Roots in Reverse. Richard M. Shain
music that remains relevant to the present day: “Rumba was softer than jazz. The latter has a charm and fascination that was measured in kilowatts. Dizzying contagious, jazz had a direct effect on the nerves like an electric current while rumba echoed with the heart. When jazz is unleashed it evoked planes taking off, the frenetic turning of a transatlantic propeller. Rumba evoked a black girl swinging in her hammock at nightfall, rocked by the plaintive sounds of a guitar.”41
Fara makes it clear that he considers both jazz and Afro-Cuban music emblematic of modernity. However, for him jazz is cerebral, almost neurological. It is the music of a frenetic industrial society, powered by the most advanced technology. In contrast, Afro-Cuban music fits a developing tropical world: soft, soulful, and evocative but still modern. It appeals to the heart as well as the head and culturally straddles continents. Revealingly, jazz doesn’t strike him as particularly “black music,” while Afro-Cuban music does. Jazz may be the product of the black diaspora, but Fara implies that it has only limited “pull” outside of Europe and North America. Afro-Cuban music, he thinks, could gain popularity with a potentially much wider public in the black world. The image of a black woman in a hammock resonates in many more African cultures than the metaphor of airplanes taking off. As the subsequent history of Afro-Cuban music in Senegal and Africa demonstrates, Fara’s words were prophetic. Outside of South Africa, jazz has been a cult music appreciated by small coteries in Africa’s capital cities, while Afro-Cuban music has gone on to be the foundation of many African nations’ popular music.42
In other respects as well, Socé Diop’s novel foretells the future significance of Afro-Cuban music in Senegal. The explanation the book offers for the allure of Afro-Cuban music for Senegalese abroad in the 1930s still holds true for many Senegalese at home today. Socé Diop’s protagonist in the 1930s and the salsa musicians in 2003 express their fascination with Afro-Cuban music in much the same terms. For both groups, Afro-Cuban music, the product of méttisage, bridges the diaspora, bringing Africa and the Caribbean closer together culturally.43 Both groups also share an intense emotional connection to Afro-Cuban music. Perhaps most strikingly, both groups agree that the emphasis on dance and movement inherent in Afro-Cuban music promotes a type of modernity appropriate for Senegal.
A DISTANT MIRROR: LISTENING TO SENEGALESE LISTENING TO AFRO-CUBAN MUSIC
Cuban Music truly belongs to us.
Camou Yandè, sonero and conguero 44
When asked to describe their relationship with Afro-Cuban music, Senegalese Latin music connoisseurs and musicians respond by declaring that Cuban music is deeply pleasurable, emotionally direct, and aesthetically powerful. It is important both as a source of enjoyment and for what it signifies and symbolizes. Afro-Cuban music for them has been representative of a cosmopolitanism that is rooted in the black internationalism of the diaspora without undermining “local” norms and aspirations. It also has inculcated “correcte” modern social behaviors such as self-control and a ritualized respect for women. As a consequence, in addition to constituting a highly satisfying form of leisure, the music has been a guide to how an urbane citoyen should behave in public in a modern African state in terms of etiquette and personal style. This section explores what Senegalese have heard in Cuban music beneath its evocative melodies and compelling rhythms. Though its focus is on musicians, broadcasters, and Latin music connoisseurs, the sentiments expressed are shared by nearly anyone in Senegal who listens and dances to Afro-Cuban music.45
For many individuals in preindependence Senegal, listening and dancing to Afro-Cuban music anchored them more securely in the cultural universe of the black Atlantic. When asked why Afro-Cuban music appealed to them, Senegalese repeatedly stressed its diasporic dimension. By linking Senegal with distinguished artistic expression in the Caribbean, the music first served as a bulwark against the racial arrogance of colonial French society. Later, during the Cold War era of the 1960s, when cultural nationalism was rife, the diasporic connection with Afro-Cuban music demonstrated the global reach and prestige of African civilization, especially in the Atlantic tropical world, while circumventing dominance by US popular culture. In Senegal, consumers always have viewed Afro-Cuban music as black music, originating in Africa. Balla Sidibè, a leading sonero and timbale player, stated: “Everything that comes from there [Cuba] comes from Africa. It’s the slaves. The great Cuban musicians—they’re black or mulattos.”46
Djibril Gaby Gaye, a radio and television broadcaster, made much the same point: “Black people are the foundation of Latin American music and we feel that.”47 Mbaye Seck, a guitarist who played with celebrated saxophonist and bandleader Dexter Johnson in the 1960s, like many Senegalese asserted that he finds himself reflected in the music in a diasporic mirror: “Even though it’s not sung in any [Senegalese] national language, it’s the melody that people like. In my opinion, I find there’re African roots in salsa. Africans feel salsa like they feel African music. It interests everybody.”48
Antoine Dos Reis, a retired journalist and radio personality, further developed this diasporic line of thinking: “This is not a music that came out of nothing. It was transplanted to Cuba, Brazil and other places from its native land. So this music came back to us. When you hear this music, you really feel something, the Africanness. This music is not foreign to us.”49
Pierre Gomis, a Latin music radio announcer, perhaps put it most succinctly: “In Afro-Cuban music, I find my roots.”50
For a portion of the Senegalese Afro-Cuban music public, the music has linked Senegal with other tropical societies like Cuba that face somewhat similar challenges of cultural and social development. This group views both Senegal and Cuba as products of cultural méttisage: a mixing of European and African cultural materials. For these listeners, Afro-Cuban music exemplifies a cultural “counterpoint” that illuminates a path to modernity. It enables its Senegalese audience to celebrate African civilization’s contributions to world history without lapsing into cultural chauvinism. This group regards cultural “purity” as an illusion. Instead, they believe a “modern” society selectively blends elements from a number of global “traditions.” By orienting themselves toward black Atlantic nations such as Cuba (and to a lesser extent Brazil), they have been able to practice their own form of cultural nationalism, simultaneously rooted in the African diaspora and in an expansive cosmopolitanism. Pierre Gomis, for example, declared: “In Afro-Cuban music … there’s the rhythmic inspiration of Africa, French dancing and the Spanish language. There’s nothing that can rival it. You rediscover yourself in this music—whether you’re in Havana, New York or here [Dakar].”51
Orchestre Baobab’s Rudy Gomis said to the researcher Aleysia Whitmore: “We needed something that wasn’t our folklore but that was close to our folklore. That’s why cha-cha-chá came here to Africa.… Before you could go to a bar and you danced tango, waltz, pasa doble. It was too white, too toubab.”52
Pascal Dieng, who was a singer with the group Super Cayor for many years and now leads his own ensemble, articulated why the cultural mélange of Afro-Cuban music is so important for many Senegalese: “Afro-Cuban music is a music of blacks and whites. It’s a music of méttisage. With salsa, there’s no apartheid. It’s for whites and blacks. Our grandparents who left Africa for slavery in the Americas—they sang in the sugar cane field. They mixed with white people so salsa is a music that mixes and joins white skin and black skin.”53
For the generation that came of age in the 1950s and 1960s, those who could dance well to Afro-Cuban music gained a reputation for cultural refinement. Dance for this group has been more than just social leisure. Along with expertise in Latin music, it has been a means for achieving social distinction, accumulating social capital, and embodying modernity. For this generation of Senegalese, Afro-Cuban dancing is modernity in motion. The late El Hadj Amadou Ndoye, a professor of Hispanic literature at Université Cheikh Anta Diop in Dakar, recalls: “Dancing and Cuban music go together.… Ibrahima Fall—he became Minister of Foreign Affairs—we were students then—he was a great dancer. There was a contest to see who was the best dancer. He was Dean of the Law School, a great intellectual—and he won a bunch of