Origins of Cuban Music and Dance: Changui [Hardcover]

Lapidus synthesizes his ethnographic and historical research to present an indispensable text on one of Cuba’s and the Caribbean’s least documented and studied musical and dance genres. The author argues for an ethnographically-based alternative to the standard evolutionary construction of the Cuban son’s historical development by showing that changüí, nengón, and kiribá—the son’s perceived “antecedents”—are not only distinct in their performative dimensions, but they also continue to contribute in their own idiosyncratic ways to the local and contemporary soundscape of Guantanamo. Herein lies Lapidus’s major scholarly contribution to the kind of popular music studies that eschews a linear evolutionary framework of music history and instead focuses on the meanings generated where memory, history, performance, and the local, national, and transnational intersect. (David F. García )

In this ground-breaking study of changüí, Ben Lapidus sheds light on a lesser-known but important genre of Cuban music, providing detailed analysis of its musical form while at the same time situating it in the broader context of eastern Cuba's unique history and music culture. (Peter Manuel )

This book is a study of changui, a particular style of music and dance in Guantanamo, Cuba, and the roots of son, the style of music that contributed to the development of salsa, in Eastern Cuba. The book also highlights the connections between Afro-Haitian music and Cuban popular music through changui.

Benjamin Lapidus is assistant professor of music at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, CUNY. He has published in Ethnomusicology, Latin Beat Magazine, and the Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies.