A Sea of Sound, Water, and Time: A Greater Caribbean Musical Web

Abstract The opacity of a national gaze that prevails in marketing Caribbean music tends to obscure origins and musical performances, even when that gaze is defied by musicians. This essay contributes to the literature networks of a meta-Caribbean musical maze that complicate national boundaries. Musicologists have documented how various styles arose as a combination of inter-Caribbean diffusion resulting from inter-island migrations and developments from common roots. They became defined as “national” as local musicians infused similar rhythms with a different “feel,” tempos, and local melodies. Styles considered national such as bomba, merengue, danzón, bélé, and cumbia, among others, often obviate common roots: the rhythmic arsenal behind these forms. The challenge to a national gaze and an example of a Greater Caribbean cartography is present in Rafael Hernández, regarded as a quintessential Puerto Rican musician composer of Spanish language tunes, whose role in “anglophone” jazz remains shrouded. Ditto for Harry Belafonte, enshrined as a singer of Jamaican ballads while his “Latin” connection remains below the radar. In both instances the artists’ cultural polysemy challenge normalized iconicity. Both cases point to a need to study the musical careers of composers and interpreters in order to fully understand and map the dimensions of a Greater Caribbean.