Despite the facts that 1. Hispanics comprise 18 percent of Hillsborough County's population, 2. Spanish was spoken here long before English, and 3. Ybor City is the most interesting cultural/historical site in the Bay area — Latinos have been pretty much invisible to local Anglo culture in recent decades.
The current Tampa Museum of Art exhibition, Voces y Visiones: Highlights from El Museo del Barrio's Permanent Collection, on display through Oct. 19, is a step in the right direction toward changing that oversight.
The exhibition is a bright, tight show, especially considering the incredibly broad range of territory it covers, in terms of time, geography and media. And though it has been drawing more than the usual numbers of Hispanics, it's well worth the visit for anyone interested in Hispanic culture and history and Latin American travel. A guide to the exhibition available in the gallery puts the objects in context and gives brief but illuminating insights into indigenous culture; the brutality of Spanish conquistadors; the uses of religious folk art to convert natives and keep colonists on the Catholic track; the evolution, significance and uses of masks; the Mexican Day of the Dead; the Santeria and Vodun religions; political art and contemporary abstract art.
It's a remarkably compact exploration of the way indigenous American, invading European and enslaved African populations collided, producing religion, art, politics and racial blends that were entirely new.
One portion of the exhibition traces the evolution of the mask. Unlike some other colonial powers, Spain and the Catholic church co-opted, rather than stamping out indigenous traditions, so that today you still see echoes of, say, ancient Olmec rituals reaching back to 1200 BCE in contemporary carnival masks.
The musical counterpart of the exhibition took place at the University of South Florida last week. The College of Visual and Performing Arts presented a staged reading/workshop of an opera in progress that will be the centerpiece of a festival of Latin American and Caribbean art in 2005.
The opera is about the life and death of a fascinating Spanish-Cuban composer and judge named Alejandro Garcia Caturla. It takes place in Cuba in the 1920s and '30s when the U.S. was tightening its stranglehold on the island after "liberating" it from the Spanish. Before Caturla was murdered in 1940 at the age of 36, he had 11 children by two black common-law wives (who were sisters) and was the first composer to integrate African and Afro-Cuban elements into modern European musical compositions.
USF music professor and composer Jim Lewis discovered Caturla's work on a trip to Cuba in 1996 and has since been working to revive it. He has been composing the opera for the past two years and working with Noel Smith, who is writing the libretto. Theresa Andrasy directs and it's looking as if Mike Foley will choreograph. Zanaida Romeu, founder of Cuba's exciting Camarata Romeu orchestra, will conduct the 20-piece orchestra. Sets will be designed by cutting-edge Cuban artist collective Los Carpinteros, who also will mount an exhibition at the Contemporary Art Museum for the festival.
The full opera will include different forms of music, from Afro-Cuban to modern atonal to popular music being composed at the time. It will even have an extended rumba dance and music scene.
This is exactly the kind of project the university should be doing, and the surrounding community should be supporting. It reaches across disciplines, bringing music, dance, theater, students and faculty together in a collaborative creative endeavor (even the new head of the Latin American and Caribbean Studies department was at the reading). It reaches into the community with a festival that will involve the Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center and, I hope, other arts groups. It embraces the unique cultural heritage and of this community. And most important, it continues and deepens the work the university faculty has begun in recent years of leading the way for opening dialogue with Cuba through cultural diplomacy.
Let's hope our other cultural leaders and politicians have the guts to follow their lead.
Rotarians for world peace
It seems Planet owner Ben Eason's been an errant "chow" member of the Ybor City Rotary Club. Member Jim Moohan, who explained that chow members basically just come and eat lunch, chided Eason for failing to do even that, despite the fact that our office is right in Ybor. So I get to make up for it with this announcement. I don't mind, though, because it's really a pretty cool thing they're doing. The club is looking for eight people to send to Pondichery, India, Jan. 3-31 and Southwestern Mexico April 10-May 10. If you're over 40, forget about applying, though. Moohan was vague about reasons for the age restriction, saying something about a vigorous schedule. "We're flexible on the age," he said. "We'll take people up to 41, 42."
Oh, and you should be gainfully employed, although, with some nudging, Moohan did say they'd consider artists and other self-employed people. Interviews of applicants will be Sept. 20, so contact Moohan immediately for an application at jimmoohan@verizon.net or 813-685-8635 or 813-240-7239. The goal, says Moohan, is to promote understanding and peace. Perhaps they would consider sending the entire Bush administration. If only they were younger.
Crossover dreams
If you were listening to Michele Drayton's Charles Vann Jazz Party on WMNF-88.5 FM on a recent Saturday night, you might have heard her talking to E-Z G. and Smooth Mama D. The two are actually old friends from her days as a reporter at The Tampa Tribune who share her love of jazz. Smooth Mama D., a.k.a. Martha Durrance still works as an editor at the Trib, though her spouse, E-Z G., has long since moved on. Readers of this paper might know him better as Francis X. Gilpin, former Planet reporter and news editor. The show airs from 6 to 9 p.m. Saturday and features mainstream, bebop, blues, funk and fusion.
While we're talking about journalists on the airwaves, we might as well send some props to our very own Eric Snider, who is on WAKS-Mix 100.7 FM every Friday morning at 8:40, previewing weekend events worth checking out, pimping our paper and generally talking trash with host Nancy Alexander. It's not like having Gail Sierens hold up a copy of the Tribune on TV, but it's a start.
Contact Senior Editor Susan Edwards at 813-248-8888, ext. 122, or ed@weeklyplanet.com.
This article appears in Sep 4-10, 2003.