How does Benny Moré’s music
represent all three main racial
demographics in Cuba?
A 2014 census showed that 64.1% of Cubans are white-Cubans, 26.6% are Mulatto or mestizo with the final 9.3% being black afro-cubans. (Wayback Machine, 2014). In this essay I aim to show how Benny Moré represents not only the Afro-Cubans through his connection to the Congolese cabildos, but also the Mulatto and mestizo Cubans through his connection to the guajiros, and also and finally, the white-Cubans through his timeless transnational influence
Benny was born on the West side of the island in La Lajas in1919 and grew up in the Congolese cabildos context. He then moved, in 1929, to the mountains in the Eastern Oriente province of Cuba where he became immersed in the context of the guajiros and son music (1929) before moving back to Havana in his teens and then to Mexico in 1945. Benny Moré finally returned to Cuba during the revolution in 1950 and died in Cuba in 1963 from alcoholism.
Cuba was an island wrapped in paradigms during this time. It was governed by a repressive dictatorship and suffering from racial discrimination and segregation whilst the foreign powers of
the USA almost completely ran the sugar cane economy. The few very rich (generally elite white Cubans) became extremely rich and the poor (Afro-Cubans) fell into poverty. Cuba was corrupt in government and consequently the streets were ran by gangsters. Paradoxically the music scene was alive and vibrant, innovative and influential.
General Musicality of Benny Moré
Benny Moré was known for having perfect intonation and ‘swing’ to his voice. The melodies he composed were fluid and his lyrics were emotive, patriotic, often improvised and impressive earning him the nick name ‘El Sonero Mayer’ meaning .... From a young age Benny dreamt of having a big band, typical of Cuban music, and in his career Benny Moré ended up combining afro-cuban instrumentation and big-band jazz, with the guajiro rural son, and son montuno, further mixing them with the charanga orchestras. In doing so, Benny Morés music constructed a new bridge between the authentic musics of the three otherwise segregated main racial demographics in Cuba: the Afro-cubans, the Mulatto and mestizo guajiros, and finally the White Cubans. (Radanovich, 2009)
Benny Morés representation of Afro-Cuban’s Music
In the 18th and 19th century, Cuba’s economy ran almost entirely off sugarcane and coffee crops which required a huge labour force. At this time it is estimated that 600, 000 slaves were brought to Cuba from the West coast of Africa: Ghana, Benin, the Cabo Verde Islands and others. (Camara, 2015). When slavery was abolished in 1886 (20 years later than the previous state to abolish slavery), the standard of living for the poor in Cuba, and the working conditions for those enduring the back breaking work of the sugarcane fields improved very little, if at all, and systematic racism continued regardless of the official condemnation of slavery. In an attempt to create a sense of Afro identity and home upon the island of Cuba, cabildos were set up around
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The World of Cuban Music Sophie Symmons 627017 the island. Cabildos were first established in 1598 by the Spanish colonial authorities as Christian houses or “Mutual aid societies for black Cubans from the same nación, or African Ethnic
group” (Sublette, 2007). It is worth noting that the naming of these institutes as cabildos was purely a colonial saying and was never used by the Afro-cubans at all, who preferred to call them “Casino de los Congos” (Radanovich, 2009) meaning ....
These cabildos which had to be named after Christian saints, became a safe space for the Afro-cuban community, recreational spaces for spiritual expression, musical preservation and were commonly referred to as ‘mutual aid societies’. The term ‘Hiding in plain sight’ refers to the practice of using cabildos as a secret place to worship the African ‘Orishas’. Within the Yoruba religion practiced in much of West Africa and Congo, an Orisha is a manifestation of supreme divinity that had been banned as worship in Cuba. So the Christian exterior of the cabildos acted as a ‘cover’ for the “real worship” of the Yoruba Orishas. Cabildos were divided into three main syncretic religions that form the basis for the Afro-cuban identity within Cuba today: Palo Monte, compromised of the descendants of Congolese slave which were brought mainly to the Oriente Province of East Cuba, Santería, from the Yoruba nations of Africa and brought mainly to Havana and Matanzas of West Cuba, and finally, Abakuá of the Efik and Carabalí African nation descendants.
The cabildos played the imperative and critical role of preserving and maintaining the oppressed music and dance as well as the languages and religious belief systems that were brought to Cuba from the African continent via the slave trade that were being quashed by governmental segregator legislation (Gerstin and Velez, 2002). Benny Moré’s great great grandfather was a Conogolese African slave brought to Cuba and Benny’s mother and father and grandfather were all members of the Palo Monte cabildos. Here in these cabildos, the family would sing during the religious ceremonies in honour of their Congolese ancestors. This ‘Cabildo de Congo’ was known for its fast passed rhythms that start slow. The percussion consisted of bongó drums and tumbadora drums (otherwise known as congas), with cyclical repetitive compound metres, whilst the singing style was of a cyclical call and response structure and a chorus in harmonies of fifths. The use of call and response and repetitive cycles is mirrored in indigenous music from all over West (and East) Africa. This Congolese derived cabildo music influenced Benny Moré’s Afro- Cuban identity as he grew up hearing these rhythms. Benny Moré’s sister also played a big role within the cabildos, working closely with the first ‘casino king’ Gundo Moré and Aida Benítez (Olano, 2018).
The role of the cabildos also extended to being a mutual aid network. This was an important aspect of Benny’s connection to the cabildos as, aged ten, Benny and his brother walked across the country from Santa Isabel de Las Lajas, where Benny was born in the west of the island, to join their mother working in the sugarcane fields in the Oriente province in the East of Cuba. Along the way, in any town that the brothers stopped in, the cabildos would welcome the boys as family,
and would proceed to take care of them, helping with money and food. In this respect the Page 3
The World of Cuban Music Sophie Symmons 627017 cabildos worked as a network on which Afro-Cubans could rely. It wasn’t simply a place to go on Sunday for worship in your home town, it was actually a mutual aid society extending safety and community spirit everywhere. The cabildos played a vital and important role in the lives and identity of Afro-Cubans in this period and by extension played a really important role in inspiring Benny Moré’s future music. Benny Moré’s use of makuta (conga) drums in his music is a direct correlation and representation of the Afro-Cuban influences in his life which stemmed from the growth and comfort extended to Benny from the Congolese cabildos. It earned him the globally used name of ‘El Bárbaro del ritmo’ - the wild man of rhythm.
Benny Moré’s representation of Mulatto music in Cuba
Benny Moré grew up in the context of the sugar cane fields. His mother lived in a small town called Las Lajas. Later Benny would write his final song as a dedication to this memory entitled ‘Santa Isabel de las Lajas’ (Moré, 1968). It meant a lot to Benny to finally give some credit to the small town on the island after having written so much of the other towns. This little town was on the western Caribbean side of the island. At the age of 10 Benny and his brother left Las Lajas alone to join their mother on the opposite side of country, who was working laboriously in a big American sugar mill. This work was the backbreaking lobour of the everyday lives for the poorest Cubans. Although slavery had been abolished in 1886 in Cuba, the sugar cane industry was still an extremely post colonial oppressive system, exploiting the Mulatto and Afro-Cuban population of Cuba. The intensive work meant that many people died whilst working the fields.
After walking to the west, aged ten, Benny lived in the Oriente province otherwise known as the land of the guajiro. A guajiro is a reasonably broad term given to the people who either worked in the fields or the sugar cane plantation. It’s also a name given to the people who lived in the mountains, or came from the eastern Oriente Province. It is a common misconception that all guajiros were Mulatto from the Spanish colonial descent on the island and of a more hispanic culture. In actual fact the guajiros came from the encounters between the Spanish settlers and the African slaves; consequently a great number of guajiros were of black skin. Regardless of this, upon Benny’s international acclaim and fame within Cuba, he became known as the “‘Black Guajiro’ or - ‘El Guajiro Negro’.
Son music was known as the music for, and of, the people of the mountain, also known as, the guajiros of the Oriente. Son is an umbrella term for various transitions of son music which started with the ‘rural son’ of the Oriente in the late 19th century. Featuring male and female artists (the guajiros/guajiras), the marimbula (a small idiophone plucked with the thumbs, similar to marimbas used in Africa), antiphonal singing (call and response), the tres (a small Spanish guitar with three courses of wire strings) which would play a small repeating pattern called the tumbao whilst the conga drums provided improvised percussion. Players of rural son were also known as
‘trovas’ (trovador). In order to be a trovador ( you had to be able to compose your own poetic songs and lyrics, whilst accompanying yourself on guitar or tres. Trovadors were known for commenting on social situations and current every day affairs and, for this reason, a quick wit
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The World of Cuban Music Sophie Symmons 627017 with lyrical improvisation was necessary. Benny Moré’s lyrical style was derived from the veija trova style of the guajiros.
Furthermore Benny Moré played both the guitar and trés like the trovadores and his patriotic improvised lyrics, commenting on the social aspects of Cuban life earned him respect as one of the most talented soneros becoming known widely as the ‘El Sonero Mayor’. A sonero being a singer of stories and more specifically someone with the ability to improvise witty and pertinent lyrics about the everyday lives of those around and able to adapt and incorporate the news and gossip of the day. The sonero’s position is to take the lyrics from the verses of the songs, and then in the chorus improvise lines working from the verses. Often his improvised lyrics would be tinged with humour and irony, this reflecting ‘guaracha’ - son with humour.
A fundamental musical element of all son, is the rhythm of the son clave. It is incorporated and imperative to any son, and consequently later rumba, salsa, reggaeton and many more genres, and is played on the guiros or claves:
x . . x . . x . . . x. x . . .
Furthermore the people of the East mountains had a unique structure to their rural son. They would sing in verses of ten lines, and this structure is called decimer. A lot of Benny Moré’s songs are written in the decimer format further strengthening Benny’s connection to the guajiros identity and therefore the racial demographics of Eastern Cuba. Son grew into a trio and sextet formation and then, in 1927, a septet formation and finally transitioned into a son montuno format in the 1940’s which was popularized as an urban genre by groups such as the Sexteto Habanero and the Sexteto Nacional (Waxer, 1994).
Benny Moré, uses all the ‘rural son’ trova styles in tres and decimer formats. He also uses the more contemporary son: son montuno. In 1940’s Arsenio Rodriguez reshaped the face of son, transitioning its character to ‘son monunto’ which was a great big band arrangement. Arsenio added the ‘conjunto’ format, which was the addition of the piano, tumbadora and trumpets as well as the montuno which refers to the repetition of lines within the chorus. In the context of son, montuno means chorus, however it also means ‘of the mountain’ as its influence comes from Arsenio’s connections the guajiros identity of the Eastern mountains. The act of repeating the chorus became a fundamental element, and can be heard in much of the proceeding Cuban music. Benny Moré was strongly influenced by ‘son monunto’ and Arsenio Rodriguez, and grew very famous for his montunos in which he had been improvising lyrics since he was a small child. Benny Moré also drew from son monunto by incorporating the characteristic stabbing horn section parts known as ‘diablos’ taken from Arsenio’s conjunto big band formation.
In Benny’s own big band ‘La Banda Gigante’ (the giant band) performance format, each musician takes his stand in turn adding instrumentation to further build on the piece. In this way there is a strong interaction between the orchestra musicians and Moré’s pieces that they play.
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The World of Cuban Music Sophie Symmons 627017 Although Benny borrowed from Arsenio’s arrangement’, they differ in that Arsenio’s compositions tended to be in a minor key, whilst Benny Moré’s tend to be in a major key, through the use of chord progressions such as the 1st ,4th and 5th notes. However Benny was also known for enjoying the 6th note, which later became very important in Cuban popular music, and also in Congolese pop music, which had further been influenced in a transnational way by Cuban music, thus drawing on Arsenio’s legacy.
In Benny Moré’s song ‘Soy Guajiro” he pays ode to the mountain people by opening the track with the lyrics “I was born on a riviera there in the middle / of the mountain, and I sing to you my guajira / as the mockingbird sings it” (Especial, 2018). ‘Soy Del Monte’ meaning ‘I am from the mountains’ is another Moré song in decimer, old trova format, lyrically commenting on his pride in being a guajiro, a countryman with the ‘monte’ (mountain) culture. Benny Moré also pays further ode to his mother with his song ‘Mi Saoco’. (Saoco is a cheap rum and coco-nut drink common with Afro-Cuban field workers). His mother used to cook for the sugar cane workers in the fields, whilst Benny would come along and sing to the workers, performing songs written in decimer structure.
Benny Moré's representation of White Cuban Music
By the 1930’s son was the quintessential dance music of Cuba, previously having been solely an Afro-Cuban music, it was starting to be played for not only the black Cubans, but now also for the white. What had been previously systematically oppressed, such as the banning of African drums by the government, was now, not just an afro-Cuban identity, but an identity within the urban sophistication, of the white elite. Different son conjunto (big band) orchestras would have different followings: Benny Moré’s orchestras always had a huge Afro-cuban and mulatto following, whereas other popular son orchestras of the time, such as Orquesta Riverside, appealed mainly to white Cubans. There thus became a new focus for some soneros, who began to sing about cultural elements of white Cuban’s life and society. Thus transcending the economic and racial distinctions that otherwise separated these two demographics (Sublette, 2007).
Many of the musics developed in Cuba contributed to advancing transnational genres, such as by son being watered down and re-invented into white societies, eventually became a cabaret genre of rhumba. There has been multiple mis-appropriation and commercialisation of cuban musics. Reggaeton for example with the use of the son clave rhythm. Parallel to rural son, which at the time was considered rustic and informal, there is the urban style of music called the danzón which started in the late 19th century. Paradoxically, to lyrical son music in Cuba, the entirety of danzón music is instrumental. It derived from more literate-based musical practices that bridged across the class divide. Danzón developed from military ensembles with big kettle drums and bugles in the early 20th century and so it’s instrumental. The orchestras were mainly compromised of literate afro-cubans who could read music.
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The World of Cuban Music Sophie Symmons 627017 The timeline of danzón music is called the baqueteo. The baqueteo is formed of the tresillo
rhythm and the cinquillo rhyme put together to make the danzón banqueteo rhythm. See example:
Cinquillo x . x x . x x . + Tresillo x . . x . . x . = Baqueteo x . x x . x x . x . x . x . x
The Cinquillo has 5 beats, the first of which is on the beat, with the second going around the beat, in 7/4 timing. Then the second part is the tressillo which is just three taps and is also taken from the son clave comprising the first three beats.
Danzón was very popular in Mexico city, where Benny Moré was also famous for his roles in the movie industry. They would play danzón in the big squares, and it has managed to remain popular in Mexico, particularly amongst the older generations who enjoy dressing up and going out to dance to the danzón. In the early 20th century Danzón orchestras and big bands transitioned further into charanga orchestras (such as Groupo Oriental) adding flutes and violins, timbales and stand-up bass. Singing was now in the son style in the 1940’s, therefore we have the meeting of Danzón and son. In 1951 this new format became known as the ‘cha cha cha’ of which spread through Latin America as the most popular music genre. This transition of the musical genres, can be reflected in the various modes and transitional musical phases of Benny Moré (Waxer, 1994).
The Mexican film industry, equivalent to Hollywood but in Latin America, also played a monumentally and huge role in disseminating and circulating cuban music, and the music of Benny Moré across borders. In the 1940's films created a heightened transnational flow of cuban musical influences across all of “Latin” America. Benny Moré was a big player in the industry having moved to Mexico with Pérez Prado the composer and band leader in 1951. Pérez and Benny helped to popularise the mambo to the white-cubans in Miami and all of Latin America, with tunes such as “King of the Mambo”. Perhaps and even greater influence came from the multitude of movies in which Moré acted and sang. Often these films were named after main musical number in the film, and the narrative nearly always followed the lyrics of a song. Moré’s soneros and big band orchestras in these moves helped the widespread appeal of rhythms such as the mambo and the cha cha cha.
After the governmental communist take-over of Fidel Castro in the 1960’s-70’s there was a great Cuban-exile of the right-white elite to Miami, becoming part of a transnational flow of economic migration. With them the music of Benny Moré was brought to New York and consequently inspired, not just Latin America with the Mexican movies, but also a number of American sentimental crooner stars such as Sam Cooke and Nat King Cole who played in Havana, loved Cuban music, and performed it frequently. Cole was also known by the Cubans as the ‘American Benny Moré’ (Waxer, 1994).
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The World of Cuban Music Sophie Symmons 627017 In conclusion Benny Moré managed to transcend geographic and cultural boundaries, creating an authentic Cuban derived music and orchestra. This occurred not only from an Afro-Cuban identity through his use of rhythm and context to the cabildos, but also through the identity of the Mulatto and Mestizo Cubans of the guajiros with their rural son and son monunto, along with their decimer formats and finally through the identity of the white-Cuban elites via movies, Miami and the inspiration of thousands globally to dance to Cuban rhythms, via the cha cha cha and mambo. Moré took sounds that individually were historically colonially oppressed, and created something of relevance to everyone in Cuba, further extending the multi-racial Cuban identity globally, and consequently influencing the world through afro-hispanic cuban music.
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