Fernando Ortiz: founder of AfroCuban Studies

Email: janelgr_AT_earthlink.net [replace _AT_ with @]

Interamericas releases bilingual publication celebrating musical traditions of africa and the caribbean, documented by renowned Cuban scholar Fernando Ortiz and featuring works from the collection of Dr. And Mrs. Joseph H. Howard

Catalogue containing essay on Afro-Cuban music by Antonio Benítez-Rojo commemorates the exhibition, "The Scholar and the Collector: Fernando Ortiz, Los Instrumentos de la Música Afrocubana, and The Howard Family Collection of Percussion Instruments," at the Los Angeles Craft and Folk Art Museum

NEW YORK, June 21 - Making a further addition to the growing body of scholarship on the work of Cuban historian and social scientist Fernando Ortiz (1881-1969) and to the study of Afro-Cuban musical traditions, InterAmericas"/Society of Arts and Letters of the Americas/Sociedad de Artes y Letras de las Américas announces the publication of The Scholar and the Collector: Fernando Ortiz, Los Instrumentos de la Música Afrocubana, and The Howard Family Collection of Percussion Instruments. The bilingual publication in English and Spanish commemorates an exhibition of the same name held at the Los Angeles Craft and Folk Art Museum (CAFAM), May 28-September 26, 1999.

In an expanded form, the exhibition, now titled "Ritmos de Identidad: The Legacy of Fernando Ortiz and The Howard Family Collection," is currently on view at the Smithsonian Institution in the Arts and Industries Building, where it is scheduled to run until August 1, 2000. The exhibit, in its current form, will open at the Historical Museum of Southern Florida in Miami in September 2000.

The CAFAM exhibition presented the work of the Cuban scholar Ortiz, who documented African influences on the musical traditions of Cuba, and instruments from Cuba, Africa and the Caribbean on loan from the renowned Howard Family Collection of international percussion and folk instruments, assembled by Dr. Joseph H. Howard (1912-1994) and his wife, Bootsie Howard (1921-1985).

Central to the content of The Scholar and the Collector and the new scholarship on music in the Americas is the featured essay by Antonio Benítez-Rojo, the Cuban-born writer and contemporary theorist of Caribbean culture, entitled "The Polyrhythmic Imagination." Both academic and lyrical, the text discusses the profound contribution of Africa to the cultures of Cuba and the Caribbean region. Benítez-Rojo also discusses the pivotal nature of the vast body of work of Fernando Ortiz, whose five-volume study, Los Instrumentos de la Música Afrocubana, became "the chronicle of the nation." Finally, the author talks about how Ortiz's scholarship finds its complement in the Howard Family Collection extolled by Benítez-Rojo as "magnificent."

Further texts describe the parallel histories of the two men. The first discusses the formation of the Howard Family Collection: the passion of Dr. Howard, his wife, and his family, who devoted decades to the assiduous collection and cataloguing of more than 700 musical, largely percussion, instruments from around the world. The second offers a short biography of Fernando Ortiz, in his career as attorney, writer, anthropologist, and ethnographer.

The catalogue includes a selection of photographs by John Kiffe, in the nature of documentary portraits, of selected instruments from the Howard Family Collection, accompanied by excerpts from Fernando Ortiz's Los Instrumentos de la Música Afrocubana describing the significance and/or usage of particular instruments. A "Foreword" by Adolfo V. Nodal, General Manager, Cultural Affairs Department of the City of Los Angeles describes the Cuban influence on the arts and culture of Los Angeles. And an "Introduction" by Jane Gregory Rubin, InterAmericas Director, explains the methodology of curatorship, first in the CAFAM exhibition, which was the first to underscore the importance of the Ortiz documentation to an international collection; and second in InterAmericas' involvement with the legacy of Ortiz, which involves years of exhibitions, publications, and archival projects, including its 1998 publication of Miscelánea II of Studies Dedicated to Fernando Ortiz (1881-1969). Miscelánea II unites new and previously published material in Spanish, English, and French on the life and work of Ortiz and features a comprehensive updated bibliography of works by Ortiz, his unpublished manuscripts, and secondary literature.

For information on the Dr. and Mrs. Joseph H. Howard Family Collection, contact:
Victoria R. Howard
Tel/Fax: (323) 732-6284
E-mail: VHoward779@aol.com
P.O. Box 360411
Los Angeles, CA 90036