The Guajira between Cuba and Spain: A Study in Continuity and Change

Relating to the land: multiple geographical imaginations and lived‐in landscapes

“…Parts of Martí’s poem were put together with a traditional song from the Orient, characterised by its own hybrid, transnational trajectory. These songs were known as guajiras , and their ‘circuitous paths of [musical] features … may have derived originally from the Afro Latin Americas – perhaps Mexico/ New Spain, whether reaching Cuba directly thence, or via Spain itself’ (Manuel 2004, 142). 16 This earlier guajira refrain and tune had been adapted through the course of the 1920s and 1930s on radio programmes to debate the everyday lives of people, as they struggled to deal with authoritarian regimes and periodic economic crises 17 .…”

“…18 18 There is also an element here of comparative, relational imaginative geographies, in that musical genres worked to flag up and symbolise Otherness. As Manuel argues, ‘In a series of exoticizations, Spain served as the “Orient” of Europe, Andalusía as the Orient of greater Spain, and Cuba as the Orient of Andalusía’ (Manuel 2004, 156). In this sense, I disagree with Connell and Gibson’s argument that genres of ‘world music’ illustrate and exemplify deterritorialisation (Connell and Gibson 2004).…”