Moods 53: Gavilán Rayna Russom
Gavilán Rayna Russom (@gavilanraynarussom), boss witch at Voluminous Arts, takes the helm of Moods this November with a collection of recordings from study trips she has taken to Cuba that feature Cuban musicians. Having released music extensively under her own name, aliases like Black Meteoric Star, Hail of Arrows and Gavin Russom, and collaborations like Black Leotard Front and The Crystal Ark—as well as touring with LCD Soundsystem—Russom’s approach to music moves past genre, gender, and frameworks, and her acute ears have collected recorded live sounds and music from Cuba for her mix.
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Tracks
This is a compilation of voice notes I recorded on trips to Cuba between 2018 and 2022. I did not intend to share them publicly so, unfortunately, I have not done due diligence about recording the names of all of the people who are present on them. Because of that I am sharing this introduction in lieu of a track listing.
Much of this music was recorded while traveling with composer, musician, record producer, musicologist, historian and author Ned Sublette during his Postmambo Cuban Music seminars, produced in collaboration with music and cultural producer, author, folklorist and musicologist Cary Diez with the assistence of Luis Perdoso and Isablel Reynoso, both prolfic and accomplished cultural producers in their own right. Some of the people on these recordings are quite well-known artists and/or spiritual practitioners. Some of them are people I have personal relationships with. Most of them are people I had conversations with at length during the time during which these recordings were made; conversations which included kinship around shared beleif and practice. All of them care deeply about this music and have dedicated themselves to its living traditions.
The sounds on these recordings connect at depth to Indigenous, Black trans-Atlantic and African diasporic lifeways, of which this music is just a small albeit important part. Much of this music is intended for ceremonies, especially those of the Regla Palo Monte (which traces its multiple roots to central Africa’s Bantu nations as well as the practices of Indigenous Arawak, Carib and Taino people) and the Regla Lukumi or Santería (which traces its principal origins to several Yoruba speaking groups of West Africa). While I have participated in many of the ceremonies these songs are intended for, all of the versions recorded here were shared by those who created them in the context of performing for visitors, scholars, music lovers, students and non-Cubans who care about Cuba - with permission to record respectfully granted as part of that context.
As a white woman, born and raised in the U.S. I am an outsider to the lifeways of the people who I shared time with on these trips. I share their musical expressions here, as I have experienced them, from a place of admiration and respect, and in the spirit of encouraging people to support the communities that continue to hold and steward the lifeways this music emerges from. As a person who practices many of the spiritual traditions from which these musical expressions emerge, who has been doing so for quite some time, and for whom that practice has been life-saving, my admiration and respect are coupled with a deep gratitude, the combination of which forms my intention in sharing this mix and its connections to techno.
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QnA
Where did you grow up? Provdience, Rhode Island
How did this influence the songs you listened to? Providence in the 70’s and 80’s was full of many overlapping sounds because of its combination of small size, population density and relatively large percentage of people who have immigrated there from outside of the U.S. I grew up listening to lots of different kinds of music and spending time with people who had wide musical knowledge and didn’t fixate much on genre or being into just one kind of music. I got exposed to a lot of music in the punk scene that wasn’t punk like reggae, dancehall, house, techno, hip hop and spoken word because people in the punk scene were into those sounds. My elementary school was in a historically Black neighborhood very close to where I lived and I learned a tremendous amount from my classmates, neighbors and teachers about Black cultural traditions in the U.S.- including music - that influenced how I still listen to and think about music today.
Can you pick one song in the mix and explain where you first listened to it? At around one hour and six minutes into the mix there is a song to Eleggua (the Orisha or deity of the crossroads in the Regla Lukumi, also known as Santería). I have heard it many times at this point. On my first trip to Cuba in 1999 a friend of a contact there offered me a cassette tape of songs to the Orishas including Eleggua which I bought from him enthusiastically. He mentioned that he was a teacher but sold cassette tapes on the side to supplement his income. This was at the end of what is called the “special period” in Cuba which was a time of tremendous economic hardship related to the fall of the Soviet Union which had provided infrastructural support following the revolution. That song to Eleggua was on there, although it was a very different version. It’s possible I’d heard it before but the ability to replay it on the cassettre tape (which I did often) meant I got to know it that way in my memory. I wasn’t able to listen to the tape until I got home but I played it as soon as I could.
Who “introduced” you to these songs? I had a high school friend who moved to New York after we graduated in 1992. He is a percussionist and became deeply connected to the living spiritual traditions that this music is a part of in some cases and grows out of in others. He enthusiastically began to introduce me to the sounds he was hearing. When I moved to New York 5 years later in 1997 my neighbors, many of whom had immigrated from Cuba or Puerto Rico began to share related sounds with me. As I became more connected to the music through living spiritual traditions I learned more songs and as I continued to build a relationship with Cuba and Cuban people by visiting frequently my awareness of the island’s musical traditions expanded into learning about other kinds of songs.
Where and when did you first hear techno? I first heard techno in the late 1980’s through the record collections of friends and relatives, through late night radio programs and through occasionally sneaking into dance clubs. When I moved to Berlin in 2004 I was introduced to Europe’s take on techno on a much deeper level through clubs and parties.
What drew you to it? The repetition mostly, and the way it seemed to articulate a post-industrial landscape and political thoughts about that landscape through mostly instrumental means.
Who did it sound like it was for? I honestly remember wondering about that in both the above cases, but especially as a teen hearing Detroit techno in its early waves. In a way it sounded like it was definitely not for me but for people much cooler, older and more knowledgeable… That first wave of music out of Detroit sounded like it was made for cybernetic afrofuturists who were changing the world and having a good time doing it to be honest. And in another way it felt inclusive and like I was invited to be part of whatever the community it emerged from was all about.
You’ve got the microphone. What do you want to say to the techno community? In relation to this mix… I hope it opens some understanding that speaking about techno as music that comes out of Black culture doesn’t just mean what happened in Detroit and its suburbs in the 80’s and 90’s with people like Juan Atkins, Blake Baxter, Mike Banks, Jeff Mills, Yolanda Reynolds and more. It goes back further than that and the music on this mix, which came from Cuba to the U.S. in successive waves and influenced all kinds of popular and dance music is part of that story. The rhtyhmic codes that live in this music and its traditions also live in techno and on the dance floors and other venues where it is played. Cuban people, especially those in the communities this music lives within are currently going through an extremely difficult time that is constantly exacerbated by the U.S. embargo. Finding ways to support these communities in Cuba is an important part of caring for the legacies of techno. On another view, it has been such a gift over the last years to watch what young trans and queer folks have done with the techno scene and its music. The way folks have linked techno parties with bail out fundraisers, mutual aid networks and community support gives me a tremendous amount of hope for the future.
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Art
We've paired Russom’s mix with a piece from Manuel Mendive, an Afro-Cuban artist whose work considers and encorporates the legacies of Yoruba mythology, colonialism, and the Middle Passage.
For more on Mendive‘s work, we recommend this article and interview with him: www.medicci.com/en/our-artists/manuel-mendive
For more on Russom, follow her here: www.instagram.com/gavilanraynarussom/