Changüí: Traditional Music of Guantánamo by Luis Rumbaut

Changüí is regional music, a bantú-derived variant of son from the eastern corner of Cuba. It stands apart from, while related to, the better-known Cuban rhythms. The real changüí, from Guantánamo, is not the bugaloo that Arsenio Rodríguez played in Los teenagers bailan changüí, having married the original to Latin jazz, or the melodious Rico changüí that Celia Cruz sang with New York salseros. Changüí is rough, pulsating music, played with minimal instrumentation, at once danceable and choppy.

Instead of the syncopated four-count of the son, changüí, -especially as played by Grupo Changüí, in this CD- follows a quick count of eight, with accents on the first and fifth counts. The absence of the clave is notable, and it is the tres that takes center stage, in tandem with the bongos, large and with low-pitched heads. The tres in changüí is aggressive, free-form, percussive.

In this outstanding CD, the Grupo Changüí and the Estrellas Campesinas alternate their versions of this traditional music. Those who find it hard to catch the beat of the Grupo Changüí will have no problem in dancing along with the Estrellas, who can no doubt keep a guateque campesino (country dance) going until dawn. The liner notes help to keep track of what's going on in the songs. One of Grupo Changüí's songs, Los animales, laments the death of the animals during one of Guan-tánamo's recurring droughts. Unlike Woody Guthrie's Dust Bowl ballads, however, this lament is also an invitation to drink (Bacardi!) and dance. The liner notes, unfortunately, don't stick to the music, but include an astoundingly idiotic series of historical and sociological fancies from the producer, one Dita Sullivan, who probably has now burned some bridges to the Cuban musicians who helped her find her way through this production.

In Sullivan's view, the revolution of 1959 put an end, within one year, to Cuban music, which "effectively disappeared from the world scene, and with it went big cars, curvaceous women and the sexual sizzle that partnered dancing provokes. Enter the Beatles and the androgynous counterculture that followed in their wake." (What she means by "world scene," of course, is "the U.S.") Not to worry: "Now, almost forty years later, Cuban music is re-emerging to claim its rightful place in the pantheon of world music." (Read, again, "of the U.S.," the only country in the world that persists on blockading the island.) And, she says, this comeback is thanks to the U.S.(!): "This renaissance began in the United States in the early 1990's, with the almost simultaneous re-discovery of two great Cuban musical innovators [Mario Bauzá and Israel López 'Cachao']. Both had endured decades of obscurity in exile, then suddenly found themselves 'overnight sensations...'"

But why "suddenly"? Did lighting strike the U.S.? Was it fate? Perhaps Sullivan missed the decades of popularity of Cuban music in Europe, Latin America, and Africa. Maybe she never knew of the growing interest of U.S. musicians, tired of disco and salsa, in the Cuban music scene, notwithstanding the blockade. No doubt she did not realize that the Mariel boatlift of 1980 brought a vibrant new infusion of popular music from the island, as did to a lesser extent the later balseros, confounding Miami's credo that "the son had left Cuba." Sullivan misplaces in time and effect the court ruling that exempted music and art from the blockade, allowing it to come in relatively unimpeded, and ignores the solid work of the Smithsonian Institution in bringing Cuban musicians to the U.S. (including musicians on this CD) and various other factors. By the time that she thinks that Bauzá and Cachao were "suddenly rediscovered," the whole world, and a great many U.S. music lovers, were enjoying Cuban music. It's not by accident that Buena Vista Social Club, for example, came out on a British label. The U.S. musical industry fell into line with a global trend it could no longer ignore.

Among the more stupefying of Sullivan's assertions is that traditional Cuban musicians "had suffered years of unemployment and hardship because their music was not favored by the Castro regime-the traditional son represented the past, and the government wanted to promote the sound of post-revolutionary Cuba as a reflection of itself." Which sound does she mean? Nueva Trova? Or the music of the National Folkloric Ensem-ble, Afro-Cuba, and Muñequitos? Does she mean the all-out jazz of Irakere? Is she referring to dances like pilón and timba? Did she ever hear the faithfully recreated traditional son of Sierra Maestra, or see the "regime's" documentary on the Septeto Nacional? Does she know of groups like Son 14, Adalberto y Su Son, and Raisón, which hardly became popular by avoiding the son? Perhaps she believes that a country whose population was mostly under 30 years of age would continue to venerate the stars of the 50's without inventing its own new stars. The answer is probably none of the above: in Sullivan's view, the only good Cuban music is "pre-1959 music"; or music tardily "rediscovered" in the U.S., or by her on her trip to Guantánamo.

Too much space would be needed to explain why the tres is not, contrary to Sullivan's claim, "a cross between the medieval lute and the guitar"; or that the Caribbean peoples in Guantánamo did not all go to Cuba "to work on the building of the US naval base at Guantánamo Bay." The mind reels at Sullivan's dictum that "ironically, since Castro, most popular music has been played outdoors, rendering the concept of class irrelevant." She finds freemasonry hidden in the lyrics of a palo song, and leaves it "to another explorer to explain the possible link bet-ween Celtic and Bantú tree magic." Ms. Sullivan apparently concludes, paternalistically, that the musicians have not ever left Guantánamo, or been exposed to the tourists who go there, or had access to the many foreign films on TV and the movies in Cuba; somewhat defensively, she ex-plains a song that exalts Cuban women over Anglo women this way: "Though it is unlikely that the changüiseros have seen many foreigners, it's their way of being patriotic and flattering to the local talent at the same time." With a little travel, one gathers, the guantanameros would be singing "I wish they all could be California girls."

For changüí music, this record is as good as they come. Buy it for the music, and ignore the ignorant blather of the producer.