Cuban song genre. A reinterpretation of trova, the romantic troubadour traditions of the island (which developed from those brought by Hispanic colonizers and immigrants), nueva trova is also closely linked to the Latin American Nueva canción movement. Musically the fundamental elements have been those of the classic troubadour (vocals and acoustic guitar), with songs then interpreted by bands of varying size and style. Songs describe the everyday experience of living; a hallmark is a poetic lyric imbued with a sense of metaphysical emotion and existential questioning, with a pervasive use of metaphor and a non-gendered approach to the complexities of love. The Cuban tradition of ‘double meaning’ is not, as with old troubadours, used for sexual wit, but instead for the doubts of inner experience within a thematic framework of time and death.
Nueva trova emerged in the late 1960s, when a collective of young musicians came together at the Cuban Cinematographic Institute (ICAIC), under the direction of classical guitarist and composer Leo Brouwer. They included Vicente Feliú, Silvio Rodríguez, Pablo Milanés, Noel Nicola, Sara González, Eduardo Ramos and Pablo Menendez, musicians who re-defined the subject matter of Cuban song, while demonstrating innovative use of popular music forms with intuitive use of older Cuban elements. Born in the decade before the 1959 revolution they were not only politicized by growing up in the revolution but also questioned the experience. Milanés, for example, had undergone ‘special military service’, a euphemism for labour camps involving cane cutting and designed to change the behaviour of those regarded as bohemian. Championed by Haydée Santa Maria, who ran the seminal cultural centre Casa de Las Americas, he and the others who formed the ICAIC collective became part of the Protest Song Centre which existed at Casa for a time; it provided a forum for the singing of nueva trova and was set up in the wake of the 1967 ‘Festival de la canción protesta’. Participants rejected the term ‘protest’ as they felt it did not accurately describe their music, which was not necessarily an expression of political protest. Many subsequent festivals and concerts in Cuba and elsewhere have also nurtured significant networks of musical friendship.
In the 1980s, the songs of Rodríguez and Milanés became a phenomenon in the Spanish speaking world, generating a large amount of foreign money for the Cuban state. In the 1990s, a new generation has emerged, for whom growing up in the revolution has exposed a different set of conflicts. The lyrics and more eclectic musical influences (notably rock) of Carlos Varela and Gerardo Alfonso, reflect the preoccupations of youth whose horizons have openly moved beyond revolutionary strictures.
and other resources
R. Benmayor: ‘La “nueva trova”: New Cuban Song’, LAMR, ii (1981), 11–45
Silvio Rodríguez y Pablo Milanés en vivo en Argentina, Polydor Argentina LP 241170–1(1984)
Canciones Urgentes, perf. Silvio Rodríguez, Luaka Bop/Warner 7599–26480 (1991)
Antología de la nueva trova, iii, Egrem CD-0297 (1998)
JAN FAIRLEY