By Berta Jottar

Rumba is an Afro-Cuban music and dance form that emerged from the encounter of various West African peoples with Europeans and those of African descent from Spain. By the turn of the 20th century, it was the predominant cultural manifestation within Cuba's regional ports of Havana and Matanzas. Since the late 1950s, New York City has been an epicenter of rumba outside Cuba. For more than six decades, a rumba circle in Central Park has embraced those of African descent from Spanish-speaking islands (Cubans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans) and Latin America (Panamanians, Colombians), local African Americans, AfroLatinxs (Nuyorican, NuyoDominicans, Cuban Americans) and those from other diasporas including American Jews. A focus on Central Park rumba illustrates the intricacies and ancestral functionings of the African Diaspora present in contemporary New York.

Rubén González, better known as *Tao La Onda* dancing rumba against the quinto soloist drummer Jesus “Tito” Sandoval. Central Park rumba at 72nd Street, 2002. Photo by author.

In the Spanish-speaking world, the word rumba means “festive gathering or party.” The Cuban rumba is a highly structured music event where a musical and kinesthetic conversation is organized by the clave, a rhythmic pattern established and sustained by a set of two sticks called claves. Three drummers, dancers, and a chorus interact and synchronize with the gallo [leading singer] who initiates and closes the rumba. Unlike Cuba, Central Park expands the Cuban rumba menu of typical foods and spirits by including Puerto Rican arroz con gandules [rice cooked with pigeon pea seed], pasteles, Cuban tamales and Dominican beverages like Mama Juana; all to delight the participants and curious passersby.

Historically, rumba amalgamated different rhythms brought by African people from the Yoruba, Congo and Carabal regions. Sung in Spanish, the language of the colony, it has been the expressive culture of individuals from underprivileged neighborhoods or portal vicinities in Cuba. The most common rumba forms are the Yambú, the Guaguanco, the Columbia and the Jiribilla, of which the most widely known is the guaguancó, an agile fertility dance where the male dancer introduces the vacunao, a playful pelvic gesture towards the female.[1]

Two distinct rumba periods in Central Park serve to highlight the heterogeneity of rumba’s soundscape: the 1960s rumba circles performed by first generation Nuyoricans and African Americans at Bethesda Fountain, and the 1990s encounter between rumberos of two different Cuban exoduses: the 1980’s marielitos and the 1990’s balseros.[2]

Central Park Rumba at Bethesda Terrace (1960s–1970s)

Bethesda Terrace in Central Park became the location where Nuyoricans, African Americans, Cubans and other Afro-Latinxs gathered to the rhythm of the drum.[3] Paula Ballán has remarked that the park’s central fountain and open plaza resembled Puerto Rico’s Spanish architecture, noting that “the summer weather allowed people to leave their closed, dark apartments to enjoy the park’s openness; people wore their best clothes — newly ironed, just as Puerto Rican dress codes dictated.”[4]

This was an era of Puerto Rican ethnic pride, typified by both the rise of the Young Lords and the Puerto Rican Independence Movement. The regular rumba gathering at Bethesda Terrace was no exception; the fountain scene was also aurally synchronized through personal transistor radios tuned in to the eloquent voice of Felipe Luciano’s Sunday radio show on WRVR, LatinRoots. Luciano’s broadcast in English was an anti-colonial stand, a voice in favor of Puerto Rico’s independence from the United States, an act of conscientization.

Left to right: Akinshélé (Scott Dowling), Howard Levy, Tony Archer with Martin Morton’s hand crafted drum and Mark Sanders. Central Park rumba at 72nd Street, 1974. Photo courtesy Mark Sanders.

Bethesda Terrace also provided a milieu in which the layered performance of Afro-Latinx sound (rumba, salsa, bomba, plena), articulated a visible “Black and proud” identity that challenged the prevalent Puerto Rican discourse that privileged the Spanish roots of Puerto Rican identity. For many influential musicians like Jerry González, the rumba at the Terrace shaped their musical content, form, and taste as a reflection of their personal process of self-awareness. Thus, for a few hours on the weekends, Bethesda Terrace became an autonomous Puerto Rican space where politics and culture were synchronized via the musical performance of rumba and affirmation.

Rumba à la Boricua: Performing a Hybrid Identity

By the late 1970s, Central Park rumba’s core group consisted of Nuyoricans Eddie Bobé, Félix Sanabria, Eddy Rodríguez, Abraham Rodríguez, Alberto Serrano, Yeyito, the African American Kenneth “Skip” Burney, the NuyoDominican Jesús “Tito” Sandoval, and the Jewish-Americans Paula Ballán, Martin Morton and his young musician son Mark Sanders.[5] The above Nuyorican generation claimed their Boricua and African ancestry, transforming rumba into something else. Their everyday bilingual and inter-cultural experience with African American music (blues, bebop, and funk) created a rumba sound unique to them as Nuyoricans, a sound that I call rumba à la boricua: a hybrid cultural manifestation claiming both New York City and African roots.

Nuyoricans have historically made music in the tradition of incorporating different musical forms in one song. Like salsa, rumba à la boricua was primarily based on improvisation and new combinations. Some Nuyorican rumberos would use alternative improvisational styles over traditional rumba rhythms, or they would swap salsa montunos for rumba ones.

Rumba à la boricua also featured language switching. For instance, Abraham Rodríguez sang rumba in Spanglish and English, in a doo-wop swing. Others sang in Spanish but also mixed sacred Yoruba ritual language of Santeria learned from LP recordings. Rumba à la boricua was a way of displaying singers’ cultural and linguistic skills, enriched by their growing knowledge as part of the African diaspora.

The rumba circle became the space to acoustically negotiate this generation’s linguistic and racial heterogeneity as the sound of the drum became the common language across boundaries. Central Park rumba became a practice of Boricua re-Africanization as well. As Eddy Rodríguez explains, “Rumba in the U.S. is to the boricuas what blues is to African Americans. Rumba is the Nuyorican Soul.”

Two Exoduses One Rumba

For Nuyoricans of the 1960s and 1970s, the rumba became a contact zone in the resignification of their identity; and for the Cubans who arrived in the 1980’s and 90’s, the Central Park rumba reverberated with acoustic layers of religious significance.[6]

Two Cuban exoduses reconfigured the style and sound of the Central Park rumba; the Mariel Boatlift of 1980 and the balseros [rafters] escaping the 1990s Special Period of Peace, an era of economic depression, energy shortage, and inflation provoked by Perestroika and the eventual collapse of the Soviet Block.

The Mariel brought to New York City highly recognized carriers of the tradition. Musicians and priests like Orlando “Puntilla” Rios and Alfredo Videaux introduced a more diverse sacred repertoire of religious Bata de Fundamento (consecrated drums) language. Dancers like Xiomara Rodriguez, Roberto Borrel, Kike Chavalonga, and Alberto Morgan introduced the dance technique for the diverse gestures, attitudes and choreographies of the orishas [deities] of the Yoruba Pantheon of the Regla de Ocha [Santeria], the Palo[7] and the Abakuá religions[8]; all gone underground under the atheist Communist regime; or institutionalized as folklore by the Revolutionary project.[9]

Manuel Martínez Olivera *El Llanero.* Central Park rumba at 72nd Street, 2002. Photo by author.

In 1980, Manuel Martinez Olivera, better known as El Llanero [the Lone Ranger], revolutionized the existing rumba sound in Central Park by recementing the relationships between the clave rhythm, the singer, and the improvisational quinto drummer into a more traditional rumba format. Furthermore, he enriched the singing repertoire by introducing the Lucumí language. Tao La Onda also brought an entire new catalogue of rumba compositions and sacred knowledge. Daniel Ponce and Alexis introduced their virtuoso quinto solo drumming. Dance, previously absent in the park, was introduced into the rumba. Kike Chavalonga articulated his deep knowledge of rumba Columbia through acrobatic body gestures. Notably, the marielitos also brought the presence of women to the scene. Merceditas “La Zorra,” an accomplished rumba dancer, negotiated kinesthetically the tricks and seduction of the vacunao to everyone’s delight. The marielitos brought the flare of Havana’s rumba sound and style into the New York City diaspora.

An Acoustic Community

Hugo Torres *vacunao* towards Merceditas “la Zorra” as they dance guaguancó. Quinto soloist drummer Michel Aldama. Central Park rumba at 72nd Street, 2007. Still image from video installation *The Pavlovian Drum* by author.

Fifteen years later, in the summer of 1995, a wave of mostly young balseros joined the Central Park rumba, bringing with them a highly visible articulation of Abakua traditions through their aural and kinesthetic interactions. But, with the distinction that their “secret” status had changed into a public and visible one given their status as “carriers of the tradition” within a new Revolutionary economy promoting cultural tourism.

Like the marielitos, many of the balseros were initiates of the same Abakuá hermetic society, descended from the Efik and Ekpe ethnic groups, which was brought to Cuba in the last decades of Spanish colonialism from an area known today as Calabar.[10] The Abakuá society is an acoustic community bound by the internalization of the sacred sound known as “the cry of Ékue,” considered the voice of God. The Abakuá-consecrated instruments cannot travel; as a result, initiation ceremonies are only possible in Cuba where, for centuries, sound, music, and dance have been constitutive of Abakuá's transmission and articulation of memory and knowledge.

Central Park rumba provided a context for the religious and musical expression of their Abakuá tradition, and facilitated a transgenerational encounter among Abakuá members of the two Cuban emigration waves. As marielitos and balseros continued to socialize in Central Park rumba, Abakuás introduced each other formally, greeted each other with their common cross-hand salute, and explained to each other what temples they belonged to. A few of them spoke to each other in Calabar. Abakuá identity functioned as a public expression of pride in contrast to its previous criminalization in Cuba.

Hugo Torres elevating into an Ireme gesture. Central Park Rumba at 72nd Street, 2017. Photo by author.

Subtle Abakuá interactions also took place within the actual rumba circle. Only initiates realized that the rumba call and response, drumming, and gestures had opened an Abakuá contact zone. When for instance, the balsero dancer Hugo Torres, himself an Abakuá initiate, broke into the rumba’s montuno [the dialogic call-and-response choral section of the rumba], singing “¡Eh, eru miña, eru miña, eru miña Ekue fo!”, a “religious layer” was activated. In response, the Abakuá rumberos replied in unison to Hugo as he began inserting Íreme [spirit] gestures within the rumba circle.[11] His choreography was in conversation with the drummer, who most likely had shifted the rumba rhythm into an Abakuá one.

Hugo Torres gesture drawing Abakua signature. Central Park rumba at 72nd Street, 2017. Photo by author.

In this context, the Central Park rumba became a transnational patio of the absent Abakuá temple where Abakuás, during their performance, attain spiritual bonding, and the sacred sound of Ekue is present only through embodiment.

As in Cuba, the rumba circle in Central Park implies a series of internal secular and religious negotiations; it generates a layered acoustic community rooted in the identitarian practices and spiritual traditions fundamental to the larger African Diaspora. Central Park rumba is a cipher in the understanding of the Diaspora’s layered and heterogeneous presences. Every summer Sunday on a bench in front of the lake by Bow Bridge the rumba continues.

Berta Jottar is a cultural critic and filmmaker specialized in the performance and representation of Afrolatinx expressive cultures. She obtained her PhD in the Department of Performance Studies at TISCH, New York University.

[1] Yvonne Daniel. Rumba: Dance and Social Change in Contemporary Cuba. (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1995).

[2] In 1980, about 125,000 Cuban refugees known as “Marielitos'' reached Florida’s shores. They left the island after the Peruvian embassy crisis when Fidel Castro opened the Mariel port and announced over Cuban radio to the families in the United States that they could pick up their relatives. Fourteen years later, the 1994 balsero crisis took place during the Cuban Special Period of Peace when a state-sponsored public event in the Malecón turned into a massive riot and confrontation with the police and military forces, the so-called Maleconzaso. The next day Fidel announced the opening of the island coasts allowing more than 30,000 rafters to leave.

[3] In the early 1960s, the fountain area had different drum circles, one of the most notable was by already famous Cuban rumberos like Ramón “Mongo” Santamaría, Eugenio “Totíco” Arango, Francisco Aguabella (when in town) and Carlos “Patato” Valdes. According to James “Mingo” Lewis, a diligent Terrace regular, the Cuban crew played a closed tradicional rumba and did not allow anyone to sit in. (Personal communication, 2005).

[4] Paula Ballán was a Folk singer and producer of folk festivals. She grew up in East Harlem, a Jewish neighborhood where Puerto Ricans settled after Operation Bootstrap. Paula Ballan as interviewed by Berta Jottar. “Central Park Rumba: Nuyorican Identity And The Return to African Roots.” CENTRO Journal. Volume 23, Number 1, (Spring 2011): 5-29.

[5] Martin Morton became a well known artisan of hand carved wood drums and shekeres. He and Paula Ballan lived near Central Park and got intrigued by the drum circles effervescence at Bethesa’s Fountain.

[6] Mary Louise Pratt, “Arts of the Contact Zone” from Ways of Reading, 5th edition, ed. David Bartholomae and Anthony Petroksky (New York: Bedford/St. Martin's, 1999)

[7] For the study about the Mariel exodus and its impact in NYC music and Afro Cuban religious scenes see, Berta Jottar Rumba In Exile: Irrational Noise, Zero Tolerance & The Poetics of Resistance in Central Park. New York: New York University, PhD thesis (2005), Lisa Maya Knauer, Translocal and Multicultural Counterpublics: Rumba and La Regla de Ocha in New York and Havana. New York: New York University, Ph.D. thesis (2005), and Benjamin Lapidus, New York and the International Sound of Latin Music 1940-1990. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2021).

[8] For the discussion of Abakuá sociality and acoustic community in Central Park see Berta Jottar “The Acoustic Body: Rumba Guarapachanguera and Abakuá Sociality in the 1990s”. Latin American Music Review/Revista de música Latinoamericana. University of Texas. Volume 30, Number 1, (Spring/Summer, 2009): 1-24.

[9] Ariana Hernandez-Reguant “Cuba’s Alternative Geographies.” Journal of Latin American Anthropology, vol. 10, Issue 2, 275-313. First published: 28 June 2008. Hernandez-Reguant eloquently unpacks Ortiz’s unproblematized theorization of transculturation as she historizices Cuba’s early anthropological thought in relation to the Revolution and its assimilation of Afro Cuban “folklore.”

[10] For the study of the Abakuá brotherhood in Cuba as a social, economic and political force before and after the revolution see Tato Quiñones, Ecorie Abakuá. Cuatro Ensayos Sobre Los Ñáñigos Cubanos (La Habana: Ediciones Unión, 1994), Pérez-Martínez Odalys & Torres-Zayas Ramón. La Sociedad Abakuá y el estigma de la criminalidad. Colección Iré. Ediciones Cubanas ARTex, Ediciones Aurelia, 2011., and David H. Brown, The Light Inside: Abakuá Society Arts and Cuban Cultural History. (Smithsonian Institute, 2003). For a choreographic study of the Ireme see Bárbara Balbuena Gutiérrez, El Íreme Abakuá. Ed. Alfredo López Llera. (La Habana: Editorial Pueblo y Educación, 1996).

[11] In general, Abakuá presence manifests not only with the presence of the living, but also with that of the dead. The Íremes symbolize the spirits of important figures and the founders of the Abakuá society. Their gestures are a form of communication between these ancestors and the living. Eugenio Matibag, “Afro-Cuban Religious Experience: Cultural Reflections in Narrative.” (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1996).

Central Park Soundscapes: The Rumba Cypher