Grupo Afro-Cuba de Matanzas - Raices Africanas (1998)

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Grupo Afro-Cuba de Matanzas - Raices Africanas (1998)

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When Dizzy Gillespie brought Afro-Cuban jazz to North America in the late 40s, he was drawing on master Cuban drummers who had emigrated to the United States. Those congueros were drawing on Havana's popular dance bands, and those bands were drawing on religious groups out in Cuba's provinces, whose use of chanting and drumming was little changed from the music brought from Africa in the 17th and 18th centuries. Seldom have those fundamentals of Afro-Cuban music been documented as usefully as they are on "RaicesAfricanas("African Roots") by Grupo AfroCuba de Matanzas.Unlike African slaves in the American South, those in Cuba were often allowed to congregate by tribe, keep their drums and thus preserve their Old World traditions in organizations called cabildos. Many of those cabildos are still active today, and members from several different groups in the port city of Matanzas formedGrupo AfroCuba in 1957. Consisting entirely of percussionists, singers and dancers, the troupe plays essentially religious music, honoring the gods of West Africa with hypnotic call-and-response patterns.These musical dialogues are dominated not by the singers but by the drums, which are each tuned to a specific pitch, a distinctive voice. The low-pitched lead drum will initiate a phrase that is both rhythmic and melodic, and the other drums respond with both echoes and variations on the phrase. The chanting singers then amplify the dialogue with their own give and take. The lack of horns and strings may dismay the North American listener, but the gradually accumulating effect is mesmerizing and provides an invaluable glimpse at the origins of the hugely influential Afro-Cuba sound.