Overview

Trumpets in the Mountains is a compelling ethnography about Cuban culture, artistic performance, and the shift in national identity after 1990, when the loss of Soviet subsidies plunged Cuba into a severe economic crisis. The state's response involved opening the economy to foreign capital and tourism, and promoting previously deprecated cultural practices as quintessentially Cuban. Such contradictions of Cuba's revolutionary ideals elicited an official preoccupation with how twenty-first-century cubanÍa, or Cubanness, was to be understood by its citizens and creatively interpreted by its artists. The rural campesino was re-envisioned as a key symbol of the future; the embodiment of socialist humility, cultural pureness, and educated refinement; potentially the Hombre NovÍsimo (even newer man) to replace the Hombre Nuevo (new man) of Cuban communist philosophy. Campesinos inhabit some of the island's most isolated areas, including the mountainous regions in central and eastern Cuba where Laurie A. Frederik conducted research among rural communities and professional theater groups. Analyzing the ongoing dialogue of cultural officials, urban and rural artists, and campesinos, Frederik provides an on-the-ground account of how visions of the nation are developed, manipulated, dramatized, and maintained in public consciousness. She shows that cubanÍa is defined, and redefined, in the interactive movement between intellectual, political, and everyday worlds.

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Reviews

Trumpets in the Mountains is a journey into the rural heartland of Cuba, where few foreigners dare to go . . . and that includes Cubans who've never ventured beyond the city of Havana. Here is a portrait of a Cuba that has escaped the notice of the media, a world where theater people go to country towns and villages to engage in performative dialogues with farm workers about the meaning of the revolution. Drawing on years of fieldwork and personal participation in popular theater, Laurie A. Frederik shows how artistic creativity flourishes in everyday Cuban life in some of the most out-of-the-way places, and offers rich ethnographic examples of how theater has become the perfect stage for acting out the hopes that Cubans still have of building a more just world. Written with sincere affection, this is one of those rare books that gives back to Cuba. --Ruth Behar, author of An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba

Trumpets in the Mountains is a journey into the rural heartland of Cuba, where few foreigners dare to go ... and that includes Cubans who've never ventured beyond the city of Havana. Here is a portrait of a Cuba that has escaped the notice of the media, a world where theater people go to country towns and villages to engage in performative dialogues with farm workers about the meaning of the revolution. Drawing on years of fieldwork and personal participation in popular theater, Laurie A. Frederik shows how artistic creativity flourishes in everyday Cuban life in some of the most out of the way places, and offers rich ethnographic examples of how theater has become the perfect stage for acting out the hopes that Cubans still have of building a more just world. Written with sincere affection, this is one of those rare books that gives back to Cuba. Ruth Behar, author of An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba Engagingly written, theoretically astute, and based on extensive ethnographic work, Laurie A. Frederik's new book provides important insights into underexplored aspects of Cuban revolutionary culture. She considers the dynamics of socially engaged theater from the perspective of actors and audiences themselves and explores debates over national identity and the goals of the revolutionary project as negotiated far from the centers of state control. An important contribution. Robin Moore, author of Music in the Hispanic Caribbean: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture ...Trumpets in the mountains is a compelling book. Frederik's work has deservedly received kudos for overcoming the many obstacles (logistical, cultural, political) that hinder participant observation in rural areas of Cuba.But Trumpets in the mountains offers much more than that, and should be of interest beyond the sphere of Cuba specialists. Frederik's interest lies between the fields of anthropology and performance studies as she analyses the ideologies and experiences of rural Cuban theatre groups. Inspired by revolutionary goals to produce plays that are for and about the rural experience, these theatre practitioners (teatristas) practise their craft in very different circumstances to their colleagues who congregate around the national institutions and large theatres of Havana. - Anna Cristina, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2013

"""Trumpets in the Mountains is a journey into the rural heartland of Cuba, where few foreigners dare to go ... and that includes Cubans who've never ventured beyond the city of Havana. Here is a portrait of a Cuba that has escaped the notice of the media, a world where theater people go to country towns and villages to engage in performative dialogues with farm workers about the meaning of the revolution. Drawing on years of fieldwork and personal participation in popular theater, Laurie A. Frederik shows how artistic creativity flourishes in everyday Cuban life in some of the most out of the way places, and offers rich ethnographic examples of how theater has become the perfect stage for acting out the hopes that Cubans still have of building a more just world. Written with sincere affection, this is one of those rare books that gives back to Cuba."" Ruth Behar, author of An Island Called Home: Returning to Jewish Cuba ""Engagingly written, theoretically astute, and based on extensive ethnographic work, Laurie A. Frederik's new book provides important insights into underexplored aspects of Cuban revolutionary culture. She considers the dynamics of socially engaged theater from the perspective of actors and audiences themselves and explores debates over national identity and the goals of the revolutionary project as negotiated far from the centers of state control. An important contribution."" Robin Moore, author of Music in the Hispanic Caribbean: Experiencing Music, Expressing Culture ""...Trumpets in the mountains is a compelling book. Frederik's work has deservedly received kudos for overcoming the many obstacles (logistical, cultural, political) that hinder participant observation in rural areas of Cuba.But Trumpets in the mountains offers much more than that, and should be of interest beyond the sphere of Cuba specialists. Frederik's interest lies between the fields of anthropology and performance studies as she analyses the ideologies and experiences of rural Cuban theatre groups. Inspired by revolutionary goals to produce plays that are for and about the rural experience, these theatre practitioners (teatristas) practise their craft in very different circumstances to their colleagues who congregate around the national institutions and large theatres of Havana."" - Anna Cristina, Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2013"

Author Information

Laurie A. Frederik is Assistant Professor of Performance Studies and Anthropology at the University of Maryland.

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