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The predominance of Cuban artists and styles in música antillana is related to the strong political and economic ties between Cuba and the United States in the first half of this century. This led to the diffusion of Cuban sounds over and above other Latin American styles—including the Argentine tango, internationally popular during the first two decades of the century (Savigliano 1995), though it never had the long-lasting commercial impact of Cuban styles. Cuba’s strategic position in the Caribbean made it a prime center of economic activity under Spanish colonialism, which it continued to enjoy under a reign of virtual economic domination by U.S. business interests from the time of the Spanish-American War in 1898 until the Cuban Revolution in 1959.

The development of improved transportation and communications links between Cuba and the United States facilitated travel, especially between Havana and New York. Buoyed by American dollars and unhampered by Prohibition, Cuba became a tropical playground for Americans from the 1920s through the 1950s.¹⁸ The popularization of the Cuban son during the 1930s, introduced to U.S. audiences in the watered-down form known as rhumba, usurped tango’s position as the most popular Latin American dance in North America and Europe (Roberts 1979). The popularity of Cuban rhumba in North America during the 1930s, followed by the widespread mambo dance craze of the late 1940s and 1950s, served to reinforce North America’s affinity for the island.

Havana became the “Paris of the Caribbean,” an exotic and cosmopolitan city scarcely ninety miles from Miami. This glittering image spread to other Latin American centers, especially through films, reinforcing the growing popularity of Cuban music throughout Mexico, South America and the Caribbean.

In the meantime, U.S. recording companies such as RCA Victor and Columbia began recording an unprecedented number of Cuban artists and groups, first bringing musicians to their studios in New York and later setting up recording facilities in Havana. Between 1925 and 1928 alone, hundreds of son, guaracha, and bolero compositions were recorded by such important groups as the Sexteto Boloña, the Sexteto Habanero, the Sexteto and Septeto Nacional, the Trio Matamoros, and María Teresa Vera. The number of artists and recordings increased throughout the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950, and recordings were distributed not only throughout the Americas, but also in Europe and even Africa.¹⁹ Although these companies also recorded a number of other Latin American musical styles, many of these recordings received limited production and distribution runs, confined to specific “ethnic” series. Cuban artists, however, were placed both in specialized series and in the general mainstream catalog (Spottswood 1990). Recordings of Cuban music also entered the cities of Guayaquil, Ecuador, and Lima, Peru, on South America’s Pacific coast—brought by sailors traveling through the Panama Canal who docked regularly at these major ports. Local radio stations throughout Latin America featured these records, and in countries or regions situated on the Caribbean, Cuban radio could be picked up via shortwave radio sets. Since live-to-air musical broadcasts were a mainstay of Cuban radio programming, the nightly performances of groups such as the Sonora Matancera, Arcaño y sus Maravillas, the Orquesta Aragón, and Benny Moré were heard simultaneously by listeners not only in Havana, but also those in points as far-flung as San Juan, Veracruz, Panama City, Caracas, and Barranquilla.

Concert tours and movie appearances strengthened the popularity of Cuban artists. Groups such as the Trio Matamoros visited several Latin American countries in tours that lasted months. Musical films in the 1940s and 1950s—most of them made in Mexico City—further increased the presence of Cuban musicians in Latin America. Stars such as Daniel Santos gained tremendous international popularity not only through live appearances but also through movie musicals such as El angel caido (1948). In the circular loop characteristic of twentieth-century mass popular culture, Cuban musicians were popularized through record promotion, but their records sold well because of concert and (in some cases) movie appearances, which increased their popularity, which sold more records, which brought them back for more concerts, and so forth.

Cuban music had a particularly strong impact in Puerto Rico (see Manuel 1994). This musical interchange has its roots in the close historical ties between Cuba and Puerto Rico. These links, both political and cultural, emerge from the fact that they were the last remaining Latin American colonies of the Spanish Empire and remained virtual or (in the case of Puerto Rico) literal colonies of the United States through the first half of the twentieth century. The islands constituted “the Caribbean” for the United States, and because of this they provided more economic and political gains than the neighboring Dominican Republic, which—despite a similar colonial history—failed to establish a solid export-oriented exchange economy (Martínez Fernández 1994: 58). According to Martínez Fernández, despite the potential profits that investment in the Dominican Republic promised in the last century, internal “political instability, the threat of Haitian aggression, and the zealous interference of European merchants and consuls blocked such economic endeavors,” essentially cutting the country off from the Atlantic-Caribbean commercial system (1994: 94–95). Cuba and Puerto Rico were thus in a much better position for their musical expressions to be diffused to the rest of the hemisphere, and of the two, Cuba was the stronger, because of its geographic proximity to the United States and its larger economic base. (Some observers say that Puerto Rico’s current affluence resulted from the shift in U.S. tourist-oriented development after the 1959 revolution terminated such investment in Cuba.²⁰)

United States record producers clearly felt that they had a more profitable commodity with Cuban popular music than with other styles. The fact that Cuban songs are in Spanish made Hispanic Latin America an obvious target for promotion of Cuban recordings, but it is probable that Cuba’s economic subordination and proximity to the United States contributed to the predilection of New York record companies for Cuban artists. The economic ties between and geographic proximity of these two countries certainly stimulated migration from Cuba to New York, and many Cuban musicians headed north in search of work and opportunities. New York’s economic strength and position as a principal international communications and entertainment center in turn launched this Cuban presence into the world.

Hollywood’s images also influenced the international glamour tied to Cuban sounds. For instance, the movies of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers (great favorites in Cali) frequently featured Cuban music, usually in the simplified rhumba form. For U.S. audiences, Cuba was seen as exotic, but not too exotic, and hence became an ideal, unthreatening other for North American projections and fantasies. While Mexicans were stereotypically portrayed as rural, sombrero-wearing bumpkins, Argentines were conventionally typecast as smoldering Latin lovers. Brazilians were presented as hot-blooded but frivolous, embodied in the image of Carmen Miranda and her ridiculous fruit-bowl headdresses. Cubans, however, were exuberant and festive, sexy but also charming, fun but not mawkish—in other words, enticing but safe. Compare the domesticated exoticism of Desi Arnaz, for example, who romped through the nation’s living rooms every week as Ricky Ricardo, Lucy’s cute Cuban hubby, with the dark and slightly menacing sensuality of the Argentine tango dancer epitomized by Rudolph Valentino (Pérez Firmat 1994: 61–63). These images influenced Latin American consumption patterns. Although música antillana was promoted and controlled through a highly impersonal industry, the key link to its popularity was its level of face-to-face enjoyment. Certainly, dancing to Cuban music was perceived as fun, and for many, the rhythms of rumba, conga, and mambo were more compelling than, say, the melancholy, marchlike compass of the tango. The joy and release generated in the intimate, vital physicality of dance and motion has contributed most directly to Cuban music’s widespread adoption, reinforcing the commercial channels through which it attained prominence. It is this affective power, ultimately, that transcended geographic and cultural boundaries to literally move thousands.

Puerto Rican artists also performed Cuban music and creatively reworked Cuban elements to create new Puerto Rican expressions that became internationally popular (Manuel 1994). By the 1950s, Puerto Rico’s most popular dance band—Cortijo y su Combo—performed Puerto Rican bomba and plena on Cuban percussion instruments instead of Puerto Rican drums. While the Cuban influence in música antillana is often overstated, Puerto Ricans not only adopted Cuban elements but also transformed them into musical vehicles that expressed a distinct Puerto Rican sensibility. As Ruth Glasser notes, “Puerto Ricans on the island and the mainland did not adopt Cuban music wholesale to the detriment of their own traditions but incorporated it into an ever-evolving repertoire of available cultural materials” (1995: 6). The hegemony of Cuban styles and artists in música antillana history is based on the predominance of Cuban instruments, rhythms, genres, and artists who were recorded, filmed, and distributed far more widely than were their Puerto Rican counterparts. I am not entirely comfortable, however, with the Cuba-centered discourse of many Latin music specialists. I think the Colombian term “música antillana” is actually more useful in this regard, since it does open a conceptual space for thinking about the historical ties that linked Cuba and Puerto Rico and led to the emergence of a transnational sound that by the 1950s could no longer be contained solely by the label “Cuban music.”