John Gray is director of the Black Arts Research Center in New York. He is the author of a half dozen books on a variety of subjects dealing broadly with black culture. His current project is a multi-volume bibliography on sacred, folk, and popular music idioms of the African Diaspora, called the Black Music Reference Series. (N.B.: the publisher seems to be distinct from another press known as the Diasporic Africa Press.)
The volume under review here is the third in the above series. It is an impressive compilation of nearly 5,000 (individually-numbered) entries that concludes with the years 2008-2009. Clearly, publications later than those dates are not included. There is very little prior to those dates, however, that has been missed by the author. The entries include theses and dissertations as well as books, articles, and “media materials.” Very few stones have been left unturned.
Gray’s intent for the series, as he puts it in an introduction, “was to gather as comprehensive an array of materials on black music and musicians born outside of the African sub-continent as possible.” In the present volume he concentrates on the musically-rich island of Cuba.
The contents of the volume are divided into seven major “sections” (= chapters): Cultural History and the Arts; Festivals and Carnival; Afro-Cuban Music: General Works; Afro-Cuban Music: Musical Instruments; Afro-Cuban Music: Genre Studies (some twenty different categories of which “Jazz/Latin Jazz”—my primary interest—was but one); Afro-Cuban Music Abroad; and Biographical and Critical Studies. The latter is the largest section (225-527) including (in terms of jazz) groups like Irakere or individuals such as Paquito D’Rivera or Arturo Sandoval (with all publications about, or by, them—discographies are not included). It is remarkably complete.
As noted above, my primary interest here is Latin jazz, a relatively small part of the
book. While covered quite thoroughly, there are omissions, e.g., groups such as Mezcla
(which has been around for a quarter century) or Diakara (led by veteran percussionist
Oscar Valdes). I was especially surprised to see no reference to the legendary Havana
jazz club Zorra y el Cuervo. Less surprising was the absence of references to talented
younger musicians (in their 30s or younger) or a couple of little pieces of mine: “A
Look at Jazz in Present-Day Cuba,”
I have had an interest in Afro-Cuban jazz for many years and finally had an opportunity to visit the island in the spring of 2001. I had two broad objectives: to experience the jazz scene in Havana, the island’s epicenter for that subject; and, secondly, to get a taste of the island’s traditional music. That could best be done, I thought, by visiting Santiago de Cuba, the first capital and the home of a legendary traditional music venue, Casa de la Trova. Gray has several entries dealing with the latter (most of which I had not known about). Since he briefly annotates most of his entries, I was interested to read his comment about item #1057, which he described as a “Photo-feature on Santiago de Cuba’s Casa de la Trova, the island’s equivalent of Preservation Hall in New Orleans” (134). That is precisely how I described it in my 2002 piece. The many similarities between Cuba and New Orleans are no accident—the ties between the two go back centuries—and, as a resident of New Orleans, I was always sensitive to possible parallels between the two. I found many. It is interesting, however, that references to New Orleans are not listed in his subject index. They must be there, but it would be difficult to find them with the existing indexes. The volume concludes, essentially, with both an author index (563-595) and a subject index (595-614).
The subject of this volume is enormous, and Gray has clearly done his best to take command of it. I congratulate him for his efforts in addressing the daunting task. The book should be a valuable reference tool (especially for non-specialists), and I know that I will be consulting it again. It should be of interest to anyone interested in the arts in Cuba.
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[Review length: 700 words • Review posted on February 6, 2013]