Afro Cuban Musical Keys in Mexico. Between Musicians and Musicologists, 1920-1950

Abstract

In this article I analyze, with cultural history tools, the ideas of Cuban and Mexican musicologists who examine the keys about African legacy on musical practices and adaptations, of danzón and mambo. In these writings we appreciate how each of these genres adjusted to the supply and demand local circumstances of the Mexican urban spectacle sphere. We look on the musical thought history to understand a more complex social phenomena, related to the central concepts of this essay: African legacy, transnational circulation, and cultural adaptation. Life histories of Cuban musicians, Consejo Valiente Roberts “Acerina†and Dámaso Pérez Prado, give us important elements to associate the cultural circulation phenomena to migration.