García Alvite SS

Strategic Positions of Las Hijas del Sol: Equatorial Guinea in World Music Dosinda Garcia-Alvite is an ery little attention has been paid to Equatorial Assistant Professor of Span- Guinea’s cultural works both in African and in His- ish at Denison University. panic studies. Even less space has been dedicated to Her research interests focus on V the country’s women’s lives and music. In this essay I aim to issues of migration, histori- fill part of that void by examining the works of the group cal memory, and gender is- called Las Hijas del Sol, since according to a website from a sues in literature, film and music of contemporary Spain. cultural critic in Equatorial Guinea “this group can put the 1 Her dissertation, which she country on the global map.” Indeed, this duo formed by an is revising for publication, aunt and her niece, Paloma and Piruchi, achieved world rec- analyzes music and litera- ognition with their first recording Sibèba in 1995. From then ture of artists from Equato- on, their subsequent works Kottó (1997), Kchaba (1999), rial Guinea exiled in Spain. Pasaporte mundial (2001) and Colores del amor (2003), all produced in Spain, have kept the group at the top of the World Music Charts Europe.2 The importance of studying these works in the field of contemporary Spanish Cultural Studies derives from the fact that, although belatedly in com- parison to England or France, Spain has recently become an openly multicultural society, not only through the official recognition of the different historical nationalities of the Basque Country, Catalonia, and Galicia, but also through the presence of increasing numbers of immigrants. The specific case of the Equatoguinean community liv- ing in Spain dates, in fact, back to the 1960s, a period in which a select group of youths from the former colony of Spain (at the time officially considered a province) came to study at Spanish universities with the aim of becoming the leaders of the country that would obtain its independence on October 12, 1968. Unfortunately, their first president, Macías Nguema, soon became one of the worst dictators in Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Volume 8, 2004 150 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies Africa, and the number of exiles and politi- The social anthropologist, Thomas Erick- cal refugees fleeing to Spain increased.3 Nev- sen, has written: ertheless, the plight of the Equatoguineans is little known, because in 1969 the Francoist Ethnicity emerges and is made rel- government forbade the publication of any evant through social situations and news coming from the former colony. This encounters, and through people’s information was declared materia reservada way of coping with the demands and in an effort to hide the failure of the decolo- challenges of life. (1) nization process in Equatorial Guinea.4 As Further, says Ericksen, ethnicity refers to a consequence, the cultural production of those “aspects of relationships between the Equatoguineans is little known today, groups which consider themselves, and are but I would argue that it deserves our at- regarded by others, as being culturally dis- tention. As the critic Homi Bhabha points tinctive” (4). The relational basis of ethnicity, out, the immigrants that travel from former with attention to the boundaries of lan- colonies to the metropolis offer a new view guage, culture and political organization, of the nation: become recurrent issues in the records of Las Hijas del Sol. The Western metropole must con- front its postcolonial history, told by Their songs can be analyzed as instru- its influx of postwar migrants and ments that enable the establishment of eth- refugees, as an indigenous or native nic cultural differences both in Equatorial narrative internal to its national iden- Guinea, in relation to the Fang and Ndowe tity. (6) peoples, and in Spain where they point to the elements that make them distinctive My analysis of the music of Las Hijas among other African immigrants and Pen- del Sol will foreground the different activi- insular ethnic groups. ties and movements that show how con- The first recording of the group Sibèba temporary Spanish cultural production is from 1995 is dedicated to the Bubi culture, closely linked to politics, and how it is mani- native to the singers. The record, according fested at three levels: ethnicity, nationality, to the booklet that accompanies it, is dedi- and global links. Through reflection on how cated “to all those that make efforts to defend these three issues are manifested in the works traditional ways of life and to underplay the of Las Hijas del Sol, we will not only learn barbarisms of a poorly understood modernity” how Equatoguineans contribute to Spain’s (my emphasis). Sibèba offers a compilation multiculturalism, but moreover, how they of traditional Bubi songs and legends that mirror Spanish society. pertain to different aspects of the Bubi cul- Ethnicity is often used in the concep- ture, such as “Boto I” (a song for the rite of tion of social groups although its meaning fertility), “Rea” which deals with the moon and content are constantly negotiated de- and sisterhood, and “O wato wa baye” pending on the context. Ethnic groups are which is about Bisila, the mother goddess based upon relationships that are con- of the Bubi people. The songs are in the stantly constructed rather than on linguis- Bubi language, with translations in Span- tically and culturally homogeneous entities. ish; many are a cappella arrangements that Dosinda García-Alvite 151 recover the rhythms and the cultural dis- the group that suffered the strongest accul- tinctiveness of the Bubi ethnic group. turation to Spain. Cultural erosion contin- Amidst criticisms of a lack of authen- ued after independence when the Nguema ticity among the other ethnic groups of family (members of the majority Fang Equatorial Guinea, the record reached num- group) took control of the government. The ber twenty on the World Music Charts Nguemist discourse imposed a politically Europe in 1996.5 It gained a following motivated, personalized, and falsified view among Western audiences. Produced in of the national culture and history, elimi- Spain by the alternative music label Nube- nating other Fang, Bubi or Ndowe perspec- negra, the publication and reception of this tives. So much so that, as M’bare N’gom record deserves our attention. While world states, Equatoguinean culture became “mu- music in Spain has yet to catch on with the tilated culture” (Diálogos 21). The Nguemist Spanish public, the success of Sibèba seems policies, which continue to this day, have to appeal to Western audiences’ desire for driven Bubi culture to the brink of extinc- the exotic. Playing with that expectation, tion.8 Many years after the imposition of the record has two different jackets, which Spanish culture, the historical, cultural, and changed according to the place where it was linguistic boundaries that distinguish the distributed.6 The front cover produced in Bubi people from other Equatoguineans are Spain has a photograph of the singers now represented and re-created for the Span- dressed in traditional Bubi raffia skirts and ish public through the exotic aesthetics, elaborate hairdos as they play Bubi bells. themes, and language of the records. Look- The front cover used for selling the same ing at the past, and acting from the me- record in the rest of Europe and the United tropolis, the use of the singers’ photographs States presents a close-up of Paloma and dressed in native garb for the jackets of Piruchi in modern dress, while the back Sibèba, as it was marketed in Spain, can be cover pictures them in raffia skirts. It is in- interpreted as a counterpoint to the conse- teresting to note that the vast majority of quences of Spanish colonization. people in Equatorial Guinea wear Western In addition, the marketing of Las clothes. One is more likely to see traditional Hijas’s records contributes, visually and cul- dresses in old photos than on the country’s turally, to what Isabel Santaolalla has iden- streets. It is clear that the use of non-West- tified as the “escalation in the propagation ern clothes and symbols from “far away of ‘ethnically loaded’ images, rhythms, and lands” on both jackets emphasizes tradition stories” in contemporary Spain (56). By and ethnic difference by exoticizing them.7 emphasizing their distinctiveness among the In Spain the fetishized representation Equatoguineans, the Africans, and all the of otherness is presented in two ways: visu- other incoming immigrants, Las Hijas af- ally and culturally. This insistence on rein- firm alliances with other aggrieved ethnic forcing the possible authenticity of tradi- groups, both in Spain and the world. tional music and blending it with modern Through broadly accessible and appealing forms of production and reception through music, these Bubi singers are passing along the singers’ traditional appearance can be the histories and indigenous knowledge of related to two historical connections be- their place of origin as they struggle against tween Equatorial Guinea and Spain. Dur- material deprivation and cultural oppres- ing the colonial period, the Bubi people were sion.9 152 Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies The tradition that Las Hijas want to and beliefs of the Bubi ethnic group is that recover offers several distinctive character- the records themselves become an official istics, according to the lyrics in Sibèba. text that testifies to the existence of a re- When Paloma and Piruchi say in the song pressed way of life. Reinforcing their own “A batyo bö lökò” (“People from here”) that oral tradition, Las Hijas provide a perma- “elo batyö bö lökö/ ëtyö a bötyö e takiö” nent registry (both for new immigrants and (“My people, tradition is above everything”), for Spaniards) of a culture that is in danger they state their goal to record dances, social of being forgotten or erased under the pres- practices and a system of beliefs that iden- sure of the Nguemist dictatorship.

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