Roots in Reverse
Richard M. Shain
ROOTS IN REVERSE
Senegalese Afro-Cuban Music and Tropical Cosmopolitanism
Wesleyan University Press Middletown, Connecticut
Wesleyan University Press
Middletown CT 06459
All rights reserved
Manufactured in the United States of America
Designed by Mindy Basinger Hill
Typeset in Minion Pro
The Publisher gratefully acknowledges the support of the AMS 75 PAYS Endowment of the American Musicological Society, funded in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Shain, Richard M. (Richard Matthew), 1949– author.
Title: Roots in reverse : Senegalese Afro-Cuban music and tropical cosmopolitanism / Richard M. Shain.
Description: Middletown, Connecticut : Wesleyan University Press, 2018.
Series: Music/Culture | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018023906 (print) | LCCN 2018025256 (ebook) | ISBN 9780819577108 (ebook) | ISBN 9780819577085 (cloth : alk. paper) | ISBN 9780819577092 (pbk. : alk. paper)
Subjects: LCSH: Popular music—Senegal—History and criticism. | Popular music—Senegal—Cuban influences. | Popular music—
Social aspects—Senegal—History.
Classification: LCC ML3503.S38 (ebook) | LCC ML3503.S38 S53 2018 (print) | DDC 780.89/96972910663—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2018023906
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Cover image: Mapathé “James” Gadiaga outside Chez Iba. Photograph by Djibril Sy. Used by permission. Blue texture: Pablo631, istockphoto
FOR WOODIE BROUN
1918–2001
“You recall most often …
[the] people who were kind to you.”
Remember Me | Heywood Hale Broun
Son is the most perfect thing for entertaining the soul.
Ignacio Piñeiro, founder of Septeto Nacional
C’est trés simple … On danse.
Luambo “Franco” Makiadi, “Cooperation”
It stays fresh as long as we catch the pattern.
Baloji, “Karibu Ya Bintou”
CONTENTS
Note on Spelling of Senegalese Names xvii
INTRODUCTION Sound Track for a Black Atlantic xix
ONE Kora(son): Africa and Afro-Cuban Music 1
TWO Havana/Paris/Dakar: Itineraries of Afro-Cuban Music 14
THREE Son and Sociality: Afro-Cuban Music, Gender, and Cultural Citizenship, 1950s–1960s 33
FOUR From Sabor to Sabar: The Rise of Senegalese Afro-Cuban Orchestras, 1960s–1970s 57
SIX “Music Has No Borders”: The Global Marketing of a Local Musical Tradition, 1990s–2006 116
Illustrations 106
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book has its origins in a presentation I gave to the Cuban Student Association at Rutgers University–Newark in 1994. The attendees’ enthusiastic response inspired me to take my inchoate ideas and mold them into something more substantial. As I did so, I realized I owed a great debt to my intellectual “fathers,” Robert Christgau and the late John Storm Roberts. I never met either man, but they both have had a significant impact on my life and my current research. As a teenager, I discovered both Latin and African music through Robert Christgau’s reviews in the Village Voice. Many years later John Storm Robert’s inimitable catalogs for his Original Music tutored me in the finer points of global musical traditions. A number of phone conversations with him furthered my training, and his books and cassettes were vital in my intellectual growth.
I would like to thank the provosts
