Trumpets in the mountains : theater and the politics of national culture in Cuba / Laurie A .Frederik.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Frederik, Laurie A.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Theater--Political aspects--Cuba.

Traveling theater--Cuba.

Rural conditions.

Traveling theater.

Theater--Political aspects.

Cuba--Rural conditions.

National characteristics, Cuban.

Cuba.

Physical Description:

pages cm

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2012.

Summary:

Trumpets in the Mountains is a compelling ethnography about Cuban culture, artistic performance, and the shift in national identity after 1990, when the loss of Soviet subsidies plunged Cuba into a severe economic crisis. The state's response involved opening the economy to foreign capital and tourism, and promoting previously deprecated cultural practices as quintessentially Cuban. Such contradictions of Cuba's revolutionary ideals elicited an official preoccupation with how twenty-first-century Cubanía, or Cubanness, was to be understood by its citizens and creatively interpreted by its artists. The rural campesino was re-envisioned as a key symbol of the future, as the embodiment of socialist humility, cultural pureness, and educated refinement, and potentially the Hombre Novísimo (even newer man) to replace the Hombre Nuevo (new man) of Cuban communist philosophy.

Campesinos inhabit some of the island's most isolated areas, including the mountainous regions in central and eastern Cuba where Laurie A. Frederik conducted research among rural communities and professional theater groups. Analyzing the ongoing dialogue of cultural officials, urban and rural artists, and campesinos, Frederik provides an on-the-ground account of how visions of the nation are developed, manipulated, dramatized, and maintained in public consciousness. She shows that Cubanía is defined, and redefined, in the interactive movement between intellectual, political, and everyday worlds. Book jacket.

Contents:

Prologue : the red blood of Cuban identity

Introduction : more than just scenery

Revolution and revolutionary performance, or what happens when El Negrito, La Mulata, and El Gallego meet El Hombre Nuevo

Artists in the special period, option zero, and the hombre novísimo, or the heroic rescue of Liborio and Elpidio Valdes

Creative process and playmaking in Cumanayagua, or waiting for Atilio on the side of a country road

The inundation of Siguanea and Cuba, or the near drowning and rescue of Cuba's Godot

Cultural crusades and the unsung artists of Guantánamo, or how Don Quixote saves Humble Harriero from the devil

Storytellers and the story-told : voices from the zones of silence, or who wins the wager if the cockfight ends in a draw

Dramatic irony and Janus-faced nationalism, or the triumphant stage return of El Negrito and Mr. Smith.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780822352464

082235246X

9780822352655

0822352656

OCLC:

769916216