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Culture Of Cuba
The culture of Cuba is a complex mixture of different, often contradicting, factors and influences. The Cuban people and their customs are based on European, African and Amerindian influences. History Music The music of Cuba, including the instruments and the dances, is mostly of European and African origin. Most forms of the present day are creolized fusions and mixtures of these two styles, with very few remains of the original Native traditions. Fernando Ortíz, the first great Cuban folklorist, described Cuba's musical innovations as arising from the interplay ('transculturation') between African slaves settled on large sugarcane plantations and Spanish or Canary Islanders who grew tobacco on small farms. The African slaves and their descendants reconstructed large numbers of percussive instruments and corresponding rhythms. The main instrumental contribution of Spanish music was the guitar, and the tradition of European musical notation and techniques of musical comp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Danzón
Danzón is the official genre and dance of Cuba.Urfé, Odilio 1965. ''El danzón''. La Habana. It is also an active musical form in USA and Puerto Rico. Written in time, the danzón is a slow, formal partner dance, requiring set footwork around syncopated beats, and incorporating elegant pauses while the couples stand listening to virtuoso instrumental passages, as characteristically played by a charanga or típica ensemble. The danzón evolved from the Cuban contradanza, or habanera ( 'Havana-dance'). The contradanza, which had English and French roots in the country dance and contredanse, was probably introduced to Cuba by the Spanish, who ruled the island for almost four centuries (1511–1898), contributing many thousands of immigrants. It may also have been partially seeded during the short-lived British occupation of Havana in 1762. Haitian refugees fleeing the island's revolution of 1791–1804 brought the French-Haitian kontradans, contributing their own ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Guaracha
The guaracha () is a genre of music that originated in Cuba, of rapid tempo and comic or picaresque lyrics. The word has been used in this sense at least since the late 18th and early 19th century. Guarachas were played and sung in musical theatres and in working-class dance salons. They became an integral part of bufo comic theatre in the mid-19th century. During the later 19th and the early 20th century the guaracha was a favourite musical form in the brothels of Havana. The guaracha survives today in the repertoires of some trova musicians, conjuntos and Cuban-style big bands. Early uses of the word Though the word may be historically of Spanish origin, its use in this context is of indigenous Cuban origin. These are excerpts from reference sources, in date order: A Latin American carol "Convidando esta la noche" dates from at least the mid 17th century and both mentions and is a guaracha. It was composed or collected by Juan Garcia de Zespedes, 1620–1678, Puebla, Mexico ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Habanera (music)
''Contradanza'' (also called ''contradanza criolla'', ''danza'', ''danza criolla'', or ''habanera'') is the Spanish and Spanish-American version of the contradanse, which was an internationally popular style of music and dance in the 18th century, derived from the English country dance and adopted at the court of France. Contradanza was brought to America and there took on folkloric forms that still exist in Bolivia, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Panama and Ecuador. In Cuba during the 19th century, it became an important genre, the first written music to be rhythmically based on an African rhythm pattern and the first Cuban dance to gain international popularity, the progenitor of danzón, mambo and cha-cha-cha, with a characteristic "habanera rhythm" and sung lyrics. Outside Cuba, the Cuban contradanza became known as the ''habanera'' – the dance of Havana – and that name was adopted in Cuba itself subsequent to its international popularity in the later 19th centu ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Santería
Santería (), also known as Regla de Ocha, Regla Lucumí, or Lucumí, is an African diaspora religions, Afro-Caribbean religion that developed in Cuba during the late 19th century. It arose amid a process of syncretism between the traditional Yoruba religion of West Africa, Catholicism, and Kardecist spiritism, Spiritism. There is no central authority in control of Santería and much diversity exists among practitioners, who are known as ''creyentes'' ("believers"). Santería teaches the existence of a transcendent creator divinity, Olodumare, under whom are spirits known as ''Orisha, oricha''. Typically deriving their names and attributes from traditional Yoruba deities, these ''oricha'' are equated with Roman Catholic saints and associated with various myths. Each human is deemed to have a personal link to a particular ''oricha'' who influences their personality. Olodumare is believed to be the ultimate source of ''Aṣẹ, aché'', a supernatural force permeating the univers ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Palo (religion)
Palo, also known as Las Reglas de Congo, is an African diasporic religion that developed in Cuba during the late 19th or early 20th century. It draws heavily upon the traditional Kongo religion of Central Africa, with additional influences taken from Catholicism and from Spiritism. An initiatory religion practised by ''paleros'' (male) and ''paleras'' (female), Palo is organised through small autonomous groups called ''munanso congo'', each led by a ''tata'' (father) or ''yayi'' (mother). Although teaching the existence of a creator divinity, commonly called Nsambi, Palo regards this entity as being uninvolved in human affairs and instead focuses its attention on the spirits of the dead. Central to Palo is the ''nganga'', a vessel usually made from an iron cauldron. Many ''nganga'' are regarded as material manifestations of ancestral or nature deities known as ''mpungu''. The ''nganga'' will typically contain a wide range of objects, among the most important being sticks and h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Yoruba Religion
The Yorùbá religion (Yoruba language, Yoruba: Ìṣẹ̀ṣe), West African Orisa (Òrìṣà), or Isese (Ìṣẹ̀ṣe), comprises the traditional religious and spiritual concepts and practice of the Yoruba people. Its homeland is in present-day Southwestern Nigeria and Southern Benin, which comprises the majority of the States of Nigeria, states of; Oyo State, Oyo, Ogun State, Ogun, Osun State, Osun, Ondo State, Ondo, Ekiti State, Ekiti, Kwara State, Kwara, Lagos State, Lagos and parts of Kogi State, Kogi in Nigeria, the Departments of Benin, Departments of; Collines Department, Collines, Ouémé Department, Oueme, Plateau Department, Plateau in Benin, and the adjoining parts of central Togo, commonly known as Yorubaland (). It has become the largest indigenous African tradition / belief system in the world with several million adherents worldwide. It shares some parallels with the Vodun practised by the neighbouring Fon people, Fon and Ewe people, Ewe peoples to its west ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Haiti
Haiti, officially the Republic of Haiti, is a country on the island of Hispaniola in the Caribbean Sea, east of Cuba and Jamaica, and south of the Bahamas. It occupies the western three-eighths of the island, which it shares with the Dominican Republic. Haiti is the third largest country in the Caribbean, and with an estimated population of 11.4 million, is the most populous Caribbean country. The capital and largest city is Port-au-Prince. Haiti was originally inhabited by the Taíno people. In 1492, Christopher Columbus established the first European settlement in the Americas, La Navidad, on its northeastern coast. The island was part of the Spanish Empire until 1697, when the western portion was Peace of Ryswick, ceded to France and became Saint-Domingue, dominated by sugarcane sugar plantations in the Caribbean, plantations worked by enslaved Africans. The 1791–1804 Haitian Revolution made Haiti the first sovereign state in the Caribbean, the second republic in the Americ ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Fon People
The Fon people, also called Dahomeans, Fon nu, Agadja and historically called Jeji (Djedji) by the Yoruba in the South American diaspora and in colonial French literature are a Gbe ethnic group.Fon people Encyclopædia Britannica, undated, 1.7 million population, Retrieved June 29, 2019 They are the largest ethnic group in Benin, found particularly in its south region; they are also found in southwest and Togo. Their total population is estimated to be about 3,500,000 people, and they speak the [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
Dahomey
The Kingdom of Dahomey () was a West African List of kingdoms in Africa throughout history, kingdom located within present-day Benin that existed from approximately 1600 until 1904. It developed on the Abomey Plateau amongst the Fon people in the early 17th century and became a regional power in the 18th century by expanding south to conquer key cities like Ouidah, Whydah belonging to the Kingdom of Whydah on the Atlantic Ocean, Atlantic coast which granted it unhindered access to the tricontinental Atlantic slave trade, Atlantic Slave Trade. For much of the middle 19th century, the Kingdom of Dahomey became a key regional state, after eventually ending tributary status to the Oyo Empire. European visitors extensively documented the kingdom, and it became one of the most familiar African nations known to Ethnic groups in Europe, Europeans. The Kingdom of Dahomey was an important regional power that had an organized domestic economy built on conquest and Slavery, slave labor, si ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] [Amazon] |
