Music, Tourism, and Identity: Cuba’s Tourism Industry as a Site for Exporting, Preserving, and Reimagining National Identity, and How Its Musicians Navigate These Relationships

Abstract:

Cuba reopened its doors to tourism in the 1990s after years of government disdain for the industry, as the collapse of the USSR left the country in financial ruin and with tourism as its only hope for economic stability. As a country with a strong musical tradition and whose national identity was closely linked to music, it is no surprise that music has taken a front seat in Cuba’s tourism industry. However, Cuba’s dual currency system—which makes jobs in tourism the most lucrative on the island—and the incredible international popularity of Buena Vista Social Club, a 1997 documentary and album on Cuban music from the 1940s–1950s, have created not only an industry where pleasing tourists is essential to survival, but where tourists’ preconceptions and expectations of what Cuban culture and music are like are narrow and tied specifically to the music and imagery found in Buena Vista Social Club. This has led to an overrepresentation of “traditional” Cuban music (such as that found in the film) in areas of tourism, and creation of a repertoire that is limited in terms of song and genre and constantly repeated in tourism.  
 
Using Marx’s theory of commodification as well as ethnomusicological theory of music as a representation of cultural identity, this thesis argues that music played in tourism in Cuba essentially works to represent tourists’ perceptions of Cuban music and national identity, which musicians have to satisfy in order to survive. This thesis focuses on how musicians working in tourism interact with this almost imposed, tourist-perceived identity of their country and culture which they rise to meet while performing for tourists, how this identity may complicate their own cultural identity, and how awareness of imposed identity impacts the musicians’ relationship with the music they’re playing.