{"id":183,"date":"2020-02-10T10:05:31","date_gmt":"2020-02-10T15:05:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.uml.edu\/cuba-winter-2020\/?p=183"},"modified":"2020-02-10T10:54:49","modified_gmt":"2020-02-10T15:54:49","slug":"dancing-boxing-in-cuba","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.uml.edu\/cuba-winter-2020\/2020\/02\/10\/dancing-boxing-in-cuba\/","title":{"rendered":"Dancing & Boxing in Cuba"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Today, I woke up and took a look at our itinerary, which showed that we\u2019d be attending a class about Cuban music. As I\u2019ll explain, this wasn\u2019t a particularly normal lecture. The bus dropped us off as usual and we met Ruben, our guest instructor, at the front door, and he took us upstairs to a dark room with a small stage and some chairs, which we made into a circle. The room seemed, frankly, dead, and I wasn\u2019t sure why we were there for class. There was an array of different instruments around the guitar on the floor. As soon as Ruben started talking to us, I forgot we were even in a \u201clecture,\u201d and honestly forgot it was a lecture until I wrote this. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ruben explained to us in this interactive class the history of music in Cuba, which is extremely diverse in style. Cuba had been such a hub of different cultures during its peak years of tourism and trade, and all of these different cultures circulating through the region had an impact on the music that still exists today. The different styles of Cuban music all had distinct beats, most of which came from the Afro-Cuban culture that was largely due to the origin of slaves in the 1800s. Ruben then began to teach these beats to us.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Trying to play the instruments with Ruben<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

He handed out a few instruments and\nthe room just came to life. We clearly weren\u2019t the most musically inclined\ngroup in the world, but he was happy enough to try and keep us on beat. He gave\nus all our own beat to keep up, and we started to make what almost sounded like\nmusic. This type of music was very foreign to all of us but was so interesting\nto learn the history of. We played the instruments as best as we could and\nshared a few laughs. Ruben showed us the beats, talked about the music, its\nhistory, and where in Cuba it originated from, and then told us to get on our\nfeet. It was time to dance.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Once we started to dance, it became\nextremely apparent how much less rhythmic we were than all of the locals. Ruben\nshowed us some of the moves for each dance, and then we would try to do it with\nmusic. We all looked like deer in headlights with four left hooves, but we\ntried our best. Ruben, Ana and Diana demonstrated some of the dances for us,\nwhich included la cha-cha-cha, la contradanza, la mamba, and la conga. They all\nmoved very naturally, like they had been dancing like this as a second nature.\nWe, however, never really learned how to dance as a part of our culture. Dance\nis a very selective art in the United States and is not as widespread as it is\nin Cuba; dancing is seen as a feminine activity that only some people can do,\nwhereas in Cuba, most of each gender are able to dance. It even gives men a\nbetter chance of attracting girls\u2019 attention if they\u2019re good dancers. Hearing\nthis and witnessing it firsthand was a bit of a culture shock, because our boys\ncertainly weren\u2019t innately suave on the dancefloor (sorry, boys, you are all\nwonderful people). Ruben and the others sure had a laugh, but they didn\u2019t\ntotally judge us for our lack of skills. We all had fun with it, and it was a\ngood time even while we fell over each other. <\/p>\n\n\n\n