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Thesis

French

ID: <

10670/1.qrm4bk

>

Where these data come from
Musicians from Havana and “the special period” test : everyday life under pressure and relationship to politics in Cuba

Abstract

The aim of this research is to provide a number of trends and areas of tension that have emerged or evolved in Cuba after the « special period in peacetime », which can be defined as the most considerably developed social and economic crisis that has struck this country, as a result of the socialist camp collapse in the early 90’s. In order to achieve this, we focus on the experience of musicians seen as ordinary in the city of Havana. It is thanks to the observation of artists in action in their everyday life that we will be able to understand and to capture the depth of this crisis and these large redefinitions it causes. The purpose is to define the consequences of the means that have been mobilized by the Cuba's socialist system in order to get out of this social and economic impasse while safeguarding the social benefits of this revolution, based on its popular legitimacy. If in the end the reforms (the massification of tourism, the gradual increase of liberalizing and economical behaviors, and the dual circulation of currencies...) allowed an economic recovery, they lead to a questioning and entering into contradiction with speeches, prerogatives and ways of life valued by those in power. We will see how areas of tension, emanating from changes (between an idealized past and an uncertain future, between the picture of the genuinely Cuban and non-Cuban, and finally between the people of the revolution and the individual who has his own project) treated by these musicians, especially sensitive to the « decompartmentalization » of the Cuban experience. We will see that these musicians, in the way they define theirselves as artists, in their concept of path in life and profession, effect sweeping changes, constantly negotiating questions of identity to ascribe meaning to what they do in this confused, social and economic reality. In their life and professional practices, the means allocated to fight and to try to make a living with music show in our opinion the Cuban society in its entirety marked by a great ambivalence, the need to find new means of subsistence and to bring these decomposing or emerging elements together.

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