404 Chapter 18
from an aficionado (amateur) group to professional status. Graciela
recounts that at one point in the 1990s, Yoruba Andabo and their
principal rival rumba group Clave y Guaguancó shared duties as the
house band at the UNEAC event, performing on alternating Wednes-
days, and also alternating with other rumba groups from Havana and
other Cuban provinces. In the past few years the Peña del Ambia has
moved in the direction of presenting espectáculos (folkloric shows),^6
where the first half of the event is dedicated to música folklórica (folk-
loric music), understood as Afro-Cuban religious traditions, and the
second half consists of rumba performance. Around mid-2006 Clave
y Guaguancó began performing the folkloric section of the peña as
well as the rumba part, which signaled a turn for the group towards
espectáculo-based, rather than only rumba-based performance. The
group abruptly ceased to be the house band of the Peña del Ambia in
January 2007 for reasons I was not able to discover, and since then the
event has not, to my knowledge, had a regular rumba group in resi-
dence. Instead, El Ambia invites different local and extra-local rumba
groups to perform for each Wednesday rumba peña.
“For-profit” rumba events.
The third category of rumba venues in Havana that I have identified
consists of what I call “for-profit” gigs that take place in small caba-
rets/nightclubs. This type of venue appears to have arisen as a result
of the expansion of the tourism sector and the dollarization of the
economy, and allows rumba groups—at least those who are subsi-
dized—to earn extra money over and above their monthly salary.
Unlike community events, which are unpaid, and state-sponsored
events, which are either part of musicians’ and dancers’ salaried quota
of performances or unpaid in the case of non-subsidized groups,
these cabaret gigs provide rumberos with an immediate source of
income after each show. There are generally two ways in which per-
formers are paid for these performances: either the group is allowed
- In the Cuban context, espectáculos refer specifically to performances that include a
diverse presentation of Afro-Cuban sacred (Yoruba, Congo, Abakúa, Arará) and secular
(rumba, comparsa [Cuban carnival]) music and dance practices.