This is Daniel Piper, curator of Latin America at the
Musical Instrument Museum. I like to say that culture is a basic human need and music,
which is practiced around the world in so many situations of life, is certainly a basic
need of ours. So we'd like to bring some of what music represents, some of my
favorite artists and instruments and stories directly to you at home.
So, Cuba. Cuba was one of my first loves of music in Latin America.
I have traveled there several times.
I met many Cuban musicians and of course we are familiar with
great Cuban music, Cuban son. The Buena Vista Social Club was
brought to the world in the 90s. These dance band musics that were
playing a variety of genres from Mambo to cha-cha-cha to rumba,
guajira, son montuno. All of this got started back in the 20s and the
30s when Cuba was tremendously influential in really the commercial
world of Latin music and the dance bands from Cuba which used
standard band instruments like trumpets and trombones
and even violins and flutes were combined with uniquely Cuban percussion
instruments like the tumbadora, which became called the conga.
These ones are from the 1940s. These are real early style
the timbales which is a Cuban invention that really is descended from timpani.
European timpani that were used in Cuba that eventually
these portable dance bands created a smaller format that then
became famously known as the timbales.
Other percussion that were added in the Cuban bands were the bongó.
All of these instruments, like bongó and güiro
and cencerro, these cowbells, and claves, they are these two
rhythm sticks, those have become really standard Latin band instruments around the world.
Whether you are playing merengue or bolero or cumbia or salsa or any number
of genres. What a lot of people don't always appreciate fully is how
much the African roots in Cuba and other countries in the
Caribbean have played into this wonderful music that we know
and is enjoyed around the world. So we put together part of our exhibit, this
section, called "Staging the Sacred" which is focused on some of the Afro-Cuban
ritual traditions. One of the most commonly known is Santería,
but there's different essentially religious societies like Abakuá and
Iyesá and Arará and, of course, La Regla de Ocha is the formal name of Santería.
We have different instruments, but we also have an example of a
ritual costume, that's used by a dancer. This here, people love this when they
come to MIM. It’s called an íreme. Íreme is sort of like the collective ancestors.
So somebody dons on this ritual wear and they become possessed by the ancestors,
and so they're inviting the ancestors to the ceremony and then they ritually
purify the area before the music and the rest of the ceremony starts.
Íreme also adds to the music because while dancing it has these
three cowbells which then jingle and create rhythm.
There’s a special type of drum called eribó that is not really played
like you would think musically, with a lot of
rhythm and phrasing. It’s more of a ritual object that is shaken.
It is tapped and played, but the sound of it and the presence of it draws out
the íreme and sort of initiates the ceremony.
A very important object and decorated with these ostrich plumes.
Some of the other instruments… one of the ones I really want to focus on.
These hourglass drums. This is called a batá.
So you have a larger head on this side
and you have a smaller head on the other side. Both with different tones.
Three of these batá are played
simultaneously while there's also singing and dancing and sometimes some
other instruments. When they start the ceremony, they don a ceremonial apron on this.
This one here is very exquisitely made by the famous Felipe García Villamil
who has actually been living in the United States since the ’80s.
He’s a National Heritage Award winner and he’s really known around through Cuba,
but also in other parts of the world as a master of Afro-Cuban arts.
So we’re proud to have his beadwork and ceremonial aprons here.
The last instrument, and this is really exciting to me personally because I have been following
this band called Irakere for many years now. The original
musicians, eventually many of them went on to have solo careers. Here's a
photo of them from the 1970s when they were really getting going.
The leader was Chucho Valdés, great Cuban piano player.
Then you have the trumpet player Arturo Sandoval
and then Paquito D’Rivera on saxophone and a number of other really important musicians.
So these guys were like the best jazz players in all of Cuba at the time,
and so they brought this project together to fuse the most contemporary innovative
jazz with Cuban salsa or timba, as they call it,
and with the Afro-Cuban arts from the religious societies and create
a new sound like no other. Only these guys, who were just the most
brilliant musicians, were able to organically and fluently do this.
So they toured the world for about twenty years or so, won a Grammy, and one of the sets
of instruments that they used during this time were these sets of three batá.
Originally the lead percussionist and singer Oscar Valdés made these in
1949 when he was a teenager under the guidance of his
master Afro-Cuban drummer. He played them in rituals for twenty years.
Then he transformed them into the ’70s using these metal tuning lugs.
The original ones didn’t have these. He set on these metal tuning lugs
so that they could become stage instruments and be able to travel with them,
but these are the original instruments
that he had that whole time. He toured the world with them.
Then he put them on a wall in his house in Havana, Cuba, in the mid- ’90s.
We’re proud to have Irakere’s drums here and we’re proud to share with you
it in your homes. A little bit of Cuba right here from the Musical Instrument Museum.