Jorge Luis Morejon leading his Comparsa students.Miami Dade College Interamerican Campus.
School Atrium. 627 SW 27th Ave.
Miami, Florida, 1994
After living in Spain for a period of a year, Jorge Luis Morejon returned to his hometown, Miami, to formally finish his Associate of Arts degree at MDC. It is during this period that he began to work as a dance instructor at MDC Inter-American Center.
At the Inter-American Center, he was invited by his professor, Cuban anthropologist Dr. Mercedes Sandoval, to create a comparsa for the Calle 8 Festival. He was born in Sancti- Spiritus. He was raised in Camajuani and Santa Clara. Hence, the comparsas, carriages, changuies, and parrandas were very influential elements in his upbringing.
It was Jorge Luis Morejon's desire to combine three generations of dancers, the younger students from MDC, the elderly from the Little Havana Activity Center and the children related to both groups. As he says: "it was Important to create a sense of community similar to that of a neighborhood (barrio) in order to make the comparsa an authentic event."
His choreographic work Comparsa Miami Dade College Interamerican, as part of Carnival Miami 1994, granted him an invitation to the Mexican TV show Siempre en Domingo and a scholarship award from The Kiwanis of Little Havana.
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Notes by Jorge Luis Morejon
A comparsa, or a conga de comparsa, takes place during the Cuban carnivals and parrandas. It includes a band that plays a conga, a large group of dancers dancing and traveling on the streets, and a carrosa (carriage) where the musicians play and which follows the comparsa along the Carnival's parade.
The comparsa specifically, is a development of African processions, where groups of devotees followed a given saint or deity during a particular religious celebration. The Carnival at large, is a Cuban traditional celebration that originated from the fiestas organized by Spanish descendants in the island. The carnivals have kept the old Spanish traditional influences such as the costumes and the carriages, as well as the old African ones such as the comparsas and parades.
In Havana, the carnival was celebrated three days before Lent. But from the center to the east of the island, the carnival was celebrated in relation to the particular patron saint's day of every town. According to the information shared by the Ministerio de Cultura de Cuba, (MCC)"the most popular carnivals are ( I suggest arguably) those of Santiago de Cuba, Camagüey and Havana." In Santiago, most of the comparsas originated from the tumbas francesas and cabildos africanos (African congregations) due to the French cultural influence and the African presence coming from Haiti.
The parrandas and charangas are also traditional celebrations that are similar to the carnival in their use of carriages and changüies. The MCC considers that the most known of all are the Parrandas from the town of Remedios, in the Villa Clara province, and the parrandas from Bejucal, in the Havana province, but also they are celebrated in Sancti Spíritus and Ciego de Avila. Interestingly, it is in the parrandas tradition that the town's people take sides, divide themselves by neighborhoods (barrios) and compete against each other about plaza-art-works, carriages, pyrotechnics, street ornamentation, (enrramadas), music, etc. The MCC, in its rather simplistic interpretation of the Cuban traditional festivities, does not mention at all the influence of the Chinese in the pyrotechnic displays which take place during the carnival celebrations all through out Cuba.
Different from the carnival, where the carriages transport the band and also dancers, the parranda's carriage is based on a theme that can be taken from world literature, film or any other source. The music is allegoric to the theme of the carriage and the models on the carriage represent characters within the theme. It is in the process of building all of these, that the whole barrio gets involved, working all year round on a theme, which is kept secret from the other barrio. Despite the last forty nine years of systematic twisting of Cuban traditional festivities, the one thing kept alive in all these celebrations is its festive idiosyncratic character and its collective, all inclusive nature.
Resources
Ministerio de la Republica de Cuba. Fiestas tradicionales. July, 18, 2008.
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