A Decade of Revolution and Experimentation in Music

Abstract

Abstract This chapter explores how Cuban composers affected and maneuvered dramatic shifts in international artistic networks after the 1959 Revolution and the consequent changes in their aesthetic and compositional preferences. It begins with a discussion of political and economic changes in Cuba in the early years of the Revolution and their impact on the classical music scene. Juan Blanco’s report on a visit to Cuba by Soviet and East German composers and musicologists sheds light on the tensions and conflicts between the Cuban composers and their Eastern European socialist counterparts. In the early years of the Revolution a socialist and revolutionary discourse regarding the arts emerged, one in which innovation, vanguardismo, socialism, and Cubanness gained importance and acquired new meanings. This chapter then shifts to discussing specific developments in the Cuban classical music scene via several defining moments: the 1962 Latin American Music Festival, the 1964 concerts of experimental and electronic music at the UNEAC, and the OSN’s October 1969 concert of orchestral experimental works. The chapter concludes with a discussion of the mixed opinions on avant-garde and experimental music among Cuban composers at the close of the decade—citing a book by José Ardévol and a pair of essays by Leo Brouwer—setting the stage for the following chapter on the institutionalization and centralization of culture and the arts in Cuba in the 1970s.