Chapter 8

Musical Cartographies: Los Ritmos de losBarrios de la Habana

John Finn and Chris Lukinbeal

Approached from the outside, Cuba's shared history and culture unifies the islandand gives itits Cubania, or Cubanness. In the twenty-first century Cubqn descibesa people, a language, a culture, an identity. Approached from within Havana'sneighborhoods, though, the view is quite different. As the scale of inquiry shiftsto the city blocks, sites, sounds and smells rise to prominence and grand culturalgeneralizations seem irrelevant as previously invisible distinctions emerge.In Havana, these distinctions are clearly seen, heard, and felt in the rhythms ofthe neighborhoods. Musical definitions of Havana are at their richest and mostpersonal at the neighborhood scale where shared cultural histories create uniquesoundscapes. At this scale the streets have rhythm as bodies, instruments, cars andbuildings provide the structures that carry the beat.

Geographers have long used mapping as a tool to reveal the geographical natureof music. This is most clearly seen in work on the diffusion of styles (Jackson 1952),the locations of music-related phenomena, such a associations, competitions, andactual musicians (Crowley 1987), and geographic attributes of hierarchies ofstyles and sub-styles (Burman-Hall 1975). These and many other studies in musicgeography have built a strong base from which current research moves forward.Indeed. it is because of these foundational works that music is now considered animportant realm of geographical study. This has meant an impressive increase inacademic literature in the area, including multiple sub-disciplinary reviews (e.g.Kong 1995; Smith 1997; Hudson 2006), various special issues (?ansactions ofthe Institute of Brilish Geographers 1995; Social & Cultural Geography 2005;GeoJoumal2006), and multiple volumes dedicated to the geographical analysis ofmusic (Stokes 1997; Leyshon et al. 1998; Perrone and Dunn 2002).

Rather than jettisoning traditional approaches to music geography, the purposeof this chapter is to reinvigorate it by exploring the neighborhoods of Havanathrough music's metaphoric relation to maps and tours. The map and the tourare two distinct approaches to spatial narration (de Certeau 1988). De Certeau's( I988) two modes of spatial narratives draws from the linguistic research of Lindeand Labov (1975) which presents ways that people understand and describe theirsurroundings. The map is seeing from above, the tour is moving within. Throughrnapping, space is presented in an objective manner, whereas the tour incorporatessubjective matter. To Linde and Labov (1975), the map presents familiar areasrrarrated from above, representing location through an abstract model that relieson the god-eye trick (Haraway 1996). The god-eye trick refers to the orthographic

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view of the world presented through cartographic representation where the vieweris situated everywhere and nowhere at the same time. For instance, a New YorkCity resident in Linde and Labov's (1975,929) study described his living space as"a huge square with two lines drawn through the center to make like four smallersquares ... In the two boxes facing out in the street you have the living room anda bedroom ..." This and other maps model reality in an abstract geometric form.Mapping requires objective description and the belief in mimesis; the tour requiresmovement through space, where subjectivity, experience, emotions, knowledge,and valuation of the traveler plays a central role. The "map," along with descriptivefieldwork, typifies traditional cultural geography tools to approach music. Incontrast, the "tour" incorporates the performative, affective role of music in place-making.

In what follows we show how the map remains a powerful tool in the analysisof regional music geographies. We then turn our attention to the tour to show howit can reveal the performative and experiential aspects of music in place-making.Finally, we apply these two spatial narrative practices to a musical cartographyof Havana in an effort to show that together, the map and the tour can take usbeyond the primacy of the visual in studying phenomena that are first and foremostauditory.

Musical cartographies

The idea of applying a cartographic metaphor to music may seem problematic inthat the former is predominately a visual representation and the later is an auditory-artistic expression. However, we draw our inspiration for such a comparison fromthe recent book, Cartographic Cinema, by Tom Conley (2007) who suggests thatcartography can provide a new way of seeing and understanding cinema. We doso because cinema is an audio-visual representation and artistic expression. Whilecartography and music/cinema are representational practices that are quite foreignto one another, they are nonetheless, all involved with "locational imaging" (Conley2007; Buisseret 2003). Locational imaging refers to the representational practicesof situating the viewing subject within the places that they represent. This practice ismediated by the production, style, and aesthetics ofauthorship and the perception,cognition, and affect on reception. While cartography relies on vision and cinemablends sight and sound, music is primarily auditory. In narrative cinema, music'srole is to animate place and provide an emotional context for how places shouldbe experienced. It could be argued that music is involved with locational imagingin that it requires authorship and reception as well as provides information aboutplace. But, without the reliance on the visual, the metaphoric relationship betweenmaps and music seemingly breaks down. This is because maps seek to de-animatespace through the god-eye trick, to remove identity, subjectivity, and narrative fromits representation to create an objectified object. Yet sensory perception cannot beobjectified or wholly removed from cinema and music because they are practices

Musical Cartographies

that require embodied participation. A musical cartography must engage both realand mental maps of sites, memories, experiences, preferences, observations, facts,fictions, feelings, and emotions. Furthermore, musical cartographies must alsoblend active performances with static representations.

While it is often the performative, experiential qualities of music that firstcome to mind, music is most often modeled through musical notation. Notation isthe musician's road map to any piece of music. This notation is literally a modelof the reality that a song will become in performance. Thus like road maps,musical notation can be followed strictly: in the same way that a city bus movesthrough space and time on a particular route and schedule, a symphony performsMahler's Symphony No. 5 with tempos and dynamics prescribed in a differentspace and time. But while musical notation provides the musician's route, thisnotation is only-and can only be-the mathematics of the music. In supposingto be objective models of reality, maps and musical notation both occlude theprocesses that gave rise to their respective existences. Maps seemingly displayobjective spatial information, such as absolute locations, distances measuredalong lines, or the extent of polygons, so much that the process of informationselection, compilation, and manipulation is rendered invisible. Ingold (1993,154-5) articulates the way experience is lost through mapping by describing asurveyor who:

experiences the landscape much as does everyone else whose business oflife lies there ... The distance between two places, A and B, is experiencedas a joumey made, a bodily movement from one place to the other, and thegradually changing vistas along the route. The surveyor's job, howeveq is totake instrumental measurements from a considerable number of places, and tocombine these data to produce a single picture which is independent of any pointof observing Ioriginal emphasis].

According to de Certeau (1988), maps colonize space, thus removing theperformative aspects of a tour. We add that in music, the relationship is much thesame: the musical notation that represents the final absolute version of a song islargely divorced from the creative and performative processes that went into itscomposition, or that will go into its future performances.

The occlusion ofthe productive process, however, has different connotationslirr musical notation and mapping. On one hand, the cartographer is condemned tonnonymity by projecting both power and agency onto the map and map user. Onthe other hand, musical notation can immortalize a composer through performancecapturing her works for future generations. In occluding the producer of the map/ruusical notation, these practices not only delineate the terrain of analysis, buttlso simultaneously limit engagement with that terrain. Both the map and musicalrrotation are forced to conform to their own standards of practice and mathematics,independent ofthe object that they are designed to model.

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130 Sound, Society and the Geography ofPopular Music

Understanding music strictly through notation, the actual performance of themusic-the act of hearing and listening to organized sound-becomes secondaryto the musical text. S.J. Smith (2000,618) observes that musical perfonnancesare often attempts "to realize the written text exactly as the composer intended itto sound. The authenticity of the performance is thus judged by the accuracy withwhich the written notes, and the markings that go with them, are conveyed." Byfocusing specifically on music-related texts (most obviously, the musical notation,but also song lyrics and other textual aspects of music), analysis of musicalperformance and its effects on those who hear it are completely lost. Adorno(1993) suggested that unlike language, music is interpreted in its performance. ToB.R. Smith ( I 999, I l2), this meant that music is what is heard, "not what is printedon the page." This idea is perhaps most clearly presented in Grossberg's (1984)ruminations on rock and roll where he decouples textual and semantic analysis ofsongs and the affective results on listens. To him, the effect of both recorded andlive rock and roll cannot be measured through text: "lt is not that rock and rolldoes not produce and manipulate meaning but rather that meaning itself functionsin rock and roll affectively, that is, to produce and organize desires and pleasures"(Grossberg 1984,233). In geographical analysis of music, what the music doesshould be at least as important as what the musical text says.

Seeking to "map" music limits it to textual analysis and descriptive geography.ln doing so, the creative, performative, and interaction aspects of music aresecondary to hermeneutics or description. Mapping forces the terrain of musicto be a material or a non-material cultural product which can be modeled in anabstract Cartesian space. Based on this traditional approach to music geography,a map of Havana's musical geographies would only reveal cultural and socialpractices that have an absolute location (see Figure 8. I ). For example, the locationof the EGREM recording studios where the Buena Wsta Social Club recordedtheir 1996 Grammy-award winning tribute to traditional Cuban music, and alsowhere North American greats such as Nat King Cole made historic recordings inthe 1940s-1950s, represents one node in a musical topologic network embeddedin Havana. The birthplaces of legendary Cuban musicians such as Beny Mord,Compay Segundo, and Chucho Valdds, and the sites of their musical performanceswould provide further point data. Whereas a musical cartography of New YorkCity would be incomplete without the Birdland and Carnegie Hall, the locationsof the Tbatro Amadeo Rolddn,the Gran Teatro, andthe Jazz Cafe are fundamentalto Havana's musical map. The site of the Sunday morning rumba by the ConjuntoFolkl6rico Nacional, and the famous Callej6n de Hamel (see Figure 8.2) areessential to the accurate representation of Havana's vibrant Afro-Cuban scene.Even the diffusion of the African influence in traditional Cuban style danz6ncould be depicted with a qualitative flow map. African and French influence inHaiti eventually impacted eastern Cuba during the slave rebellion at the end ofthe eighteenth century before diffirsing across the island, adapting a Cuban feel,and becoming Cuba's national music by the early twentieth century. In short, thereis an unlimited amount of spatial data to draw from to map Havana's musical

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Figure 8.2 Rumba dancers at Callejdn de Hamel, Centro Habana@ Megan Resch

geographies. It would, however, require that a cartographer sift through the data todetermine how classification and generalizations should be made.

The cartographic metaphor does have its limits when applied to music. S.J.Smith's (1997,504) critique on writing about music seems most appropriate:

Writing about music is like dancing about architecture, listening to a ballet orfeeling the texture of a painting - it might be helpful, but it is not the best,most direct or most appropriate way of illustrating the power of the art ... Musicconveys meaning through rhyhm, melody and harmony ... Music has to beheard to be understood.

Since music is first and foremost aural, writing about music, or mapping music.appears to appropriate one sensory representation with another. That being said,years of tradition in cultural geography and landscape studies have privilegedvisuality over other sensory ways of knowing, greatly diminishing the effect ofthe non-visual. To S.J. Smith (1997,503), this should not come as a shock in adiscipline that is a "quintessentially visual enterprise, traditionally using [visual]observation as the route to knowledge, and regarding sight as the measure of truth."The axiom of needing to see in order to believe is a clear product of the privilegedposition of visuality. A map of music's visual attributes cannot capture rhythm,melody, and harmony-the specific mediums of communication that conveysmeaning in music. For that we turn to the tour.

Musical Cartographies

The tour

While geographers frequently model space in cartographic form, when promptedto describe their living spaces, only three percent of participants in Linde andLabov's (1975) aforementioned study used this approach. The other 97 percent ofparticipants sought to produce a virtual "tour," oftheir living space:

A tour is a speech act which provides a minimal set of paths by which each roomcould be entered... The imaginary tour does not always take the listener intoeach room. In [one example] the listener walks in the front door and is in thehallway. He comes to the first door, but he doesn't enter it. He passes the kitchenand the bathroom, sees how to enter them but does not do so, and finishes in theliving room ... The task of the speaker, then, is to traverse for this imaginaryvisitor the spatial network formed by these vectors and rooms (Linde and Labov197 5, 930, original emphasis).

The tour actively seeks to provide the visitor (i.e. the reader) with the experienceof being in the particular place, of walking through, peering into rooms andnegotiating hallways and tight spaces.

De Certeau (1988, ll9, original emphasis) asserted that in spatial narratives,"description oscillates between the terms of an alternative: either seeing ... orgoing." This is also true in music as musicians oscillate between reading andimprovising, seeing and going, the map and the tour. Indeed, not all music can beconceived through musical notation. Jazz,for instance, is a form based largely onimprovisation. While the basic melody may (or many times may not) be scribbledon a sheet ofpaper, the song is largely created through performance. That is thernagic of improvization in live music-it is invented on the spot and experienceddifTerently by every single person present at its creation. Miles Davis provided hisnrusicians with only "sketches" (Davis and Jones 1990,234) of musical notationwhen recording the classic album Kind of Blue (Davis 1997 [959]). The musicthat was recorded was largely the product of the tour, as Davis, John Coltrane, Billlivans, and others moved through sound, improvisationally experimenting withcolors and rhythms, peering down sonic hallways, and guiding the listener throughtlrcir musical subjectivities.

According to de Certeau (1988), the tour is walking, doing, and moving; it islirlly experiencing the performance of the musicalized space. Where the map is thercpresentation ofthe finished product ofa cartographer/composer, the tour is thecorporeal experience ofa place. Knowledge and experience ofa place drives theruhjective experience just as much as the affective nature of the interaction withrrrrrsic in place.

ln the next section, we oscillate between objective mappable descriptions andl subjective tour of Havana's neighborhoods. To do so, we draw from John Finn's

;a-rsonal experiences, mental map and knowledge of the cultural geography oflluvana. We invite vou to stroll with us down the sheets of rhythm.

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134 Sound, Socieqt and the Geography ofPopular Music

Figure 8.3 Colonial Spanish architecture, Centro Hubuna@ Megan Resch

A guided map and tour of Havana

This section of the chapter-the "walk" through Havana-is based on more thana year that I lived in that city. The directions that I give do not come from a singlejoumey made, but rather are my collective movements as I lived, worked, andmost importantly, played music, during my tenure there. It is important to state,however, that while the meaning I convey here comes from my own impressionsand are thus subject to my personal interpretations, the cardinal directions, streets,place names, and other features that I detail in the landscape are all real.

My first apartment in Havana was near the comer of Calle Belascoain andCalle Virtudes, in the crumbling neighborhood of Centro Habana. The streets ofthis inner-city neighborhood are lined with once elegant Spanish row houses thatwere, in a different era, the focal point of the Cuban bourgeoisie (see Figure 8.3).Now it is among the most overcrowded and decrepit sections of the city. Multiplefamilies subdivide these former Spanish mansions, and often a single room iscut both horizontally and vertically (a false ceiling creates a second floor withinthe single room) and houses an entire family. In my first week there, one of thecenturies-old mansions gave way to years of abuse, overpopulation and under-reparation, leaving a pile of debris some four meters tall, ten meters wide and 40meters deep wedged between two buildings awaiting a similar fate.

While structures seem to collapse and disintegrate all around, a more vibrantplace in the city is hard to find. This ransacked neighborhood is the heart of the

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F-igure 8.4 Claves in the rumba, Callejdn de Hamel, Centro Habana

Afro-Cuban community. Going west from my apartment and left at the first light,past the remains of the collapsed building-still there six months later-andpast the warehouse on the corner that has become permanent temporary homelirr hundreds of displaced people (still there six years later), is Calle Neptuno,the main drag through the neighborhood. When walking this street, it only takesnroments to see a young person dressed completely in white as part of the initiationto Santeria, or a priest of the religion draped in colorful beads, each combinationtrl'colors representing a different sanlo, black and red for Eleggua, blue andrrhite for Yemaya, white and red for Chango. And at night this neighborhood isovertaken by Afro-Cuban celebrations, often in honor of specific saints on theirsirint-day. Invariably, there are drums. The clave. or the "key," whose simple three-lwo or two-three pattern is the rhythmic basis for all Afro-Cuban music, guidestlre ensemble as the high-pitched, metallic pulse of the guataca, usually madeliom a hoe blade, drives the music forward. The complex rhythms of the woodenr cj6n-literally a box that the percussionist sits upon while playing between hislcgs-weave through a musical time that is not quite square enough to be a duplelrcat. yet not rounded enough to be a triple feel (see Figure 8.4). The chekerd, alrollowed gourd strung with beads and played as a shaker completes the ensemblers the pulsating rhythms, canlos of singing participants, and footsteps of thetllncing mass of bodies flood from interior rooms and courtyards, through open

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136 Sound, Society and the Geography ofPopular Music

Figure 8.5 La Habana Weja,a UNESCO World Heritage Site@ Megan Resch

windows and doors, into the street. Living here for so many months gave me anew understanding of what S.J. Smith (2000, 6l 6) refers to as the contested placeof music "between the myth of silence and the threat of noise," as the soundtrackof this barrio always seemed to organize itself to reflect the musical and rhythmichearth of the Afro-Cuban.

Goingeasttoward the HavanaBay, Calle Neptuno eventually leads to La HabanaWeja (Old Havana), the original site of the Spanish city created almost 500 yearsago. As Centro Habana fades into Old Havana, the rhythms of the streets changeaccordingly. The architecture and style of the buildings are even older than CentrcHabana, and Old Havana feels like an entirely different world. This historical partof the city, a UNESCO World Heritage Site, has been the recipient of millions ofdollars of investment for its restoration (see Figure 8.5). As buildings are markedfor renovation, residents are moved out (they are told it is temporary) and thcconstruction crews move in. These ancient structures are gutted and restored totheir former grandeur. But more common than the retum of residents has beenthe arrival of hundreds of thousands of tourists annually. Colonial mansions thatformerly housed multiple families become hotels and restaurants and galleriesto accommodate the newer breed of Old Havana residents-{anadians, Italians,Germans, and the occasional brave American.

As in Centro Hobana, music is everywhere. But with its newly restoredarchitecture and its quickly changing demographic, a very different sound flowlthrough the streets of Old Havana. The new sound of Old Havana was defined

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Musical Cartographies

Figure 8.6 Malecdn

by the 1996 release of the Buena Wsta Social Club, an album (falsely) identifiedas belonging to Ry Cooder, and hugely popular throughout the United States and[:urope. This music, the traditional Cuban sorz, is rooted in the songs of Europeantroubadours infused with the percussion and rhyhm of Cuba's African heritage.After reaching its height of national popularity in the I 940s and 1950s, this soundlargely faded out of the popular Cuban conscience. But today, moving through thercstaurants, lounges, and open-air cafes of Old Havana's Calle Obispo, or BishopStreet, the sound is distinctively son. This avenue, now open only to pedestriantraffic, was where the neighborhood's restoration started, and has become a must-sce on every tourist's itinerary. Here old Cuban men in short-sleeve guayaberaslrirts and smoking Cuban cigars form the quartets and quintets that fit the mojito-sipping tourist's pre-conceived notion of what an authentic Cuban neighborhoodshould look like, and what real Cuban music should sound like. The sound of Oldllavana is traditional Cuban culture commodified and made new, packaged for theinternational visitors whose dollars are the lifeblood of this quarter.

Old Havana's Bishop Street ends where one of the city's most famouslirndmarks, the Malec6n, begins (see Figure 8.6). From here running westward,this eight-kilometer seawall protects the city from the high tides of the Straights oflilorida and is the northern boundary of Old Havana and Centro Habanq. Lookingdue north from here it feels as though the lights of Miami, and the underlyingcapitalism dominated by a very different cubania, are just out of sight. After aboutthree kilometers the malec6n passes directly in front of the famed US InterestScction, the focal point of US-Cuban antagonism on the island, and eventually

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Figure 8.7 Young Cuban singers performing with the popula.r timbagroup NG La Banda @ Megan Resch

leadstothe Almendares River. Here, two bridges span the river and two tunnels passunderneath. Passing through either ofthe tunnels, roads that previously paralleledthe coast start moving slightly inland and uphill as they continue west. They leadfirst through Miramar, the embassy zone of the city, and finally into Marianao,one of the city's largest residential neighborhoods-and a neighborhood too out ofthe way for most tourist traffic.

For almost a year I made this joumey to Marianao, deep in the heart ofHavana, to the home of my percussion teacher, Eliel Lazo. During these bi-weeklypilgrimages I was often stopped for quick conversations with curious local residents(my blond hair, blue eyes and funny accent kept me from being mistaken for aCuban). They wanted to know why I had strayed from the beaten tourist path (thatis, between the beach and Old Havana). When I told them I studied percussion inthis neighborhood, they immediately understood why I made the relatively longjoumey by crowded bus twice a week. Marianao is to popular Cuban music whatHarlem was to bebop in the 1950s and '60s. ln Centro Habana, Bembd and otherforms ofAfro-Cuban music seep from the crumbling structures, and in Old Havanathe traditional son saturates the air. But in Mariano, a new style-timba-is thesound of the barrio (see Figure 8.7). This song-style incorporates instrumentsfrom North America--{rums, electric guitars, and synthesizers-to the Cubanline-up of congas, timbales, horns, piano, and other percussion. Its velocity andferociry complex rhythms and syncopation, and its sensual, if not blatantly sexualcontent are especially appealing to a new generation ofCubans that have come ofage in a post-Soviet Cuba, and create a sound representative ofthe economic andpolitical hardships of the posrl990 Special Period. The sound of timba and thesocial conditions of the contemporary Cuban youth converge in Marianao. Thissound emerges from houses and apartments where groups are rehearsing. It blasts

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Figure 8.8 The Vedada neighborhood in Havana @ Megan Resch

liom the pieced+ogether stereo systems in '57 Chevies and'77 Ladas alike. Thisis the new Cuban sound, it is the lived experience of a new generation manifestedthrough music, and its home is not only in the streets and houses and dancehalls ofMarianao, but performed throughout the neighborhood by its residents.

Leaving Marianao and travelling back in the general direction of Old Havanaand Centro Habana, this time crossing the 23rd Street bridge, buses, sharedtaxis, and the occasional private car move in unison toward downtown Havana,the most international and cosmopolitan sector of the city (see Figure 8.8). Byday this area, known as Vedado to local residents, defies easy categorization. Inaddition to a large residential sector, the neighborhood is made up of urban high-rises, hotels, national and international businesses, banks, shopping centers, therrational university, and countless government installations. Developed morerccently than many other parts of the city, wider streets allow for heavier trafficlnd ample sidewalks provide abundant space for the multitude of pedestriansrregotiating their way through the city. The intemational feel that downtownllavana possesses is a result of much more than tourism: if Old Havana isinternational in the sense of foreigners in Hawaiian shirts and tropical drinkstrrking rides in horse-drawn buggies, Vedado is international in the sense oflirreign businessmen and diplomats in dark suits penetrating the city in oversizedblack sedans with tinted windows and foreign flags on the antennas. While thelcst of the country may lag behind, this neighborhood is Cuba in the twenty-firstecntury. This place is Cuba after the fall of the Soviet Union, flexing whateverrrrtcrnational muscle it can muster.

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Figure 8.9 Pianist Robert Fonseca performing with Omar Gonzalez(bass), Javier Zalba (sax), and Rams6s Rodriguez (drums) inLa Zorra el Cuervo during the 2008 Havana International JazzFestival O Megan Resch

For everything that sets downtown Havana apart fiom the rest of the city, thisneighborhood, like every other, has a sound. On the comer of 23rd Street and O,the center point of Vedado, there is what seems to be a bright red British phonebooth on the street comer. Upon entering. instead of a phone, a stairwell descendsinto a tiny basement club and restaurant-Havana's hottest spot for Cuban andintemational j azz.This club, La Zorrct 1, el Cuervo,ls downtown Havana by night.a musical microcosm of the emerging internationalism visible on the streets duringthe day. This club is closer to New York City than anything else on the island,and the sounds are not those of Cubans performing a commodity for mass touristconsumption. Rather, the sound is of Cubans performing as a part of a globalmusic scene. on stage with their international counterparts in open jam sessionsthat can last well into the morning (see Figure 8.9). This is where, during theHavana International Jazz Festival (locally refened to as JazzPlaza\, intemationaland North American jazz icons perform on stage with Cuban expatriate musiciansand any number of local Havana jazzers. The downtown Havana jazz scene, asplayed out in Za Zorra y el Cuervo, is the idealization of the neighborhood byday. This scene, revolving around a specific sound in Cuban jazz, has resolved thepolit ical problems that have plagued US Cuba relations fbr almost f ive decades.It is a scene that has gotten past socio-economic dif l-erences, which, upon exitingthe club, are omnipresent in the glaring disparity on the street. It is a scene that

Musical Cartographies

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r42 Sound, Society and the Geography of Popular Music

Figure 8.ll Santero in Centro Habana O Megan Resch

celebrates its Afro heritage instead of being mired in the racial problematic thatcontinues to affiict the rest of the countrv. and indeed the entire world.

Conclusion

For more than 500 years Cuba has been the site of cultural integration. Religioussyncretism has led to the practice of Santeria, in which African gods take the namesand physicalforms of Catholic saints (see Figures 8.10,8.11). Linguistic mixinghas created a distinct Cuban dialect that infuses African words into the dominantSpanish vocabulary. The rhythms and melodies of diverseAfrican cultures. rangingfrom present-day Senegal to the Congo River Basin, have fused with Iberiansounds and song-styles, and more recently, tremendous cultural influence from thenorth. The result of this cultural miscegenation is an island whose music, togetherwith Brazilian and American popular music, "has had the greatest influence onpopular music throughout the world" (Uribe 1993, I I ). Accordingly, geographicalapproaches to music can only do justice to the actual music itself if they take intoaccount not only analysis of visual and textual attributes of sound, but also theaffective reality of its creation and performance.

Thus treating music "as something else to be.seer diffirsing in space, tricklingdown hierarchies, attached to the landscape" (S.J. Smith 1997, 504, original emphasis)is only one part of understanding the geographies of musicalized space. ln Centnt

Musical Cartographies

Habana,therhythm ofthe street-the drums andvoices, the movement of feet acrossconcrete slab floors, the almost nightly Afro-cuban celebrations and the partyingthat goes along with them-are all essential elements to the (re)production of thisplace. Music is equally important to place-making as the non-musical elements ofovercrowded conditions and crumbling homes and buildings. In old Havana-whileso physically close to centrc Habana that the line between neighborhoods changesdepending on whom you ask-the music, the actual sound emerging from buildings,homes, restaurants, and hotels, draws a clearer line of distinction than any mappedboundary. Son is central in demarcating the neighborhood, and its importance intransforming this space into a place of tourism would be hard to overstate. In oldHavana it is also this sound and style that employs so many local musicians, forcingthem to retrace the musical traditions of their parents and grandparents. Movingwest, crossing much of the city, and deep into the heart of Marianao, sound andmusic once again cannot be separated from the character of the banio. Here timbais the musicalized lived experience of a generation of cubans in a post-Soviet era.Finally, it was not through coincidence or simple convenience that this'valk" endedat a tiny basement music club in Vedado. More than anywhere else in the city, it ishere that sound transforms space into place. Sound breaks through politics, bendsperceptions ofinternational affairs and geopolitics, and moves past racial and socialproblems. This power of sound is cenhal to understanding the subjectivities ofperformance, the actual sound of a place.

Oscillating between the concepts in spatial narration of "map" and "tour"enables us to use foundational concepts and approaches in music geography incombination with the performative and affective attributes of actual sound so oftenleft out of academic view. Putting the map and tour in dialectical tension is oneway to approach a musical cartography that goes beyond music's visual attributes.Through simultaneously seeing and goingwe start to feel /os ritmos de los baniosde la Habana.

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