UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS PRESS

Cuba's Bola de Nieve: A Creative Looking Glass for Culture and the Artistic Self Author(s): Glenn Jacobs Source: Latin American Music Review / Revista de Música Latinoamericana, Vol. 9, No. 1 (Spring - Summer, 1988), pp. 18-49 Published by: University of Texas Press Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/779998 Accessed: 07/09/2009 07:45 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=texas. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. University of Texas Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Latin American Music Review / Revista de Música Latinoamericana. http://www.jstor.org
Glenn Jacobs Cuba's Bola de Nieve: A Creative Looking Glass for Culture and the Artistic Self Ignacio Villa (1911-1971), known by his stage name, Bola de Nieve, became, as it were, a virtuoso of a genre (the spoken song or "diseur" style) international in scope yet inextricably tied to the cultural elements from which it sprang. The toast of bourgeois caf6 society in pre-Revolutionary Cuba, Villa seemed effortlessly to make the transition to highly celebrated performer and musical ambas- sador of the Revolution, friend and associate of Cuba's most prodigious men of letters and artists, and, finally, a symbol of the shared (though unacknowledged) culture of Europe, North America, and Cuba. Who was this black man humorously called "Snowball" in a society dedicated to the extermination of racial discrimination? In the following we shall see that the matter of "who" Bola de Nieve was actually is more complex than ascertaining his biography or even simply his cultural background, and the issue is not resolved by resort to the historical context. Instead, what is required is an analysis of bio- graphy, history, culture, and the evolution of his performance style. Thus, we begin with a biographical sketch and then launch into an analysis of his stage personality as a reflection of the racism and stereo- typing black performers had to contend with in pre-Revolutionary Cuba. Likewise, his stage persona repesents an armoring of the artistic self which permitted Ignacio Villa to cultivate a unique style. His social mask also is refracted through Bola de Nieve's own consciousness via his performance of "Messie Julian," a song revealing the many-sidedness of self and society as blacks attempted to both participate in and protect themselves from the slings and arrows of racism and discrimination. At this juncture, the substance behind the mask is probed, not as a matter of personality dynamics but of the artistic depth of a performer who is an expositor of the literary component of the Cuban national culture. This style, as we shall see, is multidimensional-sung, spoken, dramatic, and "ocular." It contains all of those things observers have considered to be hallmarks of African and neo-African music, and yet
Cuba's Bola de Nieve : 19 it is more. Here we shall ask if, indeed, more is less; that is, if this "something else" subtracts from Bola de Nieve's Africanness. Having already discussed the humanism of this performer, his rendition of Afro-Cuban material, and the role of feeling in his work, we move on to the visual elements of Bola de Nieve's work and his de-fetishization of folklore and the common people. Finally, we discuss the mutual sig- nificance of Cuba's national culture and Bola de Nieve's genius, thus picking up on the point with which this paper opens. In order to con- ceptualize the matter, it is phrased in terms of a paradox called "The Enigma of Otherness: Caliban's Triumph." In other words, how can the disinherited of racist imperialism salvage their culture and become creatively autonomous? "I'm Not a Jester or a Troubador -and Much Less a Genius" Whoever he was, Ignacio Villa was considered to be a representative of Cuban cultural life and letters. All of the material we could gather that discussed Villa lauded his genius or uniqueness and his represen- tativeness of the national culture (Guillen 1975 [1960], 1976 [1962], 1971; Le Riverand 1971; Orovio 1981; Huerta 1971). Poems composed upon his death as tributes to him (Barnet 1971; Arozarena 1971) under- score this, as do the scholarly materials mentioning him as part of the Cuban literary movement of the 1920s and 1930s, known as negrismo (Jahn 1968: 225; Dathorne 1981: 58, 59; Herdeck et al. 1979: 899; Henriquez Urefia 1963: 378). Finally, the most recent publication on him in the Cuban periodical on the arts, Revolucion y Cultura (Martinez Rodriguez 1986) offers the only detailed chronicle of his life and verifies the cultural representativeness of this fascinating performer. Thus, the biographical details on Bola de Nieve are not voluminous nor are there any lengthy descriptions or discussions of his work. This is paradoxical considering his power as a performer and his felt im- portance to Cuban literary and musical traditions. Villa (the most recent writing on him [Martinez Rodriguez 1986: 32] now adds his mother's name to his appellation; thus, the full name is Ignacio Villa y Fernandez) has not been overlooked, but he has been understudied. If he were "just" a performer this would be comprehensible, but he was not. He is claimed as a phenomenon unto himself, overlapping the borders of music, drama, and literature. This partly explains why there is no extensive writing about him: there seems to be no adequate lexicon for such a hybrid. However, another reason remains, and that concerns the man's stage personality, his public image, and the racial nuances therein. We will
20 : Glenn Jacobs return to this matter after presenting the skeletal details of his life and career. Born in the town of Guanabacoa on September 11, 1911 of parents of distinct African heritage, Bola de Nieve grew up, one of six children, in a rich cultural atmosphere saturated with the religions, folklore, and traditions of his Afro-Cuban forebears. His mother, Ines Fernandez, is described as a storyteller and an able dancer of "the best rumba played on boxes1 or to the rhythm of Yemaya [goddess of the Afro-Cuban cult of the santerz'a, who is the sea goddess and the mother of fourteen other of the most important orichas, or gods]" (Martinez Rodriguez 1986: 32). His father, Domingo, is described as a cook by profession, but little more is said about him by Martinez Rodriguez. Ines Fernandez's father, Estanislao Bertematti, an overseer of the wharves of the port of Havana, is described as a sorcerer (mayombero), an adept at herbal medicine and a ndnigo, or devotee of the cult of the abacua', a secret soci- ety traceable to the Ejagham people of Calabar, Nigeria. He allegedly brought his daughter up among varied African ethnic peoples, partici- pated in dances and processions of the African ethnic fraternities (cabildos) in the streets of Guanabacoa, and lived in a world of the santer'a with its ritual and secular music and dance. Another influential family member was Villa y Fernandez's great-aunt Tomasa ("Mamaquica"). She and her husband, Jose L6pez Sella, are said to have encouraged Ignacio's education by enrolling him in private school, where, it is said, his nickname "Snowball" was first applied humorously by a classmate. This annoyed him, but he later accepted it when it was bestowed by the singer Rita Montaner. Mamaquica also set Ignacio off on his musical training at age twelve, when he began studying solfeggio and theory and soon after piano in the Conservatory of Jose Mateu. In 1927 he matriculated at the Escuela Normal para Maestros (Martinez Rodriguez 1986: 32). He was not able to begin pedagogical studies at the University of Havana because of student disturbances during the Machado dictatorship. Also, due to economic difficulties the family had to move frequently and Ignacio's studies were impeded by the necessity of his working as a piano accompanist at the Carral cinema in Guanabacoa. In the early 1930s, Ignacio Villa worked as piano accompanist to various singers. One night Rita Montaner saw him perform at the Bilt- more Hotel Seville and she was so impressed with his technique that she proposed that he be her accompanist. He accepted and he travelled with her to Mexico in 1933. One night when she was feeling ill she asked him to substitute for her and she gave him the name Bola de Nieve. He sang the Afro-cancidn "Bito Manue," which was adapted from
Cuba's Bola de Nieve : 21 Guillen's famous poem (Martinez Rodriguez 1986: 33-34). He was a hit. Bola de Nieve describes the Mexican experience as follows: She [Montaner] found my clean-shaven head quite charming and called me in front of some people "Bola de Nieve." They found the name very funny, so the name stuck. I became her accompanist because there wasn't anybody else to take the job. Still, I had no plans of becoming a soloist or anything like that. Later we went to Mexico still unknown in Cuba. In Mexico I continued to work for her and the nickname became popular. After some time she returned to Cuba and I stayed in Mexico. There in a radio musical review I was pushed into showbiz. It was an amateurs' contest and the pretty crystal ball favored me. I was given the "chocolate" award, as I'm used to calling it. That's how I got this skin color, because of all the chocolate I ate. Since then I call myself "Bola de Nieve." I was very lucky and I think that's when I was born to showbiz. In the mean- time, I was still an unknown in Cuba. (Interview, n.d.) Villa describes his Mexican debut as a "second birth." From then on he continued to travel back and forth between Mexico and Cuba and all over Latin America, especially Argentina, Peru, and Chile (Martinez Rodriguez 1986: 34-35). He said that he could stay away from Mexico for no more than three years: it was "su otra patria." During that epiphanic first trip to Mexico he met and performed with Ernesto Lecuona; thus began a long friendship and professional asso- ciation. He was considered to be a permanent associate of Lecuona's company which toured frequently in Latin America, and it is certain that Lecuona significantly influenced Villa's style. In the 1940s and 1950s Bola visited Spain and the United States. Noteworthy was his appearance at Carnegie Hall on November 21, 1948. Earlier in 1948 he sang in Philadelphia where he alternated with Lena Horne, Teddy Wilson, and Paul Robeson, among others. Paul Robeson admired him greatly and is reported to have said to him, "No singer has moved me as you have. Now I will sing to you," and he sang him "un rosario de incomparables spirituals" (Conte 1972: 66). In 1950 he began a radio show, "El Gran Show de Bola de Nieve," and made TV appearances as soon as television was initiated in Cuba, also in 1950. Between 1951 and 1958 he travelled to Europe (France, Italy, Spain, and Denmark) and in 1956 was invited to Washington, D.C. to give a recital in the Sal6n de las Americas de la Uni6n Pan- americana. The publication of the Panamerican Union, Revista Americas, called him "maestro de la canci6n cubana" (Martinez Rodriguez 1986: 35). The Revolutionary triumph represented, as Martinez Rodriguez sug- gests, security for Villa; that is, economic and psychological security.
22 : Glenn Jacobs As he put it in a recorded, undated interview, "I have never performed as a hobby or with the idea of beating someone else's achievements, but because one has to eat and work. Things were always very uncer- tain; one never knew for sure where the next contract was going to come from. It is not like that nowadays in Cuba. Performers have a sort of life insurance which applies to almost everybody. At any rate, I was always very lucky to have the next contract waiting for me." Bola would remark ironically (Le Riverand 1971: 21) that he could only pity those who left Cuba to search for all that they had at home, but who "anxiously longed" for discrimination to boot. In September 1965, as a salute to the First National Congress of Cuban Writers and Artists, Villa participated in the recitals of popular, folk- loric, and vernacular music and also in the first and second festivals of Cuban popular music. It became his custom from 1959 onward to offer a midnight concert ushering in the twenty-sixth of July festivities. In 1965, the Restaurant Monseigneur in the Vedado section of Havana was renamed Chez Bola. In 1967, he performed with the artistic delega- tion that participated in the Montreal Expo. His last public appearance was on August 20, 1971, when he presented an homage to Rita Montaner at the Amadeo Roldan Theater. He died unexpectedly in his sleep early in the morning of October 2, 1971, in Mexico City at the home of friends while in transit to an engagement in Lima, Peru. Silhouette in Black and White: Racial Imagery and the Artistic Self Throughout the writing and commentaries on Bola and in the afore- mentioned interview, one is struck by his modesty, indeed his self-efface- ment. Inextricably tied to this persona is the physiognomy of a smiling face and bright teeth completed by the silhouette of his "frac," his formal suit with tails. The composite image is so ubiquitous that it has become this performer's signature. It is clear that this is no inexperienced rustic entertainer. In fact, as a performer he was quite poised and performed in a style which was highly animated and idiosyncratic. Moreover, as the above biographical details attest, Villa was an international figure who was well travelled and whose country employed him in the official capacity of musical ambassador. All told, Ignacio Villa was a cosmopolitan individual who had extensive musical training to complement a rich cultural heritage of African-Cuban cultures transmitted to him through his family and community. To be sure, the smile and the tailed waistcoat convey cosmopolitan
Cuba's Bola de Nieve : 23 dapperness. Guillen's phrase has become the adage: "Bola con su piano, Bola con su frac en las grandes noches de mundana etiqueta. Bola con su sonrisa y su canci6n .. ." (1971: 19). The piano, the waistcoat, the smile, and the song. Arozarena's elegy (1971: 20), introduced as con- taining a "farewell echo of Guillen to Ignacio Villa," opens with these lines: Redondo en la corchea de su frac, todo 1e communicaba. (Por su cara supe que la luna es negra.) jMessie Julian! Toward the middle it conflates the smile with the waistcoat: "Quiero su frac risuefio." The reference to Messie Julian, a title of one of his better-known songs, is significant, for it mediates the performer's persona (stage personality) and the social conditions prompting it. This complex gives the lie to Dathorne's observation about Bola de Nieve that "despite the derogatory name he took, it is interesting that like the African artist, he sought refuge in anonymity. His importance must surely lie in his contribution to the idiom of the music" (1981: 57). This would perhaps be true if Villa was a traditional performer, that is, a folkloric singer; but he was not. Broadly speaking his style was that of the boite singers, piano bar singers such as Mabel Mercer, Edith Piaf, Bobby Short, etc., whose chief features are generally urban working-class backgrounds and music hall and vaudevillian precursors to their styles. We will have more to say about this later, but for now it is only necessary to make this distinction in order to issue the more urgent disclaimer that Bola de Nieve's "anonymity" is nonexistent (he was the toast of Cuba before, during, and after the Revolution); he adopted and/or was endowed with a sobriquet, a stage personality and an image that has social ramifications; and the latter are traceable to issues of race and perhaps sexuality in society and so transcend imputa- tions of anonymity. These ramifications are to some extent peculiar to Cuban society and history but are generally found in all or most societies that have undergone colonialist, neo-colonialist, or internal colonialist domination. Now, as for the reference to "Messie Julian," Le Riverand (1971: 21) asserts that the song reveals Villa's profound "Cubanity" (cuban'a): he says it is not nor could it ever be a mere comic mask or reputable self-contempt; rather, beneath the smile lies a calculated protest against neo-colonialism in Cuba and U.S. imperialism. This denial (a la disavowal) is similar to Dathorne's protestation of
24 : Glenn Jacobs "anonymity." Both of these explanations oversimplify a much subtler phenomenon than fealty to tradition (Dathorne) or a disguised protest against imperialist domination (Le Riverend). Let us examine the song's lyrics and then see how they mediate the performer's stage persona and the social conditions underlying racism and homophobia in Cuba. Messie Julian Yo, soy negro social, soy intelectual y chic. Y, yo fui a Nueva York, conozco Bro'way y Paris. Soy, artista mundial, y no diga ma' cha-cha. Yo, que un dia baile en french can-can. Como acab6 en 'ruguay, mi bong6. Y al volver al solar me han de llamar "Monsieur." Yo, me llamo Julian Martinez Vidal y Ruiz. Y, se me hasta olvid6, que en Cuba yo fui Toti. Fui, el gran gentleman, de rondas alla en Paris. Y, hasta en Hollywood "yes yes" "oui oui." Yo soy, Monsieur, pero Monsieur Julian. Yo soy, Monsieur, pero Monsieur Julian . Martinez Vidal y Ruiz. I, am a sociable Negro, I am intellectual and chic. And, I went to New York, I know Broadway and Paris. I, am an international artist and I don't say cha-cha anymore. I, that one day danced the French can-can, in Uruguay destroyed my bongo. And, by the time I returned to my home town, they will call me Monsieur. My name is Julian Martinez Vidal and Ruiz, and I even forgot that in Cuba I was Toti. I was the great gentleman, gigolo in Paris, and even in Hollywood too, "yes yes" "oui oui." I am Monsieur, but Monsieur Julian. I am Monsieur, but Monsieur Julin . . . Martinez Vidal y Ruiz. To begin with, the manner in which the song is sung (jovial) and the lyrics themselves (mildly mocking) both represent social criticism, but they are more than that; they represent making fun of oneself. One need not strain, for example, to find within the African heritage the image of the player and the trickster.2 This figure has been documented elsewhere (Abrahams 1970; Gates, Jr. 1984) and is particularly evident
Cuba's Bola de Nieve : 25 in the Yoruba mythology Villa knew intimately through the santeria, namely, the many-sided god (oricha) Echu-Eleggua (Gates, Jr. 1984: 286-287; Thompson 1983: 18-33; Gonzalez-Whippler 1975, passim). However, this only moves a short distance from Le Riverand's inter- pretation, albeit an important gradation, from an overly rational, con- scious, and overt to a more nonrational explanation. Ignacio Villa, like most blacks in Cuba, had been singed by racism. Added to this was the fact of his homosexuality, which is absolutely eradicated in anything written about him. We can only surmise that absenting this part of his identity must have been a factor in the drawing of his public image, since it was widely known that he was a homo- sexual. It appears in the inflected Spanish he spoke, alongside, of course, the richly inflected Afro-Cuban Spanish that so enlivens his material and which was his second language code. All of the features of Messie Julian (ne Martinez Vidal y Ruiz, nick- name Toti) correspond to Villa's biography. To wit, he was well trav- elled, a speaker of several (including other European) languages, and of African heritage, in short, "an international artist . . . intellectual and chic." It is true that he never forgot or renounced his African side, but perhaps in his ability to laugh at his other, equally important identifi- cations he was keeping his selves in balance. It is common knowledge that slavery and oppression wherever they have been found have led to the most profound adaptations in personality development and in the donning of social masks. And masks, of course, conceal a great deal, indeed often a manifold of cultural traits and prac- tices of enormous breadth and depth. The image of cosmopolitanism is certainly fraught with the antinomies of identity for the Afro-Cuban. Messie Julian no longer says "cha-cha" but, more significantly, he has had his drum destroyed in "'ruguay," which scholars (Rout, Jr. 1976: 197-205) tell us is a country whose black population has been suffocated by oppressive invisibility. So, with a jaunty smile Bola suggests that while his drum was decimated in Uru- guay, and he'll be called "Monsieur" at home, he knows all of his names. The genius of his African cultural heritage, indeed, of that heritage as it was carried forward by blacks in North America as well, was an issue of the survival of African traits (which, we are discovering, were ample), but more so in the survival of African coping mechanisms which are particularly suited to dealing with circumstances such as coming to terms with the power of perceived evil (racial oppression) without sacrificing one's inner dignity; that is, in adapting to what overtly appears perverse, irrational, grotesque, even monstrous oppression but over which one cannot hold rational sway. This is what one perceptive observer
26 : Glenn Jacobs has called the "riff-playing vernacular inventiveness that is so funda- mental to the way Negroes react" (Murray 1983 [1970]: 60). As we shall see, that is also one of the hallmarks of Afro-American music. This "improvisatory" orientation or "riff-style" entails, by dint of the common understandings of society among oppressed people as well as the centrally African trickster motif, a multivalent (many-sided) as opposed to a monovalent understanding of self, society, and culture (Lee 1966). There is thus entailed an acceptance of the many-sidedness of self and society and the understanding that what appears to be a hypocritical maintenance of multiple selves is not just a matter of moral- ity but a realistic adaptation to social conditions. Thus, "Messie Julian" is not so much biting satire as it is an underscoring of the Afro-Cuban's ability to juggle roles and manage impressions. These roles and masks correspond to the socially real contexts-discrepant as they may be-that blacks have had to survive in and to manage day to day. In performing this song the singer is akin to the "signifyin' monkey" of Afro-American folklore. Remember, the lead character is not essen- tially one personage or role more than the others: "I am Monsieur . . . Martinez Vidal y Ruiz." This still does not answer the question concern- ing Villa's image: "Bola y su piano, y su frac, y su sonrisa." Here there is a striking resemblance to Louis Armstrong. Physically there is the smile and the gravelly voice (although Bola's was more on the hoarse side); behaviorally, both liked to joke and both exhibited a kind of modesty, but both evinced that trickster side of their personalities; which, for example, the following description of Armstrong reveals: Musicians who knew Armstrong have stressed his charm, his sense of humor, his tolerance of racial prejudice, and his kindness. "If they didn't let him in the front door, he went in the back door," one musician re- membered. "It was the only place to eat in town, so he didn't care. People called him an 'Uncle Tom,' but he had to eat, and he got through. He joked all the while; he called everybody 'Gate.' " (Gourse 1984: 32)3 Note the theme of the threshold and of the gate, of crossroads-the trickster again, and, more specifically, Echu-Eleggua, the Papa Legba of Vodun, or Papa La Bas in Afro-American Hoodoo, who is the god of liminality. But then, these are "survivals"; socially speaking they represent typical role patterns which have been adapted to New World situations, first under slavery, then in the postslavery period. As such, blacks had learned and employed these patterned role behaviors to cope with interpersonal and institutional racism which had essentially remained the same vis-a-vis occupational discrimination, the lack of educational opportunities, and the lack of access to the amenities of adequate housing and the denial of full freedom even to be admitted to public places.
Cuba's Bola de Nieve : 27 Reminiscing about Bola in the 1930s and 1940s, Nicolas Guillen (1976 [1962]: 85) mentions that for many years Villa was better known in Mexico than in Cuba and that he played in cabarets and boites where other people of his race could not enter as customers. This exactly paral- lels the circumstances of blacks in the United States in the same period and brings to mind the portrayal of such discrimination in the recent motion picture The Cotton Club.5 It was common for black entertainers in the United States to become expatriates in other countries where they were better appreciated. Fur- thermore, Mexico had for a long time been appreciative of Cuban per- forming arts and artists. Given the racism and discriminatory ways at home, the adoption of a social mask was a survival technique which could, however, be demeaning. As Fanon (1967: 49n) notes, the smile of the black became both an object of fascination to whites and a re- quirement of caste etiquette for blacks, so much so that it was a social hieroglyphic of enforced servitude. Considering the fact that Bola de Nieve was gay, we would hazard the guess that the mask plus his modesty were means by which he could gain acceptance in a machista and racist society which would otherwise be threatened by a more assertive de- meanor. However, it is clear that from early on in his career this mask lent Villa a kind of protective coloration which allowed him the oppor- tunity to be assertive as a performer. Martinez Rodriguez (1986: 33) notes that even before he was twenty he and a group of friends had the temerity to do an embarrassingly poor stage imitation of another per- former but that the fiasco did not discourage him in the least. Rather, this channelling allowed him to pursue a course toward a unique style which, indeed, he successfully developed. Style and Substance in Bola de Nieve Thus the social mask Ignacio Villa qua Bola de Nieve donned did serve as armor behind which his creative autonomy could develop. As we noted, it did not, however, grant him anonymity; anonymity was not sought, it was style. Style is regnant for the integration of Ignacio Villa's creative life and work; they are of the same cloth. But his style, as we shall see, was not simply something he could adapt to performance oc- casions; it was something he cultivated into a type of art form unto itself. It was noted earlier that Bola de Nieve is mentioned in several sources dealing with the movement known as negrismo. What is interesting about this is not the substantive content of the references, for they are generally brief and cursory, but the fact that an entertainer is included as part
28 : Glenn Jacobs of a movement that is primarily literary. Jahn (1968: 225), for example, includes Villa (whom he erroneously lists as born in 1902) among the "notable writers." Dathorne (1981: 57, 59) groups him with the famous singer Celia Cruz, the reciters Eusebia Cosme and Luis Carbonell, "and other popularizers of Afro-Cuban oral literature," noting further that "in large measure the later poets and writers of the Negrista, Ne- gritude, and the Harlem Renaissance movements . . . were never able to compete with these writers and performers." Guillen's essays have nothing but praise for him. What does it all mean, considering that his literary (written) production was small and consists of a few of the songs he wrote which are considered "poetry," especially the ones in Afro-Cuban dialect? Certainly there is a connection via the friendship between Villa and Guillen, who was the acknowledged leader of that movement and is now, almost half a century later, the don of Cuban poetry. Bola de Nieve even used poems of Guillen's (e.g., "'Bito Ma- nue' " and "Canto Negro," the latter called "Yambambo" by Villa) and wrote material (e.g., "Ca'lota 'Ta Mori, ' " "Drumi Mobila,"4 "Manda Conmigo Pape'," "Mama Perfecta," etc.) in virtually the same idiom or dialect, but as a poet per se he could not rival the latter's depth, breadth, or productivity. Yet there is something else about Villa that places him in the first rank of Cuban literary exponents, and that is his amalgamation of song and style, for Bola de Nieve's performed work is highly developed oral literature; not written literature that is recited, but true oral literature fed by two streams: the Afro-Cuban tradition of his homeland, including the religious and secular musical genres (e.g., santer'a, abacud, rumbias, sones, etc), and the continental non-Spanish and North American style of the spoken song or boite singing, itself possibly of Afro-North Ameri- can origin. In the apposition of Villa's stereotyped smiling, waistcoated mask with his highly animated, at times even emotionally wrenching performance style, one is struck by a surreal sense of the armored self juxtaposed with apparently spontaneous performance. Yet this was only an appearance, because it was, as discussed below, meticulously re- hearsed. Bola called himself a "diseur" in the tradition of Edith Piaf, and it is clear that he was an "expressionist interpreter" in the fashion of singers such as Mabel Mercer. (Mabel Mercer, for example, was of a British interracial background, influenced by vaudeville, and really flowered as a performer at the expatriot Bricktop's [Ada Smith] Cafe in Paris [Gourse 1984: 238-239].) We have not been able to locate any sources dealing with this style sui generis, outside of material on the singers themselves, but there appears
Cuba's Bola de Nieve : 29 in Bola's case to be a triangular geocultural connection between Afro- American development of the style in the United States, perhaps expatriot black jazz singers in Europe, and Afro-Cuban musical styles. There is no doubt that the Afro-Cuban oral traditions themselves-the street vendors' shouts called pregones, the folk raconteurs, and the call and response patterns so frequently alluded to in African music in general, not to mention the Spanish-influenced comic operatic zarzuelas-were also ingredients blended by Ignacio Villa into a style that was, never- theless, unique. It is not reducible to the sum of its parts; it is a gestalt. While he resembles other singers (diseurs), it is clear that his dynamism and dramatic force outweigh theirs. Furthermore, there is no mistaking the distinct Cuban character of his work. In the idiom in question, the singer mimetically performs her/his material in a half-sung, half-spoken manner. Thus, the song is not simply sung; it is acted, so that sympathy or empathy for the subject(s) (the singer-narrator, situation, characters, and events) is established. The performer more than emotes lyrics, even within the expanded spectrum of African and Afro-American musical genres. Rather, the performer dramatically recreates the reality depicted in the song for and in the minds of the audience. As Le Riverand says of Bola de Nieve (1971: 21), "Todo ello, piano y voz, coincidia en una magnifica sintesis del actor." Most important, "Cada canci6n era un trozo de vida que nos ganaba como vivencia propia. Y eso solo consiguen los grandes actores" ("Each song was a living fragment which affected us like life itself. And that is only achieved by great actors"). In other words, situations are dramatically and imaginatively constructed. More than satisfying the Aristotelian criterion of catharsis, Bola de Nieve, as any good dramatic actor does, creates context. In the language of sociology, a dramatic "definition of the situation" is established. To a degree this may simply be ascribed to a performer's skill at creating rapport between audience and performer, and certainly Bola de Nieve was a past master at ac- complishing this. However, more than rapport is involved. Rapport is a means to an end, a tactic. The larger aim is to expand the horizon of the mind's eye so that the mind becomes, in effect, an extension of the theater. Not only is the world a stage; every person is. Bola de Nieve: singer, storyteller, actor. One of the features of his style is the cultivation of the appearance of spontaneity, as though, in fact, what was transpiring was being created at the moment; but this was not the case. Everything was well rehearsed. In an interview for Gramma (anonymous) in 1969, he said with characteristic modesty: "In this style the important thing is feeling, the way you say things and not the things you say. In other words, I'm not a jester or a troubador-and
30 : Glenn Jacobs much less a genius. I don't believe in improvisation. My style requires both studying and rehearsing. It calls for dedication, for discipline to control the feeling so it will fit the song itself." That this bespeaks a genre is borne out in the case of Mabel Mercer, Bola's British-born contemporary. There is a striking similarity in ap- proach and philosophy, particularly around the issue of feeling: " 'She put everything she had into her lyrics,' said Jimmy Lyons [her accompa- nist], 'and she rehearsed it until she had it down infallibly. Every word had to mean something. That's why rehearsals were so monotonous. She had to get it the way she wanted it. Mabel's the only one I know who could make you laugh or cry at her will. I saw Mel Torme really cry with tears in his eyes. . . . She could put a spell on you' " (Gourse 1984: 240). What appeared spontaneous-was meticulously rehearsed. One must ask what kind of contrivance would produce such an effect. Indeed, jazz musicians and singers appear to enjoy this style (sometimes called "parlando") but are careful to note that it is not jazz, which is quintes- sentially spontaneous since it is improvised. Most likely the spontaneity is an illusion-not only because the performance is merely rehearsed, but because it is an illusion based upon a delusion on the part of the audience, whose evoked feeling leads it along the path of projecting its own spontaneous emotional eruption onto the performer inspiring it. Since the audience has not seen the rehearsal nor rehearsed its own response, it imputes symmetricality. One might think, how could such an outpouring of feeling on the part of the singer be rehearsed? More- over, the style itself leads to this illusion because the mixing of the spoken line and sung lyric dupes one into believing that he/she is eavesdropping onto spontaneous thought, speech, or action. It is the juxtaposition or mixing of singing and speech that produces this effect and it is this kind of practiced discontinuity that is a hallmark of the African musical style. While repetition and swinging rhythm constitute the genius of Afro- American and Afro-Cuban music, it is the "cut," or sudden break (that is, a sudden suspension of the musical action, be it on the part of the musicians, dancers, or both), that evokes surprise and marked contrast with the rhythmic swing (Snead, Jr. 1984: 69-72). In North American music, for example, James Brown is a master of the cut. As Albert Murray (1983 [1970]: 59) notes: The blues idiom dancer like the solo instrumentalist turns disjuncture into continuities. He is not disconcerted by intrusions, lapses, shifts in rhythm, intensification of tempo, for instance; but he is inspired by them to higher and richer levels of improvisation. As a matter of fact (and as the colloquial sense of the word suggests), the "break" in the blues idiom provides the dancer his greatest opportunity-which, at the same time, is also his most heroic challenge and his moment of greatest jeopardy.
Cuba's Bola de Nieve : 31 Bola was familiar with the "break" or "cut" as a mainstay of Cuban music, and he used it to its best advantage in the medium he crafted, not solely in the typical manner of Cuban music, as found in rumbas and the son montunos, but, by extension, as a dramatic technique repre- senting a shift in voices, attitude, emotional tone, and so on. Thus, in a "straight" musical performance, the cut represents a true rhythmic suspension used to highlight the rhythm itself; but in Bola de Nieve's music, it is more accurate to describe the break as a technique focusing on the cadences of speech as well as song, although the former (rhythmic sus- pension) appears as well in virtually everything he performed. Photo- graphs of Bola de Nieve reveal a highly animated gestural countenance, much like the expressive face one would find in a storyteller. To illustrate Bola's technique, let us look at his rendition of a standard nightclub number, "Babalu," written by Margarita Lecuona and popu- larized in the United States first by Xavier Cugat and then Desi Arnaz. The song has become one of those pieces representing Latin American minstrelsy in U.S. popular music, as hackneyed as hackneyed can be. In Bola de Nieve's hands, however, it is a serious, moving, and intimate artwork. The song opens with a dramatic, Stravinsky-like piano and vocal introduction; something serious, perhaps dangerous is going to happen: the oricha Babalu-Aye is being summoned. Babalu-Aye (deriving from the Obaluaiye of the Nigerian Yoruba and syncretized with San Lazaro in Cuba) represents the power to heal or spread pestilence. "Once aroused by arrogant behavior, the spirit of Obaluaiye is dangerously difficult to appease" (Thompson 1983: 62). Babalui-Aye is being called to secure the love of a woman. The oricha's name is chanted after the piano opening: "Babalu . . . Babaluuu . . . Babalu-Aye . . . Babalui, Aye." Now the song details the ritual in Afro-Cuban dialect (brackets contain omitted letters): Ya [es]ta[n] empezando lo[s] velorio[s], que le hacemo[s] a Babalu. Dame diecisiete vela[s] pa[ra] pone[r]las en cruz. [The vigils we hold in honor of Babalu are about to begin, Give me seventeen candles to make a cross.] Suddenly, in an aside (a "cut") hurried words in a loud whisper are spat out: "Dame un tabo de tabaco, Mayenye!" ("Give me a measure of tobacco, Mayenye!").6 Back to the narrative voice, which continues the aside: "y un jarrito de aguardiente" ("and a little pitcher of aguar- diente [cane spirits]"). Again the hissed aside: "Dame un poco de dinero, Mayenye!" (Give me some money, Mayenye!"). And the continuation by the cooler narrative voice, although still in the first person: "pa[ra]
32 : Glenn Jacobs que me de la suerte" ("for good luck's sake"). The stanza, done in a lucumi and/or bolero-son rhythm is repeated and followed by a wistful and tender reverie nominally addressed to Babalu but so enveloped in its mood that one would scarcely suspect that this was a supplication to the fierce Babalui-Aye. Once the door has been opened by ritual and the threshold crossed, this supplicant opens his heart: Yo qu[i]ere pedi[r], que mi niegra me qu[i]era, que tenga dinero y que no se muera. Que yo le qu[i]ere pedi[r], a Babalu, una negra bembona, como tu. Que no tenga [o]tro negro y que no se muera, ah ... Mi Babalu-Aye, Babalu-Aye, ah ... [I want to ask for my old lady to love me, for her to have money and for her never to die. I want to ask of Babalu, a black bembona (thick-lipped Negro), to have no other black man and for her never to die, ah ... My Babalu-Aye, Babalu-Aye, ah ... The stanza is repeated and concluded with a wistful "Yo qu[i]ere pedi[r], que mi negra me qu[i]era. ..." The tone in talking to the oricha is intimate and tender. In the first stanza the attitude is formal. The thresh- old to the supernatural is being crossed; what with such a fierce and dangerous deity, the preparations must be careful, with the proper forms (cross) used, offerings (tobacco and liquor) made, and an extra induce- ment (money) thrown in. The second stanza now has shifted in mental state and tone, but, surprisingly, the supplicant is neither frightened nor formal any longer; he is almost joyous. Indeed, as van Gennep (1908 [1960]) tells us, tran- sitions of state, status, place, etc., in human societies are marked by rituals which get the participants through from one "side" to the other. Perhaps it is not Babalu-Aye himself who is so fearsome as it is his wrath at those who are not punctilious in their approach to him. Here our supplicant, as Bola de Nieve enacts him, talks to Babalu-Aye as to another person, even an acquaintance, and so relaxed is he that, once now in the realm of the oricha, his thoughts, feelings, wishes, and love for his lady animate themselves through his open heart. No social dis- tance interposes itself between the oricha and devotee: Babalu-Aye is a "black bembona" as the subject himself is. Among other things, what makes Bola de Nieve's work unique is the fashion in which he depicts Afro-Cubans themselves. It is true, on
Cuba's Bola de Nieve : 33 the one hand, that this can occasionally border on the stereotypical, as when he uses phrases like "negra bembona." However, one must consider the fact that much of this material was presented and composed during a time when such images were rife. On the other hand, putting aside this occasional phraseology and looking instead into the depictions as a whole, we get neither "realism," whatever that means, nor roman- ticism; rather, the result is humanism, which is to say, a sense of person- hood expressed in the Afro-Cuban idiom through the use of an extensive palette of emotions. This humanism is poignantly expressed in one of the most moving of Bola's pieces called "Ca'lota 'Ta Mori.'" Here again the message of the song lies more in the deep feeling communicated through dramatic realization than in the mere semantic content of its words. It is hard to imagine this song done in any other manner than Bola de Nieve's. Anything short of that kind of stylistic interpretation would be banal or callow. The song simply consists of the keening of a man over his dying wife or lover. It opens with the man calling urgently to his friend, "Jose Isabe', Jose Isabe'! Viene pronto pa' que tu mira ve. Ay Dio. Ca'lota." The second "Jose Isabe'" already contains a foreshadowing of the stronger quaver on the second syllable of "Ca'lota." Perhaps there has been a deathwatch, and, at last, Carlota is almost gone. "Come quickly to look and see. Oh, God, Carlota will soon leave us all alone." These are the tears that become sobs later in the song; the fear and the antici- pated grief, from the heart and from the eyes. Now comes the pleading "Carlota. look, I have nothing to live for if you go. Oh God, if you die, you desert me Carlota. Look, I want to go too, if you go." Now he calls his friend as a witness to this damnable injustice: "Ay, Di6. Mira, Jose Isabe', prieto mano 'ta lleva me Ca'lo-o-ta. Y deja so-lo-yo" ("Look at this . . . the hand of darkness takes my Carlota. And [with measured resignation] leaves me all alone"). The next stanza begins with the refrain and reflects the Afro-Cuban call and response pattern, which in a more traditional number could be the montuno but here is a melancholy, softly sobbed dirge: Jose Isabe', yo 'ta llora po'que Ca'lota ya 'ta mori. Jose Isabe', yo 'ta llora po'que Ca'lota ya 'ta mori. Ca'lota 'ta mori, cuando hace falta yo. Jose Isabe', yo 'ta llora po'que Ca'lota ya 'ta mori. [ose Isabe', I'm crying because Carlota is dying. Jose Isabe', I'm crying because Carlota is dying. Carlota is dying now that I need her. Jose Isabe', I'm crying because Carlota is dying.]
34 : Glenn Jacobs After the refrain he says goodbye: "Adios, Ca'lota. Adios, Ca'lota." Her name is repeated in a long sob followed by an echo of the refrain which reappears almost as a parenthesis, mechanically, the way people numbed by trauma do when they hypnotically repeat a phrase. Still talking to Jose, he sings, "Ya el muertero ya 'ta lleva mi Ca'lota" ("Already the undertaker is taking my Carlota away"). Now wailing, he says goodbye again and repeats the refrain. In the hands of a lesser artist this song would be maudlin, but here it recreates death, love, and mourning, themes otherwise subverted by bathos, Bola de Nieve makes us feel the grief and loss. Anyone who has lost a loved one and, especially, has witnessed their death knows these feelings, and those who haven't will be able to relate the song to other experiences of loss in their lives. But why listen? Why be rent by such sadness? It is not masochism that makes the opening of oneself to such suffering and emotion portrayed by Bola worthwhile-not masochism, but the understanding that the widening and deepening of our emotions result in or are nourished by artistic experiences such as these. The themes of attachment, love, death and loss, and emptiness appeal to people in all societies. And in revolu- tionary ones, where people have experienced these things with great inten- sity and frequency due to, yes, loss of loved ones but also of old habits, ways of thinking, and even material benefits as well, art and music which keep people in touch with their own sense of deprivation and loss strength- en revolutionary consciousness and openness to recognize the gains of the revolution. This is why, perhaps, Bola de Nieve chose to remain in Cuba after the Revolution and why Cuba chose to cherish him. He could have left for the United States, where he surely would have earned more money, perhaps have become rich; but, as we mention later, his greatest treasure was his national culture, sentimentally as well as prac- tically, as the creative source of his work. There is much to be said for the nexus joining Bola's unique ability to enact and evoke feeling with the creative sociocultural ground of that feeling, which transcended even the African musical spectrum within which that feeling is evoked. Cer- tainly he would have carried his personality with him wherever he went. Nonetheless, personality is not sufficient: he needed to remain in touch with mulatto Cuba. Excursus on Style and "Lo Africano": To Build a "Better" Negro? "Mulatez" in Bola's case is doubly trenchant since not only did he carry the Afro-Cuban culture but he transformed it musically too. Thus
Cuba's Bola de Nieve : 35 we run up against a paradox: if, indeed, his musical style represents an amalgamation of Afro-Cuban elements with European ones (and, perhaps, ones from the United States), does this transculturation betray or dilute the national culture? Furthermore, does this dramatic element in his music destroy the quintessentially African union of music with dance? You cannot dance to his music: it is not rhythmically hypnotic nor metrically consistent enough to establish a "groove" to dance to. This being the case, doesn't this continuity, again, rupture the union with Afro-Cuba? Apart from the obvious fact that Ignacio Villa never intended his music to be dance music, the more serious matter of Bola having gone "too far" nags. Has he painted himself, shall we say, played himself into a corner? The answer is no. Superficially, Bola de Nieve might appear to be "white"; that is, his music is done in a style with European elements. However, we also noticed that his music has been universally perceived as unique, so from beginning to end we are faced with a kind of paradox-but only an apparent one. This is due mostly to Western observers' notions of what is, properly speaking, "African" in sensibility, or even, in a wider sense, what is "black." We would suggest that both attributions do violence to that which they attempt to glorify. As Fanon (1967: 17) in his essay "West Indians and Africans" says: "The object of lumping all Negroes together under the designation 'Negro people' is to deprive them of any possibility of individual expression. What is thus attempted is to put them under the obligation of matching the idea one has of them" (italics added). Although Fanon goes on to say that there is credence in the idea of an African or West Indian people, it might also be said that all such notions run the risk of reification, of straitjacketing reality by ideas. In Bola de Nieve's case-or, perhaps, any case-it is important to see that the African sensibility, which is what we are talking about, is alive; it is evolving and changing, and all of its manifestations are em- bued with it. This is what Ortiz (1947: 97-103) meant by "transcultura- tion" as describing the processes of cultural development and adaptation as they occurred and continue to occur in Cuba vis-a-vis the mixing and exchange of cultures in that society. And this is what Le Riverand (1971: 21) means in discussing Bola's connection with the African sensi- bility as "No le interesaba lo africano por si mismo sino embrion para renovadas realizaciones" ("He was not interested in Africanness for its own sake but for its embrionically creative realization"). Thus, there is an African sensibility, but we need to see it incarnated in a national culture which is to an extent driven by it but which has a dynamic all its own. We need to shed our tunnel vision in this case and realize that Bola de Nieve is quintessentially African and Cuban: the rhythm, the dance qua motion is there; the rhythms are recognizable
36 : Glenn Jacobs Afro-Cuban ones, only they are framed in a new context-of the drama- tized song-story. The tumbaos (basslines) and the call and response patterns of rumbas, sones, boleros, habaneras, etc. are all suggested and do not domi- nate the telling of the story, the evocation of feeling, or the unfolding of the cadences of speech. As Robert Faris Thompson has characterized African sculpture and textiles (1974), they are in motion; that is, they are intimately connected with dance, movement, and music which, in turn, are closely tied to African daily life. To return to the substantive features of his style, Bola de Nieve's music is motion, and to this we would add another dimension-the ocular or visual one. Bola's Songs as Word Paintings: Humanism and the Common Person The ocular dimension in Bola's music manifests itself not so much in the lyrics' rich descriptions as in the coloring of his performance by feeling, gesture, and mimesis so that the mind's eye recreates the imagery of the actor going through his/her motions. There is an old-fashioned quality to this creative yet dynamic visualization, much like that which people speak of when they talk about how stimulated the mind's eye was in the days of radio when sound alone prodded the imagination. We are reminded here that early in his career Bola de Nieve was a piano accompanist to silent films. The key lies, in Bola's case, in the enspiriting or enlivening of the imagination by a multitextural use of vocal and instrumental music. We might add that he was a consummate pianist able to use his instru- ment onomatopoeiacally. Onomatopoeia constitutes another feature of the African sensibility in Cuba: namely, in the use ofjitanjaforas or non- sense syllables for rhythmic purposes analogous to "scatting" in North American jazz. But, to return to the visual aspects of his work, one can see Bola's music as well as hear it, the way one sees a play and, yes, the way one sees a painting. The song "Chivo que rompe tambo" ("The Goat Broke the Drum") provides a fine illustration of this quality, although many songs, including those analyzed herein, would all have served to make the point. "Chivo" is a word painting. It tells the story of a "negro bueno, hijo de Orunla y de Yemayia" ("a good black son of the oricha Orunla and Yemaya"). Chang6 is the god of thunder and fire and the patron oricha of drummers. Sung in a droll way, the song relates how the singer's drum has been broken by one of a herd of goats that has gotten loose. The singer cannot live, indeed, exist without his drum, and since he was only minding his own business in his own house ("Yo esta quieto
Cuba's Bola de Nieve : 37 en mi bohio") and a natural son of the gods who does not wish to harm animals, he has been placed in a frustrating predicament. In the end he gives in to his impulse to punish the goat-at least in fantasy-and says that he'll cripple it and break its horns so that the goat will learn his lesson that "the drum the black man plays cannot be broken." This goat, he says, is a miranda which rhymes with mierda (shit). He's going to become stew! Earlier he said he was going to see Juan Gualberto, perhaps a policeman or official, because "around here everybody acts as if they were dead"; that is, as if they don't know what's happening. The imagery resembles that of a Chagall painting: the broken fence, goats running helter skelter, the broken drum, the hidden whiskered culprit, the good man sitting in his bohio (thatched hut), lightning off in the distance, images and icons of Chang6, Orunla, and Yemaya, rolling landscape. And again Bola's humanism shows itself, for there is cosmic meaning: a goat broke my drum; I'm under the influence of Chango and Orunla and Yemaya, and I need my drum to propitiate the gods. In this joining of the folkloric everyday with the cosmic, Bola de Nieve resembles another painter, Pieter Bruegel (acobs 1979), whose use of scale humanized the spiritual aspects of things, gave deeper mean- ing to the mundane and greater significance to life of the common person. Perhaps the key importance of this humanism of Bola de Nieve is its implicit underscoring-virtually in all of the Afro-Cuban songs-of the dignity of common people; that is, of people of the working class. While his songs do not eulogize workers per se or deal with union strug- gles and occupational issues, nevertheless it is not well-educated and better-off blacks that Bola is singing about. Sometimes they are rustic but, more important, his characters have emotional depth, a dimension usually denied to blacks except in the heroically stereotyped fashion of even the literature of negrismo. In short, blacks are not simply exotic, they are real. This is nowhere more apparent than in his pregones, or street vendor shouts, which in and of themselves constitute a genre of Cuban folk music remotely comparable to the field hollers and work songs of Afro- North Americans. However, in Bola de Nieve's hands the "human" is amplified over the "folk" so that again the result is more than a quant rendition of an anachronism or an exotic African survival; in- stead, we are treated to a living fragment, eidetically dramatic, full in the flesh. Perhaps the most interesting example of this is his rendition of the old standard written by Moises Simons, "El Manisero" ("The Peanut Vendor"). Bola de Nieve takes this nearly shopworn although still loved piece, also recorded in the United States in 1930 by Don Azpiazu (Ro- berts 1979: 76-79), which probably was a synthesis derived from street
38 : Glenn Jacobs vendor shouts made into popular music, and converts it back into an authentic street vendor song. In other words, he de-fetishized-consciously transculturated-a cultural object that had become commodified by the music market. In doing so, the peanut vendor no longer stands alongside Latinos stereotyped by North American commercial culture and glitz. Here we have a sense of a real street vendor selling peanuts: by con- verting a popular song back into a more authentic idiom, Bola de Nieve has recontextualized the song and therefore humanized it. One qualification needs to be made, however: while Bola de Nieve has revitalized a cliched popular song, as with everything he has rendered, his own stylistic signature is affixed to it. Yes, this is identifiably a pregon, but it retains that operatic/dramatic quality identifying virtually every- thing he performed. Moreover, as Guillen (1975 [1960]: 23-26) percep- tively notes in an esssay on pregones, the pregon is a folk genre sui generis, although it can run the gamut, depending upon the abilities and creativity of individual vendor performers, from relatively artless and unmusical vocal advertisements to more mellifluous and poetic songs. It is clear that only a short step need be taken to bridge the gap here between the folk and popular music forms; in other words, from, say, a capella pregones to more elaborately arranged and rhythmically consistent renderings either directly adapted or synthetically contrived popular son montuno dance numbers. Unlike their transformations into popular song and dance tunes, however, Bola de Nieve's renditions are tableaux vivants, which popular music, for the most part, is incapable of creating. Bola de Nieve thus conveys the essence (again, so perceptively observed by Guillen as an integral part of the pregon) of the rich communal contexts of the merchant-singer and the buyer. Take his rendition of "Botellero" ("The Bottle Seller"), in which we see that the cash nexus is nonexistent. Bartering and neighborhood relations are far more important: the song opens with the announcement that the bottle man is in the environs ("Bo-te-llero . . ."), then a cue regarding his territory ("Here you see me exchanging trinkets for bottles around a school's corner in the Cayo Hueso district"). Other choruses lay out the variety of goods he barters for-balloons for bottles, flowerpots, scrubbing pads, and so on. In many countries, one encounters the sing-song drone of street peddlers and itinerant barterers. (From my youth in Brooklyn I recall the drone of old clothes peddlers, of which my grandfather was one, in backyards and alleys: "Buy old clothes . . . Buy old clothes.") In few if any coun- tries other than Cuba, however, have these street peddler chants become so elaborate and musical. It is a virtue of Cuban culture and its expositors that the creativity of its common people is recognized and extolled as shared literature.
Cuba's Bola de Nieve : 39 Discussion: The National Culture, Prospero's Looking Glass, and the Paradox of Otherness We have now come full circle from our exploration of Bola de Nieve's style and our assertion that he indeed is a literary figure representing a unique genre of oral performance which he perfected to the threshold of discussing the wider sociocultural significance of Bola and his work. In other words, we are led to discuss the mutual importance of Villa and his national culture. The issue of an autochthonous national culture and Bola de Nieve's significance to it is important in a number of respects: (1) as noted earlier, the national culture a la Marti's prophetic insistence on the necessity for providing a social foundation for an independent Cuba and Latin America is clearly historically germane; (2) the artistic move- ment-negrismo-that Bola de Nieve helped pioneer continued Marti's movement for cultural liberation and is a linear ancestor of a contem- porary literary contingent containing negrismo's transitional figures (e.g., Carpentier, Guillen, etc.) and their intellectual descendents (e.g., Nancy Morej6n, who was an apprentice of Guillen); (3) unlike Guillen, whose poetry passed from a more exotic apotheosis of black Cuban folkways into a more overt political consciousness, Bola de Nieve plied his art along dif- ferent lines. He single-handedly fused his Afro-Cuban heritage with out- side cultural elements and forged a spoken-song genre that remained Cuban. We will consider each of these issues in turn and conclude this es- say with a summation of Bola de Nieve's place in Cuba's national culture. A blueprint for cultural autonomy was an essential element in Jose Marti's strategy for an independent Cuba and Latin America. Thus, while the "other America" (the United States) could claim its intellectual ancestry in the Enlightenment, "Our America [Cuba and Latin America] springs neither from Rousseau nor Washington, but from itself!" (Marti 1893 [1977]: 102). In other words, there was an autochthonous culture in Latin America; it only had to be recognized and respected as such by its Indian, black, mestizo, and mulatto originators and carriers. But this was a tall order, as Marti knew when he declared that Cuba would have to undergo a "second independence" after the War of 1895. This neces- sarily entailed a kind of liberation from the stigma placed on their own culture which was internalized by its victims. This stigma can be under- stood as deriving from the inculcation of the mestizos' and slaves' sense of racial, social, and cultural "otherness"; that is, their alienation from themselves and their society. The rescue of culture from such alienation would become part of the larger revolutionary project against the forces of imperialism. How this project could start and be made into a continuous
40 : Glenn Jacobs process entails the exploration of what we call the "enigma of other- ness," or the "triumph of Caliban." We refer to the paradigmatic struggle for cultural autonomy as it emerged from the Cuban Revolution as conceived by Roberto Fernandez Retamar (1974, 1986). Its precepts can be applied to the sectors of the precapitalist world which have revolted against imperialism and regen- erated indigenous cultures. Using the tale of Prospero and Caliban from Shakespeare's play "The Tempest," Fernandez Retamar (1974: 62) extends an allegory of colonialism to a prescription for liberation and growth. Noting that the actual etymology of "cannibal" entailed Colum- bus's confounding of that word with Carib, Caliban, the anagrammatic savage of the tale who is given language by Prospero, and thereafter cursed Prospero, now represents "our America." Indeed, it has been the fate of Cubans, says Fernandez Retamar, to invert the language of the oppressor and use it in the service of autonomy. Thus, "the most venerated word in Cuba-mambi-was disparagingly imposed on us at the time of the war for independence [1895-1898], and we still have not totally deciphered its meaning. It seems to have an African root and in the mouth of the Spanish colonists implied the idea that all inde- pendentistas were so many black slaves emancipated by the very war for independence-who of course constituted the bulk of the liberation ar- my" (1974: 27).7 From the standpoint of the history of the continent, blacks and native peoples are the prototypical "others." Otherness is described by Fernan- dez Retamar (1986) as more of a state of mind than a blood and soil mystery: it originally represents the mercantile expropriation of human dignity from indigenous and exploited people by the real primitives-shall we say "mercantile primitive accumulators"? As Abrahams and Szwed (1983: 10-22) remark in their introduction to a collection of extracts from British travel accounts and journals of the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries concerning the slaves' manners and customs in the West Indies, "These observers were often operating with regard to the two closely related stereotypes-the one of Blacks, the other of [European] West Indians. Especially in the travel literature, the European visitors came not only to see whether or not Blacks were human (and thus should or should not be freed) but also whether living away from Europe had made savages of their White brethren" (p. 11). Caliban perforce is Prospero's looking glass. As Fernandez Retamar notes (1986: 5), the descendants of the Europeans (the criollos) were quickly distinguished from the European-born. Although the term criollo was initially used to refer to American blacks, it was appropriated by whites "and eventually acquired almost exclusive reference to them."
Cuba's Bola de Nieve : 41 Thus, "to the dramatic otherness of the Indian and of the future-bound man who Marti characterized as 'autochthonous mestizo', the criollos now add their relative otherness." Retamar has opened a window on national alienation: once the Euro- peans arrogate the new continent as "home," "the first concrete pos- sibility of a break offers itself." Thenceforth, a schizoid expropriation of nativeness augmented by racist ethnocentrism could simultaneously label the real natives and slaves "others" and allow the children of the interlopers to struggle for "independence" from Spain. Moreover, the culture of these new European others maintains a predatory relationship to the native culture, wherein whites partake of it, consume it, commodify it, but deny its originators and carriers full membership in society. With the revolutionary expropriation of the expropriators, a national culture for itself is born, and those original "others" can now redeem their culture out of pawn; that is, out of the lexicon of "underdevelop- ment." This cultural reappropriation was begun by the pick and shovel work of Marti and continued by the literary movement, negrismo, of which Bola de Nieve was a charter member, and is consummated by the Revolution. However, a question has arisen (Barradas 1980) concerning the matu- rity of some of the early pre-Revolutionary figures of this movement vis-a-vis the more viable post-Revolutionary expressions of blackness in a society which now provides a context for the political resolution of problems of personal and social identity. In other words, the earlier exponents of negrismo could only appeal to the exoticness of black culture as an antidote to their sense of otherness, as, analogously, North Ameri- can black poets today often ground their issues in spiritual or metaphysical terms (Barradas 1980: passim). The contemporary Cuban situation thus represents a historical process taken into hand by its subjects. Conclusion Where does this leave us with respect to the third point concerning Bola de Nieve's place in the Cuban national culture? If his work never became explicitly political, must he be a kind of relic from Cuba's past? No, he was not a purveyor of Afro-exotica; he was an active transculturator. All of the Cuban and extra-Cuban elements that he filtered underwent a creative recombination and yet came out Afro-Cuban. He was a fulcrum of musical-cultural forces, indeed, a mirror that combined and trans- formed them into new cultural products. Like Guillen, he is transitional and viable within a socialist context. Moreover, his internationalization,
42 : Glenn Jacobs or free and open use even of styles and techniques of capitalist art, strengthened by his extensive travel, is a feature shared with many contemporary Cuban artists. In commenting upon contemporary Cuban poster art and artists, David Kunzle (1975: 95) remarks: Once the umbilical cord tying the colony to the metropolis so close to its shores was cut, and once the direction of the Revolution was assured and its international position clarified, Cuba became free to select and reject any artistic style which suited its purpose. Once economically and politically separated from the United States and the capitalist world, Cuba felt inde- pendent enough culturally to absorb any style, however closely associated with advanced bourgeois societies which had rejected Cuba and which Cuba, in turn, had rejected. In other words (Fernandez Retamar 1986: 20), "The Cuban people did not, of course, renounce 'Western Culture' (what there is in it of 'culture', if critically received, is undeniable), but four centuries of 'exploitation'. " The crux of the issue is whether cultural evolution under socialism must be unilinear. In this regard, Retamar's (1974: 69) suggestion, "To better understand the goals as well as the specific characteristics of our developing transformation, it is useful to compare it to similar processes in other socialist countries," is tantalizing juxtaposed with Fidel's proc- lamation (also quoted by Retamar): "Within the Revolution, everything; outside the Revolution, nothing." In point of fact, the variation of artistic and musical cultures between and within socialist societies is considerable, as in Cuba's case it must be for it to live by the lights of its prophet, Marti. The Revolution may thus be all inclusive, that is, maintain wide tolerance limits for creativity and variation, and not promote orthodoxy among the arts. Hence, it would seem that non- political musical expression in contemporary Cuba can stand with its political cousins and still be viably socialist, as the Cubans themselves seem to think. Bola de Nieve and other black artists of Cuba and North America have continued to be a part of the Revolutionary spirit bearing a "passion for change which [has or] has not yet found its agents" (Jameson 1986: 81). Bola de Nieve's humanism, indeed, fulfills Fanon's criterion of the national culture as "the whole body of efforts made by a people in the sphere of thought to describe, justify and praise the action through which the people has created itself and keeps itself in existence" (1963: 88). If the Cuban national culture has reached the point of a pervasive, urbane international presence (and it seems to, especially in the arts,
Cuba's Bola de Nieve : 43 as Cuba has become perhaps the most important hemispheric host to annual conclaves of cinematographers, writers, and performing artists), then Bola de Nieve must be understood as one whose work helped propel it in that direction. As Guillen (1971: 18) says, "Bola de Nieve fue un interprete nacional de creadores nacionales" ("Bola de Nieve was a national creator of national creations"). More so, "El interprete de una musica que era nacional porque expresaba un proceso de siglos, y con 1e la dramatica convivencia, y aun connivencia de las corrientes sociales [African and Spanish] que, al fundirse en una sola, serian la sintesis del modo de ser de Cuba" ("He interpreted a music which was national, and with him a dramatic union, even a connivance of social currents which when fused would be the synthesis of the Cuban character"). From the long view of his historical significance as an expositor and creator of his national culture, may we not say that Bola de Nieve per- formed sub specie aeternitatis? And may we not also say with due respect for the culture and the man that the attainments of their stations are the products of their struggling, creative selves? Lastly, the relationship between Bola the transculturative performer and his culture can be rendered in the words of his song "Manda conmigo pape," which describes a friend who bears messages from a young lady to a white lover. The song, almost sung as a children's ditty, skips along until we realize its subtle social and emotional nuances, which give us pause to think about the intricacies of culture and feeling: The young lady is in love, with a white boy her father doesn't like. And I see her writing. She writes on a paper a letter. She writes what she feels for him. And she sends the paper with me. If you want you can send the letter with me, because people like to gossip. I deliver little notes thus, and paper is sent with me, with me. Thus it was with Bola. An artist who played the "fifth business" (cata- lytic) role in the company of his national culture, he is both unobtrusive and pivotally creative, so powered by the muse that he is the muse. No wonder as we read the funerary praises of him we can see the national culture sensuously and joyously cheering itself on as though Bola's worldly passing was only a pause between songs. The smile, the waistcoat . . . and the threshold.
44 : Glenn Jacobs Notes The author wishes to acknowledge the following: Efrain Barradas provided generous counsel on negrismo and Cuban letters, read the MS, and corrected the author's Spanish; Jorge Gonzalez translated most of the songs used herein; Maria Elena Gonzalez advised the author on Cuban cultural, social, political, and literary issues; Alfred McClung Lee read the MS and provided sociological feedback; Yvonne Johnson read the MS and provided comparative perspectives on music and culture in the British West Indies and in the United States; Irene Reiss typed the MS. Of crucial importance to this work was the generosity of the Center for Cuban Studies and its librarian, Jerome Nickel, who provided the author with clippings and reprints of archival material on Bola de Nieve. Finally, the Faculty Development Committee and Dean Richard M. Freeland of the University of Massachusetts/Boston awarded the author a Faculty Development Grant which greatly assisted the accom- plishment of this research. 1. Rhythms were often played on boxes substituted for drums when the latter were not available. It is said that the well-known Cuban- American conguero (conga drummer) Mongo Santamaria learned to play on boxes and for years did so in the Havana neighborhood of his youth. Today, even professional drum ensembles in Cuba include the cajita as an integral instrument, for its tone and accenting are distinctive. 2. A striking parallel suggested by Efrain Barradas (1987) is the case of Nicolas Guillen himself in his early poetry (especially the Motivos de son) where this mocking attitude is present. 3. Hentoff (1976: 73) observes that Armstrong was quite acerbic about racial issues. In 1957, when Governor Orville Faubus resisted school integration in Arkansas and President Eisenhower equivocated over the enforcement of the Supreme Court's 1954 ruling, Louis Arm- strong told the press: "The way they are treating my people in the South, the government can go to hell!" As for the widely beloved Ike, Louis observed, "The President has no guts." Thus, it is easy to make glib and simplistic judgments about the moral courage of people who must deal with racism on a daily basis, but it requires keener observation to understand the kind of discretion employed as people selectively decide where, when, and how stands against racism could or should be taken. 4. Villa's lullabye, "Drumi Mobila," is included in the most recent and comprehensive anthology of negrista poetry, Amora de Albornoz
Cuba's Bola de Nieve : 45 and Julio Rodriguez Luis's Sensamaya: La poesia negra en el mundo hispanohablante (Madrid: Ediciones Origenes, 1980). 5. Manning Marable (1984) summarizes the situation of blacks in pre- Revolutionary Cuba in the twentieth century as stemming from two sources: (1) nineteenth-century racism reflecting the heritage of slavery, which was succeeded by (2) the transporting of "Jim Crow" from the United States after the Spanish-American War. This is most clearly reflected in occupational discrimination. 6. It appears that sometimes Bola uses the word tabo ("coconut shell cup") and another word, cabo ("piece, stub"). In the first case the connotation is of loose tobacco; in the second it is more in line with the Cuban use of the word tabaco for "cigar." 7. DiPerna (1979: 45) says that mambises is an African word meaning "children of vultures" which the Spanish used to connote the rebels as "dregs." Incidentally, this "turning around" of language is clearly a technique also used by North American blacks, perhaps as an aspect of Murray's riff motif, in their efforts to preserve a sphere of autonomy (see Holt 1972: 152-159). References Abrahams, Roger D. 1970 Deep Down in the Jungle . . : Negro Narrative Folklorefrom the Streets of Philadelphia. Chicago: Aldine. Abrahams, Roger D., and John F. Szwed (eds.) 1983 After Africa. Extracts from British Travel Accounts and Journals of the Seventeenth, Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Concerning the Slaves, Their Manners, and Customs in the British West Indies. New Haven: Yale University Press. Anonymous 1969 "Bola de Nieve Returns from His Tour of Nine Western European Nations." Gramma, April 22 (English ed.). Arozarena, Marcelino 1971 "Habra que Esperar." La Gaceta de Cuba 97 (October): 20. Balliet, Whitney 1976 New York Notes: A Journal of Jazz in the Seventies. New York: Da Capo Press.
46: Glenn Jacobs Barnet, Miguel 1971 "Oriki para Bola de Nieve." La Gaceta de Cuba 97 (Octo- ber): 20. Barradas, Efrain 1980 "La Negritud Hoy: Nota Sobre la Poesia de Nancy Morej6n." Areito 1, no. 24: 33-39. 1987 Personal communication. Bola de Nieve n.d. Interview [Entrevista]. In Bola de Nieve. In Memoriam, vol. 1. Havana, Cuba: Egrem (Areito), LD 3978. Burkey Richard M. 1978 Ethnic and Racial Groups. The Dynamics of Dominance. Menlo Park, Calif.: Cummings Publishing Co. Conte, Antonio 1972 "Bola: Dejame que te cuente." Cuba Internacional 29 (January): 62-67. Dathorne, 0. R. 1981 Dark Ancestor. The Literature of the Black Man in the Caribbean. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press. DiPerna, Paula 1979 The Complete Travel Guide to Cuba. New York: St. Martin's. Fanon, Frantz 1963 The Wretched of the Earth. New York: Grove. 1967 Black Skin, White Masks. New York: Grove. Fernandez Retamar, Roberto 1974 "Caliban: Notes towards a Discussion of Culture in Our America." The Massachusetts Review 15, nos. 1, 2 (Winter- Spring): 7-72. 1986 "Our America and the West." Social Text 15 (Fall): 1-25. Gates, Jr., Henry Louis 1984 "The Blackness of Blackness: A Critique of the Sign and
Cuba's Bola de Nieve : 47 the Signifying Monkey." In Black Literature and Literary Theory, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., pp. 285-321. New York: Methuen. Gonzalez-Whippler, Migene 1975 Santer'a.: African Magic in Latin America. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday Anchor. Gourse, Leslie 1984 Louis' Children. American Jazz Singers. New York: Quill. Guillen, Nicolas 1971 "Palabras Finales." La Gaceta de Cuba 97 (October): 18-19. 1975 Prosa de Prisa 1929-1972, vol. 1, ed. Angel Augier. La Habana, Cuba: Editorial Arte y Literatura. 1975 "Pregones." In Prosa de Prisa 1929-1972, vol. 2, ed. Angel (1960) Augier, pp. 23-26. 1976 "Mafiana: Bola de Nieve." In Prosa de Prisa 1929-1972, vol. 3, ed. Angel Augier, pp. 84-85. Henriquez Urefa, Max 1963 Panorama Historico de la Literatura Cubana (1492-1952). New York: Las Americas Publishing Co. Hentoff, Nat 1976 Jazz Is. New York: Limelight Editions. Herdeck, Donald E. et al., eds. 1979 "Villa, Ignacio." In Caribbean Writers. A Bio-Bibliographical- Critical Encyclopedia, p. 899. Washington, D.C.: Three Continents Press. Hoff, Grace Sims 1972 "'Inversion' in Black Communication." In Rappin' and Stylin' Out. Communication in Urban Black America, ed. Thomas Kochman, pp. 152-159. Urbana: University of Illinois Press.
48: Glenn Jacobs Huerta, Efrain 1971 "Recuerdo de Bola." La Gaceta de Cuba 97 (October): 22. Jackson, Richard L. 1979 Black Writers in Latin America. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press. Jacobs, Glenn 1979 "Pieter Bruegel as an Interpreter of Ultimate Reality and Meaning." Ultimate Reality and Meaning 2, no. 1: 29-39. Jahn, Janheinz 1961 Muntu: An Outline of the New African Culture. New York: Grove. 1968 Neo-African Literature: A History of Black Writing. New York: Grove. Jameson, Frederic 1986 "Third-World Literature in the Era of Multinational Capitalism." Social Text 15 (Fall): 65-88. Kunzle, David 1975 "Public Graphics in Cuba: A Very Cuban Form of Inter- nationalist Art." Latin American Perspectives 2, no. 4: 89-110. Le Riverand, Julio 1971 "Bola de Nieve: Nuevo y Permanente." La Gaceta de Cuba 97 (October): 20. Lee, Alfred McClung 1966 Multivalent Man. New York: George Braziller. Marable, Manning 1984 "Race and Democracy in Cuba." The Black Scholar 15, no. 3 (May/June): 23-37. Marti, Jose 1893 "Simon Bolivar." In Our America, by Jose Marti, ed. (1977) Philip S. Foner. New York: Monthly Review Press. Martinez Rodriguez, Raul 1986 "Bola de Nieve." Revoluciony Cultura 11 (November): 33-37.
Cuba's Bola de Nieve : 49 Murray, Albert 1983 The Omni-Americans: Black Experience and American Culture. (1970) New York: Random House. Orovio, Helio 1981 "Villa, Ignacio." In Diccionario de la Musica Cubana, pp. 429-430. La Habana: Editorial Letras Cubanas. Ortiz, Fernando 1947 Cuban Counterpoint: Tobacco and Sugar, trans. Harriet de Onis. New York: Alfred A. Knopf. Roberts, John Storm 1979 The Latin Tinge: The Impact of Latin American Music on the United States. New York: Oxford University Press. Rout, Jr., Leslie B. 1976 The African Experience in Spanish America: 1502 to the Present Day. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Snead, James A. 1984 "Repetition as a Figure of Black Culture." In Black Litera- ture and Literary Theory, ed. Henry Louis Gates, Jr., pp. 59-79. New York: Methuen. Thompson, Robert Faris 1974 African Art in Motion: Icon and Art in the Collection of Katherine Coryton White. Los Angeles: University of Los Angeles Press. 1983 Flash of the Spirit. African and Afro-American Art and Philosophy. New York: Random House. van Gennep, Arnold 1960 The Rites of Passage. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. (1908)