ABSTRACT

When evaluating contemporary pregones, or street-vendor songs, most Cubans tend to resort to comparisons between the sounds of the present and sonic imaginaries of bygone times, often describing the sound of current vendors as an impoverished version of what were once beautiful, unique songs. At face value, these assessments point to the formal features of street-vendor songs, crystallizing around what appear to be direct descriptions of sounds heard on a daily basis. After enough probing, however, an analysis of these judgments reveals how such aesthetic descriptions are layered with multiple meanings, pointing to questions which are not contained in their literal signification nor sufficiently interrogated through formal analysis alone. My research suggests that when Cubans say something like ‘present-day vendors have forgotten how to sing’, they are also tacitly enunciating, through musical discourse, opinions on adjacent, specific issues. In this article, I focus on a cluster of questions around the musicality of street vendors that is directly related to issues of gender, race, and internal migration from the Cuban Eastern provinces to the capital. My analysis includes literary and ethnographic sources, the latter derived from extended interactions with consumers and listeners of pregones as well as vendors themselves.

摘要

在评估当代先驱时或街头小贩歌曲，大多数古巴人倾向于在当下的声音与过去的声音想象之间进行比较，经常将当前小贩的声音描述为曾经美丽，独特的歌曲的贫困版本。从表面上看，这些评估指出了街头小贩歌曲的形式特征，围绕着似乎是对每天听到的声音的直接描述而形成的结晶。然而，经过足够的探索，对这些判断的分析揭示了这样的美学描述是如何具有多种含义的层次化的，指出了其字面意义中未包含的问题，或者仅通过形式分析就没有足够的疑问。我的研究表明，当古巴人说“当今的摊贩忘了唱歌”之类的东西时，他们也在默契地发声，通过音乐话语，就相邻的特定问题发表意见。在本文中，我将重点关注与街头小贩的音乐风格有关的一系列问题，这些问题与性别，种族和从古巴东部各省到首都的内部移民问题直接相关。我的分析包括文学和人种学资源，后者源于与消费者和听众的长期互动pregones以及厂商自己。