieGoogle Scholar
Lane, Jill. 2010. “Smoking habaneras, or a Cuban struggle with racial demons.” Social Text, 28 (3): 11–37.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
León, Argeliers. 1984. Del canto y el tiempo. 2nd ed. Havana: Editorial Letras Cubanas.Google Scholar
Maguire, Emily. 2011. Racial Experiments in Cuban Literature and Ethnography. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Martinez-Furé, Rogelio. 1982. “La Rumba.” In Folklore Cubano, 4 vols., edited by Carbonero, Gabriella and Lamerán, Sara, 114–118. La Habana: Editorial Pueblo y Educación.Google Scholar
McClaurin, Irma. 2001. Black Feminist Anthropology: Theory, Politics, Praxis, and Poetics. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.Google Scholar
Moore, Robin D. 1994. “Representations of Afro-Cuban Expressive Culture in the Writings of Fernando Ortiz.” Latin American Music Review 15 (1): 32–54.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Moore, Robin D. 1997. Nationalizing Blackness: Afrocubanismo and the Artistic Revolution in Havana, 1920–1940. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.Google Scholar
Ortiz, Fernando. (1906) 1973. Hampa Afro-cubana: Los Negros Brujos: Apuntos Para Un Estudio de Etnologia Criminal. Miami: Ediciones Universal.Google Scholar
Ortiz, Fernando. (1921) 2018. “Afro-Cuban Cabildos.” In Fernando Ortiz on Music: Selected Writings on Afro-Cuban Culture, edited by Moore, Robin D., 68–95. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Original edition, “Los cabildos afrocubanos.” Revista bimestre cubana 16, no. 1 (January–February 1921): 5–39.Google Scholar
Ortiz, Fernando. (1924) 1991. Glosario de afronegrismos. La Habana: Editorial de Ciencias Sociales.Google Scholar
Ortiz, Fernando. (1945–1946) 2018. “The Religious Music of Black Cuban Yorubas.” In Fernando Ortiz on Music: Selected Writing on Afro-Cuban Culture, edited by Moore, Robin D., 186–211. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. Original edition, “La m ú sica religiosa de los yorubas entre los negros cubanos.” Estudios afrocubanos 5 (1945–1946): 19–60 .Google Scholar
Ortiz, Fernando. 1950a. “La ‘tragedia’ de los ñáñigos.” Cuadernos americanos 9 (4): 79–101.Google Scholar
Ortiz, Fernando. 1950b. La Africanía de la música folklórica de Cuba. La Habana: Ministerio de Educación, Dirección de Cultura.Google Scholar
Ortiz, Fernando. (1951) 1985. Los bailes y el teatro de los negros en el folklore de cuba. La Habana: Editorial Letras Cubanas.Google Scholar
Ortiz, Fernando. 1952. Los instrumentos de la musica afrocubana. Vol. 5. Havana: Publicaciones de la Direccion de Cultura del Ministerio de Educación.Google Scholar
Palmié, Stephen. 2013. The Cooking of History: How Not to Study Afro-Cuban Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Pañellas Álvarez, Daybel. 2015. “Impactos subjectivos de las reformas económicas: Grupos e identidades sociales en la estructura social cubana.” In Cuba: los correlatos socioculturales del cambio económico, edited by Espina, Mayra Paula and Echevarría, Dayma, 164–182. La Habana: Ruth Casa Editorial.Google Scholar
Perry, Marc D. 2016. Negro Soy Yo: Hip Hop and Raced Citizenship in Neoliberal Cuba. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Phelan, Peggy. 1993. Unmarked: The Politics of Performance. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Queeley, Andrea J. 2015. Rescuing Our Roots: The African Anglo-Caribbean Diaspora in Contemporary Cuba. Gainesville: University Press of Florida.Google Scholar
“Resolución sobre los lineamientos de la política económica y social del partido y la revolución.” 2011. VI Congreso del Partido Comunista de Cuba, La Habana.Google Scholar
Ribeiro, Gustavo Lins. 2004. “Tropicalismo y Europeísmo. Modos de representar al Brasil y a la Argentina” [Tropicalism and Europeanism: Modes of representing Brazil and Argentina]. In La Antropología Brasileña Contemporánea. Contribuciones para un diálogo latino americano, edited by Grimson, Alejandro, Ribeiro, Gustavo Lins, and Semán, Pablo, 165–195. Buenos Aires: Promoteo.Google Scholar
Ribeiro, Gustavo Lins. 2019. “Cuba: Anthropological Imaginaries, Flows, and Comparisons.” American Anthropologist 121 (3): 764–766.Google Scholar
Roland, L. Kaifa. 2011. Cuban Color in Tourism and La Lucha: An Ethnography of Racial Meanings. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Roland, L. Kaifa. 2013. “T/racing Belonging Through Cuban Tourism.” Cultural Anthropology 28 (3): 396–419.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rubiera Castillo, Daysi, and Martiatu Terry, Ines Maria, eds. 2011. Afrocubanas: historia, pensamiento, y practicas culturales. La Habana: Ciencias Sociales.Google Scholar
Saunders, Tanya L. 2009. “La Lucha Mujerista: Krudas CUBENSI and Black Feminist Sexual Politics in Cuba.” Caribbean Review of Gender Studies, no. 3 (November): 1–20.Google Scholar
Saunders, Tanya L.. 2016. “Towards A Hemispheric Analysis of Black Lesbian Feminist Activism and Hip Hop Feminism: Artist Perspectives from Cuba and Brazil.” In No Tea: No Shade: New Writings in Black Queer Studies, edited by Patrick Johnson, E., 147–165. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Sawyer, Mark Q. 2005. Racial Politics in Post-Revolutionary Cuba. New York: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Schwartz, Rosalie. 1997. Pleasure Island: Tourism and Temptation in Cuba. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press.Google Scholar
Sharpe, Christina. 2016. In the Wake: On Blackness and Being. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Spillers, Hortense J. 1987. “Mama's Baby, Papa's Maybe: An American Grammar Book.” diacritics 17 (2): 65–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stein, Michal, and Vertovec, John. 2020. “The Transformative Dynamics of Self-Employed Dance Instruction in Havana, Cuba's Tourism Industry.” In Anthropological Enquiries into Policy, Debt, Business, and Capitalism, edited by Wood, Donald C., 169–190. Bingley, UK: Emerald Publishing Limited.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Stout, Noelle. 2014. After Love: Queer Intimacy and Erotic Economies in Post-Soviet Cuba. Durham: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Sublette, Ned. 2007. “Rumba.” In Cuba and Its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo, 257–272. Chicago: Chicago Review Press.Google Scholar
Thomas, Susan. 2009. Cuban Zarzuela: Performing Race and Gender on Havana's Lyric Stage. Champaign: University of Illinois Press.Google Scholar
“Trabajo por cuenta propia.” 2010. El Granma: organo oficial del comite central del partido comunista de cuba, September 24, 3–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cirilo, Villaverde. (1839) 2005. Cecilia Valdés or el Angel Hill: A Novel of Nineteenth-Century Cuba. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Wade, Peter. 1993. Blackness and Race Mixture: The Dynamics of Racial Identity in Colombia. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.Google Scholar
Wade, Peter. 1997. Race and Ethnicity in Latin America. London: Pluto Press.Google Scholar
Walker, Sheila S., ed. 2010. Conocimiento desde Adentro: Los Afrosudamericanos Hablan de Sus Pueblos y Sus Historias. La Paz: Fundación Pedro Andavérez Peralta, Afrodiáspora, Fundación Interamericana, Organización Católica Canadiense para el Desarrollo y la Paz.Google Scholar
Zeller, Jessica. 2017. “On Dance Pedagogy and Embodiment.” In Conversations Across the Field of Dance Studies, Teacher's Imprint—Rethinking Dance Legacy, vol. 37, edited by L'Hotellier, Sanja Andus, 17–20. Oak Creek, WI: Society of Dance History Scholars.Google Scholar
Zurbano, Roberto. 2011. “Cuba: doce dificultades para enfrentar el (neo-)racismo o doce razones para abrir (otro) debate.” La Jiribilla June, Issue No. 529.Google Scholar