"The rise of the Afro-Cuban musical genre commonly known as son is representative
of Cuban society’s ability to affirm through art its primary cultural influences: Europe and Africa. Despite the successful transculturation within the music, however, the events surrounding the creation and acceptance of son reiterate the struggle between Cuban elites and the masses to define lo cubano. In this essay, I will show how the social and political conditions under which son became a representation of popular culture in Cuba served as a catalyst for the affirmation
of Cuba’s African roots, despite attempts on the part of the elite to exclude Afro-Cubans from establishing any connection to Cuban national identity." --The Author
"Calypso in its modern incarnation (from roughly the turn of the century onward, that is) has always been commercially-oriented, always creole and cosmopolitan, always "compromised," shaping and re-shaping itself according to bourgeois imperatives and market forces; this is in great measure what made it "modern" (see, esp., Cowley). ... And as for the U.S. market, calypso had been cultivating it since the first luxury-liners put into port in Trinidad in the early 'teens. ... So if, by the end of World War II, calypsonians had figuratively speaking bought the bungalow (as West Indians did quite literally two decades later, when they snapped up not only the row houses of Flatbush and Crown Heights, but also the cottages of western Long Island), then buying into a dodgy proposition like "world music" amounted to just one more mortgage payment." --The Author
