Looking at Cuba from an outside perspective entails an inevitably incomplete understanding of what it means to be Cuban because no book or class trip captures the totality of the Cuban experience. Perspective are limited in that they approach a subject from only one point of reference, thereby creating blind spots of knowledge that would otherwise compliment one's understanding of that particular subject. The Cuban identity is the subject in this case.

Identity is an abstract concept that captures particular combination of both the commonplace and complex aspects of an individual's experience. What further complicate the study of an identity are the preconceived notions and paradigms of thought which one approaches the subject with. Achieving complete objectivity is literally impossible. Yet we ask ourselves, what does it mean to think from Cuba? Given the limitations of subjectivity, all we can do is try to look at as many different aspects of the Cuban identity as possible.

Identity is multi faceted. Both things as small as a grain of sugar or as large as a hurricane have equal influence in the formation of an identity. Organized and politicized movements are just as significant as impromptu cultural developments. Identity is sometimes formed in an up-down direction, defined by the people "on top," and at other times the motion is reversed and directed by the collective actions of the ordinary masses. The forces defining an identity are both historical and contemporary. Complicating matters further, discerning who exactly falls under the shadow of a particular identity is impossible.

The immediate population involved in the formation of Cuba included Indians, Africans, and Europeans. Confined to one island, the different races mixed over the years so that each generation carried a distinct combination of new and old traditions. Fernando Ortiz explores the process by which different populations both within and outside of Cuba impressed each other: transculturation, a word that is somewhat synonymous to cultural exchange. Transculturation describes the complex interactions undergone by people of different cultures that share the same space. It is a process of cohabitation that resolves differences through mutual convergence. Transculturation does not imply that one culture must necessarily cede its identity to the other; instead, both cultures retain a modified version of their identities by reinterpreting aspects observed of the other group and making it their own. In Cuba, sugar and tobacco functioned as a vehicle for transculturation.

Through the exchange of tobacco and sugar, the two products Cuba produced with most efficiency and profitability, cultural exchange flowed both East and West across the globe. First, it flowed West as European colonists transplanted foreign traditions and ideology into the New World. "A revolutionary upheaval shook the Indian peoples of Cuba, tearing up their institutions by the roots and destroying their lives." Ortiz argues that the Neolithic Indians were unable to adjust to the initial injection of Spanish culture in Cuba. In this case, the formation of a Cuban identity occurred through the debilitation of the Indians in Cuba, proving that transculturation is not always egalitarian.

However, certain Indian traditions survived their own civilization and carried through to the colonial society first and then continental Europe second. Colonists originally viewed tobacco "as a thing for Indians and Negroes and only later, as it worked its way up from the lower strata of society, did whites develop a taste for it," says Ortiz. Indians smoked tobacco in the context of their own society, but both colonists and Europeans had to invent new purposes and values before integrating tobacco into their social spheres. The significance of Ortiz and his analysis of transculturation are not found in the details of the tobacco plant and the exact ways in which colonists and Europeans integrated cigars into their culture. The significance lies in the fact that tobacco, a product unique to the Caribbean, moved East from Indian to European culture. His analysis is just one example of how the social context of a little thing such as tobacco, sugar, or anything else morphs as new people come into contact with it. This process of cultural reinterpretation is molded the Cuban identity.

Cuban Counterpoint also functions as a vehicle of rebellion against a paradigm that, in the eyes of Ortiz, unjustifiably places Cuba in a subordinate position to Europe. He specifically rejects the Western paradigm of progress and modernity. On Becoming Cuban explores this paradigm and its detrimental effects on Cuba in more depth. Luis Pérez defines national identity as something that "constantly adjusts to and reconciles perceptions of reality with changing needs, and vice versa, with its own particular history, specifically a way to experience the meaning of inclusion of previously disparate constituencies within the notion of nationality." He utilizes an up-down approach to Cuban history, focusing more on the elite class and its interaction with the United States.

Through globalization, American imported values of materialism and consumption flogged Cubans during the 1950s, a time of economic crisis that limited how far Cuba could progress and modernize itself. However, the discontent grew from the "realization that mastery of North American ways had, in the end, failed to modify power relationships between Cuban and North Americans." Cubans with means adopted American products, ideals and values in the hopes that they would one day reach same level of international prestige as the United States. However, this national identity of modernity necessitated outside approval, which Cuba never received.

These privileged members of Cuban society, along with the rest of the population, rebelled from the United States and its intervening policies by supporting the Revolution, at least initially. At this moment, the Cuban nationality found itself in a time of deep adjustments as the reality of economic underdevelopment necessitated a paradigm that did not depend on the approval of an outside force. This moment of realization parallels the rise of distinct cultural forces in Cuba, each marking their territorial influence on the development of the nation's identity.

Several up-down movements preceded and followed the years of the Revolution. The inclusion of non-white races into the Cuban identity is one such example, at least in the eyes of Alejandro de la Fuente. "In contrast to the early republic, in which Cuba's future was frequently identified with the demographic expansion of its white population and the consolidation of its Spanish cultural ancestry, by the late 1920s the Afrocubanista movement was asserting that African influences were at least equally important in defining the character and nature of the Cuban nation," argues Fuente in A Nation for All. The same class of Cubans that adopted the American perspective of modernity grabbed a hold of American racial divisions.

For the better half of Cuban history African influences were viewed as primitive and unworthy of national recognition. At the same time, Cuba never experienced the complete segregation endured by African-Americans in the United States. Racial lines in Cuba were ambiguously drawn, whereby most citizens interpreted their national identity as inclusive regardless of race. Nevertheless, barriers blocking blacks entry into predominantly white spheres (i.e. politics) did exist. Slowly, colonial politics and later national politics required the support of the large Afro-Cuban population. Somewhat organized efforts on behalf of the Afro-Cubans helped partially integrate them into the political sphere in Cuba and this was then magnified once the Revolution took control.

However, one must wonder how receptive the general public was of these up-down, politicized movements. Did the average Afro-Cuban really care if she was not permitted inside the white country clubs? Did the average white doctor with two dozen patients a day care if some beach in Havana opened up to mulattos? Probably not. Ortiz and Fuente approach history from the more traditional angle of politics and power. Although this rhetoric did indeed matter to some portions of Cuban society, cultural history is often times a more inclusive approach to Cuban identity since it encompasses broader events and influences over the general population.

Music, for example, is an undeniable factor in the Cuban identity. The coming together of New and Old World musical influences and the rise of unique Caribbean genres occurred in a down-up fashion. European music adapted to African based Caribbean beats, creating new styles of music such as the guajira and the Cuban contradanza. Son, however, is the basic "starting point for Cuban music," revealing "a process of transculturation destined to amalgamate meters, melodies, Hispanic instruments, with clear traces of old African oral traditions." Alejo Caprentier chronicles the interaction between black and white musicians, an ambiguous relationship that at some point created distinctive Cuban music. "In the first half of the nineteenth century," says Carpentier, "blacks played and created white music, without enriching it further, except with their atavic rhythmic sense, where they uniquely accentuated certain kinds of danceable compositions." From there, music took an almost evolutionary course as one established genre or another accumulated creative variations through impromptu jam sessions.

Despite the reality of musical development in Cuba, the emerging Cubans of European descent rejected the cultural diversity in the island because they were afraid of the negative implications associated with adopting non-European customs and traditions. The movement of popular music through the entirety of the island was initially controlled in an up-down fashion. The political desire of being "culturally up to date" required the rejection of the so-called primitive African influences and institutions. María Teresa Vélez, however, views white hesitancy as a cultural barrier that actually benefited popular music by allowing African musical traditions time to crystallize.

In other words, Africans in Cuba underwent their own period of transculturation, which created the Afro-Cuban musical heritage that slowly mingled with European styles. Slaves shipped in from Africa found themselves in Cuba without the institutions of their native lands. Forced convivencia united first generation Africans in Cuba. Moreover, the constant influx of new slaves continuously replenished African elements in the never-ending process of cultural transformation. Ideas and practices of African origin were at times preserved, other times modified, and sometimes replaced through a process of transculturation.

Individual church-temples, for example, each produced their own versions of African religious traditions. "What flourished in Cuba," says Vélez, "is not just a continuation of Yoruba religious and cultural practices but something new, born from the encounter of the diverse Yoruba tribes with one another, with non-Yoruba Africans, and with the Europeans in a new environment and a new social order governed by a set of institutions different from those of Africa." Afro-Cuban drumming matured within this church-temple context and Felipe García Villamil took part in this process. He learned how to play the batá drums at an early age as he simultaneously played in inter-racial bands. Each musical style formed an impression on Villamil, making him "not only a drummer but a completo, a name given in Cuba to drummers who not only can perfrom the secular styles, such as rumba-guaguancó, yambú, columbia-but are familiar with the different Afro-Cuban religious styles of drumming." The formation of completos occurred at the ground level, with each individual drummer mixing his/her own particular ratio of African and non-African styles into their own. However, the official assimilation of completos into Cuban culture occurred in an up-down fashion. This is not to say that music in Cuba had been 100% segregated until that moment, after all, Carpentier's work proves the opposite of just that through the creation of son and Cuban contradanza. Musical tradition in Cuba had always been, and continues to be, a living and adapting force. Nevertheless, the new regime underwent a "process of selecting the cultural roots of the nation," so as to redefine the Cuban Nationality as a more inclusive entity.

Music is an appropriate medium for tackling the identity question. It is an intangible presence of everyday life that influences an individual's experience. Its fluidity makes it a tradition that neither stops changing nor integrating the different people who play and listen to it. Whether one hears a song at a formal event or in passing at a mall, lyric and rhythm functions as cultural glue because exposure to these is widespread. Music, therefore, is a part of a nation's collective memory despite different tastes and preferences. The evolution of European, African and Cuban music has never been clearly demarcated in terms of the exact moments any one genre came to life. Cuban culture is not the result of a 1+1=2 equation where African and European traditions merged into a wholly new hybrid state. Culture and identity, like music, are ambiguous concepts that reflect old, new, transformed, and unchanged characteristics that are in no way constant.

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