Music: Cuba's Guampara keeps the sound of Africa Alive

In Guampara, Havana’s sounds of resistance find a home. The studio and record label is a consistent force in unearthing ways to maintain and honor the connection with Cuba’s past and its interconnected history with Africa, while also creating content that’s relevant to today. As label manager Laura Catana puts it, “It’s about staying rooted in the past while looking forward towards the future,” a mission she pushes with label founder and owner DJ Jigüe.

As we recently covered, AfroRazones, Guampara’s landmark compilation project this year, was a “Cuban manifestation of black resistance in 2017,” as described by the project’s Executive Director Luna Olavarría Gallegos. By bringing together 12 hip-hop, R&B, and spoken word artists in the booth, the project offered a Cuba-specific sample bank and an archive of transnational-rooted rhythms. It was the culmination of three days of media literacy workshops aiming to build sustainability for each artist involved, and also for the project itself.

This aspect of education is an ongoing tenet for Guampara; in Catana’s own words, “The lack of Internet access leaves Cuban artists at such a disadvantage because they don’t have the same opportunities to be exposed to what their peers in other countries are producing…we’ve got some upcoming projects that will offer more opportunities like this for Cuban artists.”

Guampara’s mission is not centered solely on connecting outwards, however; the project maintains an emphasis on educating the country’s artists and fortifying its homegrown scene. As a participant in this local community as much also being an organizer, Jigüe continues, “Our mission is to support the development of the scene of urban music in Cuba…to create cultural products that help to maintain our legacy, with a local eye toward our own roots and cultural heritage toward the future, with a contemporary language that can reach youth.”

While Guampara’s wheelhouse is musically rooted, it’s also extending into video documentation and videos, most recently fitted with a visual rendering of El Individuo’s powerful anthem “Mi Raza,” also from the AfroRazones project. The concept was developed by Eli Jacobs-Fantauzzi, who’s been a part of the Guampara team since its formation. Lensed by Cuban videographers Toussaint Avila Alvarez and Helman Avelle, and produced by Catana, the project was a collaborative effort, also integrating selections by El Individuo for the video’s religious imagery, like the palo fire rituals that were projected onto his skin during the shoot.

By wearing his pride quite literally, El Individuo’s message gets a visual accompaniment to the track’s mission of amplifying Black solidarity and reclaiming roots with pride. “This album is directed specifically toward the young Afro-Cuban audience, to show audiovisual codes as a way to translate a part of the message that’s within these linguistics,” Jigüe specifies. “The idea is to wake up the youth, to [direct them] towards the search of this information, to the search toward their roots, and to raise up the pride of being Afro-descendant in Cuban society.”