This chapter explores how Cuban popular dance music nurtures
and contests revolutionary values in... more This chapter explores how Cuban popular dance music nurtures and contests revolutionary values in today’s Cuba. I focus on the performance and discursive construction of the song ‘Cubanos por el mundo’ by Interactivo, one of Cuba’s most popular bands in the last decade, using a combination of textual and musical analysis framed by Jacques Rancière’s notion of ‘police’ and ‘politics’. From this perspective I analyse the formation of a ‘Cuban police order’ structured around a shared notion of the revolutionary and discuss how the experience of the song dialogues musically with that order by associating it with pleasure and critique. Empirically, I focus on the recording and an improvisation by Roberto Carcassés, the director of the band and composer of the song, during a live performance at a massive concert held to celebrate revolutionary unity at Plaza Anti-Imperialista in Havana. The second part of the chapter discusses how the song nurtured new articulations of ‘politics’ and ‘police’ discursively by studying blogs and newspaper articles written in response to the improvisation. Listening to the pleasures and politics of Cuban grooves through Rancière’s two concepts call for a relational understanding of the politics of music that examines both the broader police orders within which music makes sense and, through in-depth listening, how music disputes and amplifies such orders. It suggests that the multidimensional meanings of music in experience allow sounds to both pleasurise and criticise police orders as rhythms, melodies and sung statements interlock in time. More importantly, the study shows how these relationships create pleasurable ways of being together that both reproduce and change ‘what is common to the community’. It resonates with John Street’s emphasis on ‘the political possibilities inherent in [musical] pleasure’ and calls into question studies that focus exclusively on lyrics and music’s circulation to capture the politics of music. A relational understanding of the politics of music grants more political agency to musical sounds than most existing studies while still considering music’s discursive context.
Drawing on ethnomusicological fieldwork and music analysis, this article discusses the ways in wh... more Drawing on ethnomusicological fieldwork and music analysis, this article discusses the ways in which live performances of contemporary Cuban popular dance music create an aesthetic polis space and increase participatory democracy by disseminating opinions, values and preferences critical to the Cuban state. Inspired by Arendt’s theo- retical concepts of action, polis and wooing, and Rancière’s theory of the politics of aes- thetics, the study shows how Interactivo’s live concerts give a political voice to people commonly excluded from political discussions in the one-party state. The analysis sug- gests that this musical politics is played out through an interplay of grooves, melodies and lyrics that invites dancing and collective singing among members of the partici- pating audience; it therefore illuminates how music can increase political plurality in today’s Cuba.
This chapter explores how Cuban popular dance music nurtures
and contests revolutionary values in... more This chapter explores how Cuban popular dance music nurtures and contests revolutionary values in today’s Cuba. I focus on the performance and discursive construction of the song ‘Cubanos por el mundo’ by Interactivo, one of Cuba’s most popular bands in the last decade, using a combination of textual and musical analysis framed by Jacques Rancière’s notion of ‘police’ and ‘politics’. From this perspective I analyse the formation of a ‘Cuban police order’ structured around a shared notion of the revolutionary and discuss how the experience of the song dialogues musically with that order by associating it with pleasure and critique. Empirically, I focus on the recording and an improvisation by Roberto Carcassés, the director of the band and composer of the song, during a live performance at a massive concert held to celebrate revolutionary unity at Plaza Anti-Imperialista in Havana. The second part of the chapter discusses how the song nurtured new articulations of ‘politics’ and ‘police’ discursively by studying blogs and newspaper articles written in response to the improvisation. Listening to the pleasures and politics of Cuban grooves through Rancière’s two concepts call for a relational understanding of the politics of music that examines both the broader police orders within which music makes sense and, through in-depth listening, how music disputes and amplifies such orders. It suggests that the multidimensional meanings of music in experience allow sounds to both pleasurise and criticise police orders as rhythms, melodies and sung statements interlock in time. More importantly, the study shows how these relationships create pleasurable ways of being together that both reproduce and change ‘what is common to the community’. It resonates with John Street’s emphasis on ‘the political possibilities inherent in [musical] pleasure’ and calls into question studies that focus exclusively on lyrics and music’s circulation to capture the politics of music. A relational understanding of the politics of music grants more political agency to musical sounds than most existing studies while still considering music’s discursive context.
Drawing on ethnomusicological fieldwork and music analysis, this article discusses the ways in wh... more Drawing on ethnomusicological fieldwork and music analysis, this article discusses the ways in which live performances of contemporary Cuban popular dance music create an aesthetic polis space and increase participatory democracy by disseminating opinions, values and preferences critical to the Cuban state. Inspired by Arendt’s theo- retical concepts of action, polis and wooing, and Rancière’s theory of the politics of aes- thetics, the study shows how Interactivo’s live concerts give a political voice to people commonly excluded from political discussions in the one-party state. The analysis sug- gests that this musical politics is played out through an interplay of grooves, melodies and lyrics that invites dancing and collective singing among members of the partici- pating audience; it therefore illuminates how music can increase political plurality in today’s Cuba.
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Papers by Kjetil Bøhler
and contests revolutionary values in today’s Cuba. I focus on the
performance and discursive construction of the song ‘Cubanos por
el mundo’ by Interactivo, one of Cuba’s most popular bands in the
last decade, using a combination of textual and musical analysis
framed by Jacques Rancière’s notion of ‘police’ and ‘politics’. From
this perspective I analyse the formation of a ‘Cuban police order’
structured around a shared notion of the revolutionary and discuss
how the experience of the song dialogues musically with that order
by associating it with pleasure and critique. Empirically, I focus
on the recording and an improvisation by Roberto Carcassés,
the director of the band and composer of the song, during a live
performance at a massive concert held to celebrate revolutionary
unity at Plaza Anti-Imperialista in Havana. The second part of
the chapter discusses how the song nurtured new articulations of
‘politics’ and ‘police’ discursively by studying blogs and newspaper
articles written in response to the improvisation.
Listening to the pleasures and politics of Cuban grooves through
Rancière’s two concepts call for a relational understanding of the
politics of music that examines both the broader police orders
within which music makes sense and, through in-depth listening,
how music disputes and amplifies such orders. It suggests that the
multidimensional meanings of music in experience allow sounds
to both pleasurise and criticise police orders as rhythms, melodies
and sung statements interlock in time. More importantly, the
study shows how these relationships create pleasurable ways of
being together that both reproduce and change ‘what is common
to the community’. It resonates with John Street’s emphasis on ‘the political possibilities inherent in [musical] pleasure’ and calls
into question studies that focus exclusively on lyrics and music’s
circulation to capture the politics of music. A relational understanding
of the politics of music grants more political agency to
musical sounds than most existing studies while still considering
music’s discursive context.
and contests revolutionary values in today’s Cuba. I focus on the
performance and discursive construction of the song ‘Cubanos por
el mundo’ by Interactivo, one of Cuba’s most popular bands in the
last decade, using a combination of textual and musical analysis
framed by Jacques Rancière’s notion of ‘police’ and ‘politics’. From
this perspective I analyse the formation of a ‘Cuban police order’
structured around a shared notion of the revolutionary and discuss
how the experience of the song dialogues musically with that order
by associating it with pleasure and critique. Empirically, I focus
on the recording and an improvisation by Roberto Carcassés,
the director of the band and composer of the song, during a live
performance at a massive concert held to celebrate revolutionary
unity at Plaza Anti-Imperialista in Havana. The second part of
the chapter discusses how the song nurtured new articulations of
‘politics’ and ‘police’ discursively by studying blogs and newspaper
articles written in response to the improvisation.
Listening to the pleasures and politics of Cuban grooves through
Rancière’s two concepts call for a relational understanding of the
politics of music that examines both the broader police orders
within which music makes sense and, through in-depth listening,
how music disputes and amplifies such orders. It suggests that the
multidimensional meanings of music in experience allow sounds
to both pleasurise and criticise police orders as rhythms, melodies
and sung statements interlock in time. More importantly, the
study shows how these relationships create pleasurable ways of
being together that both reproduce and change ‘what is common
to the community’. It resonates with John Street’s emphasis on ‘the political possibilities inherent in [musical] pleasure’ and calls
into question studies that focus exclusively on lyrics and music’s
circulation to capture the politics of music. A relational understanding
of the politics of music grants more political agency to
musical sounds than most existing studies while still considering
music’s discursive context.