Divine Utterances: The Performance of Afro-Cuban Santeria [With CD]

By Katherine J. Hagedorn

Book Overview

This compelling and personal exploration of Afro-Cuban Santer?a comes with a CD featuring 20 mesmerizing songs from prominent Afro-Cuban musicians that embody the book's themes

In Divine Utterances, Katherine J. Hagedorn explores the enduring cultural and spiritual power of the music of Afro-Cuban Santer?a and the process by which it has been transformed for a secular audience. She focuses on the integral connections between sacred music performances and the dramatizations of theatrical troupes, especially the state-sponsored Conjunto Folkl?rico Nacional de Cuba, and examines the complex relationships involving race, politics, and religion in Cuba. The music that Hagedorn describes is rooted in Afro-Cuban religious tradition and today pervades a secular performances that can produce a trance in audience members in the same way as a traditional religious ceremony.

Hagedorn's analysis is deeply informed by her experiences in Cuba as a woman, scholar, and apprentice bat? drummer. She argues that constructions of race and gender, the politics of pre- and post-Revolutionary Cuba, the economics of tourism, and contemporary practices within Santer?a have contributed to a blurring of boundaries betwen the sacred and the folkloric. As both modes now vie for primacy in Cuba's burgeoning tourist trade, what had once been the music of a marginalized group is now a cultural expression of national pride.

The compact disc that accompanies the book includes examples of twenty songs to the orichas, or Afro-Cuban deities, performed by prominent musicians, including L?zaro Ros, Francisco Aguabella, Alberto Villarreal, and Zenaida Armenteros.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1560989475
• ISBN13: 9781560989479
• Release Date: August 2001
• Publisher: Smithsonian Books
• Length: 312 Pages
• Weight: 1.84 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 6.2" x 8.9"