Cuba: Danzon in Times of Reparto
Photo Feature By Nester Nuñez (Joven Cuba)
HAVANA TIMES – Jose Fidel Leonard Viciedo, better known as Joseito, is a tall man with a white hat. Because his walk is unsteady, he leans on someone for support. He asks people to speak loudly, because at 85, his hearing is impaired. He also suffers from chronic gastritis, so he says he survives on guagüí and malanga. Still, the little meat left on his bones supports a frame as tough as his love for music. Especially for danzon.
“I learned to dance danzon at home and at the Black Society in the small town where I’ve always lived — Sabanilla del Comendador (Matanzas), now Juan Gualberto Gomez — around a record player that was already old at the time. Then I’d go to the matinee and show the boys the little I knew.”
He sits tall and elegant, watching the couples dance. At the same time, I watch him, and everyone else, through one of the large mirrors in the hall, its silver backing fading at the edges. It feels like I’m watching an old black-and-white movie. The men wear hats and suits, some in sharp two-tone shoes. The women smile as they follow the men’s lead.
A young woman lifts her gaze and looks into her partner’s eyes for a moment — with desire, daring, and subtlety. His hand sweats, a little nervous, but he follows through: pulling her close, inhaling her perfume. Her heart beats differently now, faster than the danzón’s montuno rhythm. She doesn’t move her hips too much, nor does she rest her head on his chest, so others won’t notice. She needs to maintain control, not break social norms. She looks at him again — that, at least, is allowed. Neither of them feels the ground beneath their feet: they’re floating. They’re in the Hall of Mirrors, Joseito watching them from his seat, I watching everyone, but that couple is in another dimension, in their own cloud.
Then a sound from the street breaks the magic: “The reparto’s here! Hips down, hands up!”
“People in the 19th century already wanted to dance differently,” says Maria Victoria Oliver, doctor, musicologist, and researcher. “Our climate, our way of being, our idiosyncrasies demanded that our contradanza be different, more open. At Bellido Luna’s house, on August 13, the dancers made a special request to Miguel Failde: ‘We need something that sounds different, more like us.’”
Failde, as a musician of his time, composed a binary contradanza like all others, but the dancers told him, “Don’t you see we’re inventing a new thing in dance? Invent us something new in music.” So he had to go away, scolded by the dancers. Of course, there were musical precedents and elements, and to put it simply, Failde said, “I’ll take a bit from here and a bit from there,” and on January 1, 1879, he showed up at the White Room in Matanzas with the first danzon.
Today, the White Room is mostly used for concerts. Matanzas danzon enthusiasts dance at their own venue on Medio Street, but those from other municipalities and provinces lament the loss of dance spaces, the scarcity of current orchestras that include danzon in their repertoire, and the lack of television programs dedicated to danzon and other traditional musical dance forms.
The problem is broader still and affects not just danzon and related forms. The deep economic crisis, budget cuts to state-funded institutions, and the loss of specialists who have emigrated or moved to better-paying jobs have all contributed to the dwindling of spaces for Cubans to socialize and dance. Many institutions no longer fulfill their role. Private bars or those run by non-state entities proliferate, but their prices are beyond reach for much of the population. As a natural act — and a form of cultural resistance — young people gather in any public place with a portable speaker to listen, hum, and dance to the music they like.
But the same can’t be asked of the danzon community, made up mostly of elderly people. Governments at every level should prioritize their minimal needs, because these gatherings significantly improve their quality of life. You should see the smile on the 96-year-old lady who came from Pinar del Río to Matanzas for the 6th International Danzon Encounter. You should hear Maria Belen Hidalgo Blanco, coordinator of the “Friends of Danzón” clubs in Matanzas, who has visited many of the 132 clubs across the country, when she talks about the fan dance, the tie and scarf dance, the cookie dance, the flower dance, the dance of Saint Joaquin — many of which have ceased due to lack of resources and institutional support. More than a duty, it’s an obligation — because we’re talking about what danzon means personally for thousands of Cubans and, more broadly, what it represents for our national identity.
“Everyone thinks it’s our national dance because it has identifiable elements from both Black and European roots. But that’s a musicological, academic study,” says Maria Victoria. “The truth is, danzon was the first time Black and white people came together in the same ballroom. So for the Spaniards, that union — even through dance — was dangerous. Danzon reflects how we are, how we dance, how we feel, how we’ve mixed. Cubans are one race, and that was the danzon. It represented the ideology of Jose Marti and Juan Gualberto Gomez. Besides, danzon grew stronger at the end of our first war of independence, in the time of national consolidation and thought. That’s why it’s an expression — a part of our identity that must be preserved.”
Too many good things have already been lost, and we can’t leave it all to memory. Joseito’s memory, for example, is still strong, but beneath the hat, his recollections jump from track to track on that old record player.
He mentions scattered names — those he considers the best pianists or performers from a not-so-clearly-defined era: Hector Tellez, Maria Elena Pena, Jorge Gomez, Centurion, Luis Carbonell… or orchestras: America, Estrella Cubana, Siglo XX, Conjunto Rumbavana… He talks about Pavon, about when the Council became the Ministry of Education and Culture, about Armando Hart. He says that in 1979, for the danzon centennial, they built an incredible wooden stage in Rene Fraga Park in Matanzas for 100 dancing couples. He also remembers the Cubadanzon festival… Then he says that from his role in the cultural department, he created 18 danzon clubs in the province. “Each one worked with a daycare, and in each one, we formed 15 or 20 pairs of children who danced.”
That makes me think of the loudspeakers blaring reparto (once referred to as the “reggaeton of the poor,” it has become the dominant musical expression of Cuba’s youth) and my own childhood. In primary school, without talent or ambition for it, they dressed me in a straw hat and a guayabera and made me dance zapateo (a Cuban form of tap dancing). Maybe because I was the “smart one” in class, or the “cute one,” or because they wanted to form well-rounded students — even though I wasn’t interested in any of it. The good part was realizing something I didn’t want to do, and from that day forward, I knew I could say no.
Traditions pass on naturally: from parents to children, from experts to interested youth. There’s a huge risk in treating it as a goal, a duty, or a plan to fulfill — or teaching it in a superficial, anecdotal, dehumanized way, like so much of national history. What matters is the real need felt to dance danzon, in this case. To dance because you love it, because it makes you happy, because you want to fall in love, because it’s a moment to feel glorious — like the couple I saw in the mirror, or imagined, her behind her fan, blushing… And the other thing is danzon’s age-old ability to transform.
“Danzon was the first dance that let couples unite in a ballroom. And it’s the only Cuban dance that gives you a break — a moment to socialize, to flirt. That’s essential to its nature,” says Dr. Maria Victoria. “But structurally, danzon has always been flexible. When son came from the east to the west of the island? No problem — we added a montuno, which brought in a slight hip movement.”
“We also have the pianist from Aniceto’s band recounting a dance in Alacranes, in the Matanzas of 1928. People weren’t getting up to dance danzon, and Aniceto said, ‘Forget it, I’ll starve if people don’t dance — they won’t hire me again! We have to change this.’ And so he added lyrics and a chorus, creating the first danzonete. It was called Rompiendo la rutina (Breaking the Routine). If he hadn’t broken the routine, if danzon hadn’t evolved, none of the musicians would’ve eaten.”
So danzón, like all music, reflects the times, and of course, the market matters. The real question is: how and why has that simple beat — reparto — come to dominate all of Cuba’s rich musical heritage? Why are the lyrics so vulgar? Why do they glorify easy, fast success, the “me” over the “we,” explicit sex, misogyny, gender violence, and rampant marginality? We must ask how repeating these ideas influences the imagination and values of young people. Or, to circle back — is reparto simply the expression of what we’ve already become, of what has been taught?
José Fidel Leonard Viciedo, the elegant old man in the white hat, is now dancing a danzon called El inquieto Joseíto, composed especially for him by Guillermo Rubalcaba. Around him, thirty-some couples are dancing. Five or six of them are young — people I’ll probably see someday grooving to reparto, and there’s nothing wrong with that. The difference is: they can choose, they have options to enjoy, they won’t be limited. What remains to be seen is what will happen to today’s children — and to the country in general — if we fail to pass on our traditions.
First published in Spanish by Joven Cuba and translated and posted in English by Havana Times.