Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #168539 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-01
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 688 pages

From Publishers Weekly
As the cofounder of the important Cuban music label Qbadisc and coproducer of public radio's Afropop Worldwide, Sublette is a well-known figure among elite mambo aficionados. Still, the sheer size and historical precision that makes this volume essential is a bit surprising coming from this proud nonacademic. The first two chapters, for instance, offer a fascinating narrative that explains the complex formulation of Iberian culture, beginning with the appearance of Phoenician traders in what is now the southern Spanish city of Cádiz in 1104 B.C. When the Cuban story finally kicks in with chapter five, Sublette makes the most of his prehistory to create a visceral and astute vision of the island as incubator of musical revolution. Most of the story has been told before, but rarely in such painstaking detail, and Sublette's easygoing and engaging writing style makes the reading almost painless, although sometimes his analysis is overly determined by politics. His most important accomplishment is combining information from rarely translated musicological works from Cuba with data from his active involvement with surviving giants of the music to produce one sustained, living history. Given all this, it is odd that he ends the book so abruptly, in 1952, especially since he has participated so much in the music's recent permutations. While not exactly for beginners, this book is a solid, supremely lush effort.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Sublette, cofounder of the QbaDisc record label and an expert on Cuban music, argues in this exhaustive history that the influence of the "fundamental music of the New World" can be heard in almost every genre of modern music from classical to hip-hop ("Louie Louie" is basically a cha-cha-cha). Equal parts world history and music history, Sublette's tome examines the music from a "Cuban's point of view." The story begins with Spain's earliest encounters with Africa and continues through Perez Prado and the mambo explosion of the 1950s. Sublette places the music in a historical context by offering thorough accounts of its journey across the Atlantic--the slave trade, Afro-Cuban religions such as Santeria, and Cuba's revolutionary history all have important roles in shaping the music's sound. Most music-history books tend to rely on extended laundry lists of styles and influences, but Sublette takes an informal narrative approach instead, making his work far more approachable both for readers new to the country's rich musical history and for devotees who have already succumbed to its rhythms. Carlos Orellana
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

New York Times
"A magnificent labor of love and advocacy. . .Remarkably thorough yet genially readable."

Customer Reviews

There should be a Nobel Prize for musical scholarship!
It's a first for me to review a book I haven't finished reading. I've been reading Cuba and Its Music for about a year, off and on, as I've read other books and material. What's prompting me to review it now is that this is simply a terrific, wonderful book and the word needs to get out. Full disclosure: despite being a musician all my life, I discovered Cuban music only about twenty years ago. The more I learned about it the more it took me over. This is not the place to go into the reasons, but I will make an outrageous blanket statement and say that what Bach is to classical music, Cuban music is to popular music.

Ned Sublette explains why in his marvelous book. I find myself pouring over passages, rereading and underlining and making notes to myself in the back. I can't take a lot of this at one time. I'll put the book down to pick it up a week later and end up rereading what I'd already read. The prospect of getting all the way to the end of it fills me with joy and dread at the same time. It's not that it's densely written: on the contrary, it's some of the clearest, easiest to read scholarly writing I've ever run across (and that's a lot, by the way).

The book is not for everyone. You have to like music, for starters. Then, it would be good if you enjoy learning about how musical styles originate, travel, and influence other styles. Cuba has been a true melting pot for many of the world's musical traditions, and most have made their way to this country, through New Orleans, through New York, and by other means, to the point that its influence is discernible in almost every popular American genre today. Sublette has traced these influences in the most careful and understandable way, and the result is enlightenment on every single page.

Now I hear that Sublette has another book out on the musical cultures and history of New Orleans. This is wonderful news even if it means I'll spend the next five years finishing both volumes. Amazon won't let me review a book twice, so I won't be able to comment on the latter parts of Cuba and Its Music here. Maybe I'll be able to mention it when I finally report on The World that Made New Orleans: From Spanish Silver to Congo Square.

Filling a gap that I never knew
This is the finest book on the sociological basis of music I have ever read. Many good books will provide a new fact on each page or two, but I seem to learn three new bits of history on every single page of this extensive analysis of the origins of musical styles in Cuba. But this is more than about Cuba; it is about Al-Andalus/Sefarad and Renaissance Spain and the eary history of the United States, and about northwest and central African peoples, and about Renaissance Europe, and about the early history of Islam and Arabia. It is about differing social policy and its effect on the slave trade. It is about what gave New Orleans jazz the Latin tinge and makes that city a treasure. It is about the distinct origins of the polyrhythmic, polytonal structures of Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian music and the recitative, glissando-embellished, monorhythmic music of the blues and later jazz. We learn about Louis Gottchalk's first use of the African drum in classical music [performed in Europe] and why such instruments were banned in England's continental colonies and the early United States since 1739. We learn how Moorish, that is, black, line dance style was once the rage of western Europeans, and led to England's Morris dances. These are among the smallest of factoids that you will encounter reading this highly readable yet scholarly book.

Because I admire and particularly enjoy multidisciplinary cultural histories, Sublette's book is a feast. His explorations are ours. You will be fascinated, and you will be delighted. The book is an education. Buy it.

El Unico
There is nothing written in English that compares to the scope and depth of this book on Cuban music. (Leymarie's Cuban Fire comes close in volume of information, but it lacks the cogent overview and insight that Sublette masterfully weaves into the details.) This is a history of Cuban music written by a musician (!) who understands the importance of credible research when defining context and cultural antecedents. Furthermore, he uses his perspective as an outsider--he is a North American--to our advantage. Coupled with his examinations of the complexity of a Cuban identity and aesthetic, our North American culture also becomes more transparent.

This is particularly true when it comes to dissecting the story that most conventional Western Hemisphere histories neglect-the profound cultural influence of West Africa. As Sublette notes, "the drum...what an African would call a drum-is conspicuously missing from European music before the sixteenth century." Was it the creolized cultures of the New World that finally gave Europeans license to return to the dance floor after centuries of Church proscription? Sublette presents a convincing case for this, while simultaneously providing an explanation for those among us who are rhythmically challenged...

Readers also benefit from the full spectrum Sublette's perspective--that of a musician who migrates comfortably between the music of the concert hall and the dance hall. "Dancing," he writes, "is an intense listening state. Dancing can be complex and it can be spiritual. African music is almost always music for dancing; and so is Cuban music, which is African music's grown-up child." No armchair scholar talks like that.

Furthermore, his writing is not of that academic ilk that is afraid to offer opinions, or reveal passions. (For starters, he states that he likes Cuban music because he "has good taste.") Nor does he shy away from connecting the dots or hazarding wide-reaching theories. He is the first author I have come across to point out that the geographical origins of the African slaves-those coming to North America from the Senegambia, those to the Caribbean from the coastal areas-largely explains the differences in the musical styles (melismatic vs. polyrhythmic) between these two regions of the Western Hemisphere. Shouldn't this information be part of our cultural literacy?

The subject of this book is huge and Sublette is certainly up to the task. (Did I mention the extensive index?) I have also found, thanks to this text, that I am listening to Cuban musicians (eg. Chano Pozo, Miguelito Valdes, Arsenio Rodriguez) with new ears. That's quite a gift. Chevere que chevere!