First, the study of the clarinet at the “Olga Alonso” Provincial Art School in central Cuba. Then, teaching —a permanent and invariable passion in her life— and from there a long journey between research, theses, students, discoveries… Professor Giselda Hernández Ramírez is the author of the Villa Clara music dictionarypublished by Editorial Capiro (Santa Clara, 2004) and the invaluable text (unknown to the vast majority): Pre-Hispanic Archaeomusicology of Cubaco-authored with the archaeologist Gerardo Izquierdo Díaz.
“I studied clarinet but I graduated from the elementary level and due to certain situations I did not continue with the intermediate level, but I began to study to teach History of Music. In this sense, Isabel Díaz de la Torre, an entire institution, and music theory teacher Nancy Romeu (from the Romeu family) helped me a lot. So I was leaning towards music education, towards teaching the history of music”, she recalls, making the following clear:
“I always liked teaching and it is true that society builds certain archetypes and one of them is that, in this context of artistic education, people who are dedicated to teaching: either they are mediocre or they could not successfully complete a career in art. art. However, for musicians and music to exist, there must be teachers who teach, and there are those who combine all that. The art world is very competitive and is not exempt from these social archetypes”.
hunger for knowledge
“I started teaching in a complicated period, back in the 90s, and the direct contact with my students, the musicians and their families led me to form the Dictionary… He was hungry for knowledge and needed to recognize these human beings, to know the history of that geocultural region. It is a learning story and I am very grateful to life for being able to touch many sensitivities”, confesses the Professor of Anthropology at the Higher Institute of Art of Cuba.
The Dictionary of Villa Clara music —a permanent construction site—facilitates quick and effective retrieval of all the information the reader wants. At the end, the explanatory notes that it was decided to include throughout the work, relevant sources as well as the periodical publications that were reviewed in search of information are settled.
In 1998 and with the help of archaeologist Gerardo Izquierdo, Professor Giselda Hernández began the study of aboriginal musical instruments from an anthropological perspective, an unknown part of our history. For this, and for a long period of time, she entered the world of archaeology, she participated in excavations until she repositioned the human being who played the instrument. So far there are no references of a similar work.
“Calling them ‘musical instruments’ —he clarifies— is an asymmetry from the cultural point of view. We don’t have original groups, so we don’t know what they called the flute or any other instrument. These instruments had been described by archaeologists, but the weaving of the musical instrument with the human being who used it was done by me. I was lucky to have Gerardo Izquierdo with me, my organology teacher Lino Neira Betancourt, and in Spain María Isabel Moreno Montoro, José Luis Anta, among others”, he highlights.
A stage about which little or nothing is known
Pre-Hispanic Archaeomusicology of Cuba it is based, say its authors, on the ignorance that a large part of current Cuban society has about these ancient societies. Some elements are also analyzed, such as: the continuity of the historical process, where the lack of cohesion between archaeological research and the knowledge taught in the classroom has been absent, legitimized by study plans where a Eurocentric vision still predominates.
Most Cubans today are unaware of many elements of these ancestral societies, however, there are stories by chroniclers such as Bartolomé de las Casas or Álvar Núñez Cabeza de Vaca, who describe practices and even musical instruments that surely had a material function rather than an aesthetic one. for they appear between the utensils of the cult and the means of magic. These communities built various instruments of wood, shell and animal bones.
Why is there still in Cuba an abysmal historical vacuum about that fundamental stage of history?
—The colonizers built a correlation from power where, first of all, they questioned whether the people who lived here were human beings or not. The construction of the other as a “savage”, as an “animal” that must be tamed. Power relations accompanied by domination of the land, of course.
These societies were not exterminated in one fell swoop, however they were excluded from written literature, which is another type of power. Why was this construction of the negative other made? Because it was the only way the settlers had to get hold of the land. Unfortunately, the correlation survives that these aboriginal communities disappeared due to diseases, etc.
Another element to take into account: there is a very large disconnection between archaeological and historical research and what is transmitted in teaching. Since all this is “parceled” it happens that, for example, in Music History classes it is said that the aborigines played the mayohuacán, the botuto or danced the areíto, up to that point. It is a reduction of that culture, of that superstructure where there were constructive practices that were linked to matrix myths. In those societies the concept of culture did not exist, there were no differences between the cultural and the natural, everything was woven…
These are some of the causes of this profound ignorance: reductionism, having silenced other research that was done on the subject, not making it known, the disconnection between research, results and teaching.
