Here is a fantastic article by Alan West-Durán, who explores the inspiration and subject matter of Cuban pianist, violist, and composer Aruán Ortiz’s latest album Créole Renaissance. [Many thanks to Roberto Rodríguez Reyes for sharing this on the Critical.Caribbean.Art platform.] Here are excerpts of this excellent review; visit No Country Magazine for full article, audio samples, and beautiful illustrations by José Gelabert-Navia.

In his most recent album, Créole Renaissance, the Santiago-born Aruán Ortiz (1973) traces the world of the négritude movement of the Francophone Caribbean. In a series of explorations and meditations for solo piano, Ortiz invites us to share a vision of highly original poets and essayists. Founded in the 1930s in Paris, négritude was led by Aimé Césaire (1913-2008) from Martinique, Leopold Sedar Senghor (1906-2001) from Senegal, and Léon Damas (1912-1978) from French Guiana. All three were excellent poets and all three were politicians: Senghor would become the first president of independent Senegal (1960-1980), Césaire the mayor of Fort-de-France for more than fifty years and also a deputy in the National Assembly (of France) for several decades, and Damas was a deputy in the National Assembly for three years. The three, however, are remembered for their literary and cultural contributions more than their political achievements, although the latter are not insignificant.

Négritude was a revaluation of Africa and its cultural, spiritual, and political significance in the Afro-diasporic world, which included the USA (Harlem Renaissance), afrocubanismo (Cuba), and similar movements in Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Haiti had its own movement, indigénisme, which arose as a response to the American military occupation of the island (1915-1934), contributed to interwar anti-colonial sentiments, and had an impact beyond the Second World War. Négritude also influenced Africa, especially in Senegal (and also Cameroon and Congo). The UNIA (Universal Negro Improvement Association and African Communities League), founded and led by Marcus Garvey, did not share all ideas of négritude but was a significant force in this era, especially for its focus on Pan-Africanism and the goal to build Black institutions for social and economic progress. In Europe, from the 1920s onward, there was a renewed interest in African art, along with major studies in anthropology driven by figures such as Franz Boas, Leo Frobenius, Melville Herskovits, Harold Courlander, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Zora Neale Hurston. In Cuba, scholars like Fernando Ortiz, Lydia Cabrera, and Rómulo Lachatañeré conducted valuable research on Afro-Cuban culture, including oral literature, dance, religion, and music.

This history helps us contextualize this album-project by Aruán Ortiz, since nine of the ten compositions directly reference négritude, be it through names like Césaire, René Ménil, or Senghor, magazines or publications (L’Etudiant Noir, Légitime Défense, and Tropiques), or specific texts (such as “The Great Camouflage,” an essay by Suzanne Césaire, Aimé’s wife). One of the most significant aspects of Ortiz’s album is the prominence given to Suzanne Césaire (1915-1966), who was a key figure in négritude as a thinker, editor, poet, and essayist, and who inspired the créolité movement of the eighties in Martinique and influenced Édouard Glissant.

The first track of Créole Renaissance is titled “L’Etudiant Noir” (“The Black Student”), in reference to the magazine of the black students from Martinique, founded by Aimé Césaire, and in which he first published his ideas on négritude, and which also featured poems by Damas and essays by Senghor. The magazine had only two issues in 1935 (in March and May-June), but it was preceded by two literary and journalistic efforts: Revue de Monde Noir, edited by the Martinican sisters Paulette (1896-1985) and Jeanne Nardal (1902-1993), and Légitime Défense (1932), established by the Martinicans René Ménil, Etienne Léro, and Jules Monnerot, who later collaborated with Georges Bataille. [. . .]

Alan West-Durán (Havana, 1953). Poet, essayist, translator and critic. He has published the poetry collections Dar nombres a la lluvia (1994) and El tejido de Asterión (2000). Of literary-cultural criticism he has published Tropics of History: Cuba Imagined (1997) and Cuba A Cultural History (2017). He has been editor-in-chief of African-Caribbeans: A Reference Guide (2003), Latino and Latina Writers (2004) and Cuba: A Reference Guide (2011). He has translated Rosario Ferré, Alejo Carpentier, Luisa Capetillo, Nancy Morejón, and Nelly Richard. He is a professor at Northeastern University (Boston).

For full article, visit https://nocountrymagazine.com/creole-renaissance-by-aruan-ortiz-image-music-history/