Notes
Chapter 1. Santiago before the Conga
Carnival in Santiago
Since at least the 17th century, carnival in Santiago has been celebrated in June and July, traditionally starting on June 24 (Dia de San Juan) and culminating around July 25, El día de Santiago Apóstol (the day of Santiago the apostle), the patron saint of the city. This festival was traditionally called the Fiesta de Mamarrachos (“Festival of Buffoons”) or Días de Mascaras (“Days of Masks”); by the early 20th century, it became known as carnaval. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries upper and middle class (mostly white and lighter-skinned) santiagueros (residents of Santiago) staged “Winter Carnivals” at exclusive social clubs.
The African presence: Cabildos de Nación
Until the abolition of slavery in 1886, neighborhood-based comparsas (carnival troupes) made up of free and enslaved people of color paraded in the streets to music which was not recorded but occasionally transcribed and described by outsiders. Many of these comparsas were affiliated with cabildos de nación (ethnically based mutual aid societies). Cabildos were institutions where Africans and their descendants re-constructed and maintained ethnic identities based on diasporic cultural, religious and linguistic practices. Throughout Cuba, there are documented examples of cabildos that enslavers, and later scholars, have grouped into broad “meta-ethnic” umbrella categories: Congo (Congo River basin region/speakers of Bantu languages); Carabalí (Cross River Delta region/Southeastern Nigeria/Southwest Cameroon); Lucumí (Western Nigeria and parts of Benin and Togo/Yoruba speakers), Arará (Ewe/Fon/Dahomey kingdom) and several others.[1]
Most scholars agree that the Congo and Carabalí groups were numerically predominant in Oriente (Calderon et al.; Lachatañeré 80-81; Millet, Espiritismo). In addition, free and enslaved French and Creole speaking people of color, many of whom arrived in the region from Haiti during its revolution, formed cabildos called tumba francesa (“French drum”) societies in the 1800s. These societies included members born in Haiti, Africa and Cuba, creating uniquely hybrid music and dance forms that are often called “Franco-Haitian,” but better described as “Afro-Franco-Haitian-Cuban.” The emergence of tumba francesa societies was a complex process wherein various African, Spanish and French cultural elements interacted during a period when Cuban and Haitian national identities were still in embryonic form (Millet and Brea, Grupos 27; Gelbard 5; Galis Riverí 104).
In 1888, the colonial regime, in an effort to suppress and monitor the movement for Cuban independence, required cabildos to register under the Law of Associations and affiliate with a Catholic saint and local church. This requirement and other factors eventually led to the demise or consolidation of many cabildos, but Afro-Cuban culture continued to thrive and evolve despite elite efforts to repress or eliminate it (Millet, “El carnaval” 6; Pappademos 115). Three cabildos in Santiago have survived to the present day as state-supported focos culturales (cultural centers or clubhouses): Carabalí Isuama and Tumba Francesa Caridad de Oriente in Los Hoyos, and Carabalí Olugo in Trocha Sur.
Though hundreds of Black comparsas performed in Santiago throughout the 19th century, there are two groups that have become prominent in both the collective memory of the Los Hoyos community and the historical record: El Cocoyé and Los Brujos de Limones. Both have been cited as predecessors or early versions of La Conga de Los Hoyos.
Nineteenth Century Comparsas
El Cocoyé: Cabildo, Comparsa, Cinquillo, and Contradanza
El Cocoyé was a tumba francesa society that was based in the Black community of Los Hoyos from roughly 1836 to 1959. One of the earliest and most influential accounts of this group's comparsa is in Emilio Bacardi’s Cronicas De Santiago De Cuba, first published in 1922. The text describes the following scene from July 1836:
[Juan] Casamitjana, senior musician of the Catalonian Regiment, from the top of the cafe “La Venus”, in Fertatges, [?] In the Plaza de Isabel II, at two in the morning, transcribes the song of the blacks marching in the comparsa “El Cocoyé,” led by Maria de la Luz González and Maria de la O. They came on the wings of the breeze and the popular Creole tune, known as “El Cocoyé”, would remain in perpetuity” (289).
Casamitjana wrote down and named what he perceived to be the song’s melody, which prominently features the cinquillo [x.xx.xx.] , a figure which is generally attributed to Haitian migration to Cuba. His adaptation would become known as “El Cocoyé.” It is not at all evident that the song's performers called this song or its music and dance genre “El Cocoyé.” We can reasonably associate this melody with tumba francesa and note a rhythmic similarity to masón, a tumba francesa subgenre which includes the cinquillo as an ostinato on the catá (a large hollowed out tree trunk which is played with two sticks).
According to Zoila Lapique, “El Cocoyé” was “a characteristic dance of Haitian blacks established in the [Eastern] region” and Casamitjana's and others' adaptations became popular among different classes at social dances in Santiago in the 1840s (151). By the time this piece rose to fame in Havana in the 1850s, it was being interpreted as a contradanza, a popular salon dance. Lapique asserts that the song's incorporation of the cinquillo enlivened and transformed the genre (150-152). At times, Lapique describes El Cocoyé as a specific song “…the Cocoyé’s popularity…” (151). In other descriptions she treats it more like a genre: “Gottschalk… interpreted a Cocoyé [as in ‘a waltz,’]” (153). El Cocoyé's notoriety as a song or genre was mostly in the bourgeois world of salon dancing, far removed from the cabildo's home base in the Black community of Los Hoyos.
While some accounts link the Cocoyé comparsa/song/genre to the modern conga, the connection is more symbolic than empirical (Urfé 218; Fernández 129). The most distinct contribution of “El Cocoyé” is the cinquillo, a figure which has never been prominent in the conga. Most attempts to associate the word “Cocoyé” with a genre are extrinsic: they can be traced to Casamitjana's adaptation, Bacardí's account, and subsequent narratives about the piece's roots in Oriente and Haiti.[2] For Black Santiagueros, however, Cocoyé has never been the name of a genre or rhythm. The term renewed its power and prestige as an emblem of Oriente's Black traditions in 1947, as I discuss in Chapter 6.
Los Brujos de Limones: Rebels from Los Hoyos
Another comparsa prominent in Los Hoyos' collective memory is Los Brujos de Limones (“The witch doctors from Limones”). This group is especially prestigious due to its association with the revered Black general Guillermón Moncada, a favorite son of Los Hoyos and hero of Cuba's struggles for racial equality and independence from Spain. During the 1860s, Moncada co-organized and performed as primer bastonero (lead macebearer or stick fighter) in this group. (Bettelheim 147; Ferrer 84; Galis Riverí 120). The name Los Brujos boldly and subversively honors the cimarrónes (Maroons or escaped slaves) who had successfully raided several farms in the district of Limones around 1815, freeing many enslaved people. As they marched through the streets, Moncada and the Brujos sang this refrain:
Choncholí se va pa’l monte—Cógelo que se te va
[The blackbird is heading for the hills—catch him! He’s getting away]
This chant has been interpreted and remembered in multiple ways, which I elaborate on here; in most narratives, Choncholí (the Cuban Blackbird) represents a Black person fleeing to freedom in el monte (the backwoods). “Choncholí” is usually remembered as a coded call to arms, urging Black men to join Moncada, flee to the mountains and join the mambises (Cuban rebels, a majority of whom were people of color) to fight for independence and Black liberation. This refrain is one of many that express rebellion and defiant satire in comparsa performances.[3] The “Choncholí” refrain, Moncada, and Los Brujos are frequently cited as patriotic antecedents that link Los Hoyos to Black liberation and the birth of the Cuban nation (Hernández Fusté; López Jiménez); in some accounts, Moncada is cited as the conga's founder. The most direct similarity between Choncholí and conga is semantic and symbolic, rather than overtly musical: both are part of a long tradition of choteo or subversive satire.[4]
While little is known about how the Cocoyé comparsa and Los Brujos de Limones actually sounded, both groups are important as conceptual and symbolic predecessors of 20th-century conga. Their tangible musical influence is ambiguous at best.
Tajona
Several authors have speculated that El Cocoyé and Los Brujos de Limones were examples of tajonas, a type of comparsa which originated on 19th century coffee plantations that is often associated with tumba francesa societies (Bettelheim, “The Tumba Francesa and Tajona of Santiago de Cuba” 147; Galis Riverí 120).[5] The tajona genre incorporated a lead singer and chorus whose repertoire featured cantos de puya (taunting songs) aimed at rival comparsas. The traditional instrumentation consisted of two or more hand drums (fondo and repicador), one or two small bass drums (tamborita and bimba), and sometimes a hoe blade (guataca) and conch shell (lanbí or fotuto). During carnival season and other annual occasions, these groups would visit their rivals to engage in competitive performances with the objective of surrounding and “capturing” the opponent's queen. The defeated tajona ensemble would then have to buy food and drink for the ensuing “after-party.” These showdowns set a strong precedent for the visitas (visits) and invasiones (invasions) which are still vital to the conga tradition. Traditionally, most of Santiago's cabildos, tumba francesa societies and tajonas were based in three rival neighborhoods: Los Hoyos, El Tivolí, and El Guayabito; see Figure 1.1 (Millet and Brea 44–45; Mililian Galis Riverí 119).
El Rey Congo
Another important Black institution in 19th-century Santiago was Los Hoyos' cabildo congo. This group is mentioned in several historical accounts but is much less prominent in popular memory and oral tradition than El Cocoyé or Los Brujos. This cabildo held musical processions on Dia de Reyes (Three Kings Day, January 6th) to commemorate the election and coronation of its king (Portuondo Zuñiga 80; Ravelo 138) and during the Fiesta de Mamarrachos in June and July (Goodman 90). The possible connection between this cabildo and the 20th-century conga groove is discussed below.
The Early Twentieth Century
By the time Cuba became independent in 1902, the predominant types of comparsas in Santiago were: tajona, carabalí (vocals in Spanish and Afro-Cuban dialects and percussion, associated with the above mentioned cabildos), and paseos, (guitars, maracas and voices, associated with middle and upper classes).[6] The paseos were encouraged to flourish as a “civilized” alternative to blacker, drum-based groups. In addition, several other cabildo-affiliated comparsas performed in the early 20th century (Rodríguez Lamarque).
Between 1902 and 1908, Santiago's government tried to explicitly ban tajonas, carabalí comparsas, and other Black ensembles because of their inclusion of “primitive” Afro-Cuban drums, but evidence suggests that these groups performed despite this repression (Rodríguez Lamarque; Millet et al. 190, 223). At this time conga was a music and dance style interpreted by Black comparsas in Western Cuba, principally Havana and Matanzas.[7] In 1911 “El Negro Bueno,” a small visiting ensemble which included players from these two cities, successfully interpreted the conga in Santiago (Galis Riverí 225).[8]
Jesús Guanche thoroughly analyzes these various categories and their features and flaws in Africanía y etnicidad en Cuba. The author proposes a geographic zone system to designate five broad areas from which African slaves were taken. It is worth noting that postcolonial African nation-states include many different ethnic and linguistic groups; this is why I prefer the term “Congo,” which refers to the broad meta-ethnic category constructed in Cuba and elsewhere, to “Congolese,” which connotes a nationality.
One of the most cited amplifications of the Cocoyé origin story is Carpentier (120-121).
Other Santiago comparsas associated with the fight for Cuban independence include: Carabalí Isuama, Los Guajiros (“The peasants”), La Huida del Javalí (“The Flight of the Boar”), led by future Generals Quintín Bandera and Luis de Feria, and La Huida del Cimarrón (“The Flight of the Maroon”), led by Moncada just one year before his death in 1895 (Bettelheim, “Carnival in Santiago de Cuba” 100; Ravelo 124; Rodríguez Lamarque).
I also discuss the connection between Moncada, the mambises, and Los Hoyos in Chapter 6.
This connection should not be considered exclusive. There are many examples of tajonas that were not affiliated with tumba francesa societies, as well tumba-affiliated comparsas whose music may not have resembled tajona (Galis Riverí, 11 December 2023; Rodríguez Lamarque). In addition, tajona lyrics are in Spanish rather than Creole. We must bear in mind that genres are often constructed and retroactively imposed by scholars, journalists, and other commentators.
Undoubtably, other styles existed at this time; the three categories mentioned here are the ones that are most prominent in written records and oral tradition.
The use of “conga” to refer to a musical genre and street parade most likely emerged in Havana or Matanzas in the late 19th century ((Urfé 232; Mililian Galis Riverí 94). While these styles are often referred to as comparsa, conga de comparsa, conga matancera (Matanzas-style conga) or conga habanera (Havana-style conga), I will use “Western conga” as a broad term to refer to both the Havana and Matanzas variants, which are quite similar. In the case of El Tivolí's conga-columbia, evidence points to Matanzas as the main source of the groove.
The Rodríguez LaMarque collection lists “Los Negros Buenos” as La Conga del Tivolí's 1911 title or theme (see Chapter 2, note 4).