(Journey to Eastern Cuba, March 13-23, 2025)
Rev. Steve Jungkeit
One of the many projects we’ve undertaken at FCCOL over the past several years has been to explore how the history of Old Lyme, and of Southern New England more broadly, has been shaped by contact with peoples of the African diaspora. We’ve learned of more than 300 enslaved people that lived on the spaces we now use for worship, for school, and for other activities. We’ve commemorated many of those individuals through the Witness Stones. With that, we’ve also opened an exploration of African diasporic rituals and music, here at home (with visits from Román Díaz and his ensemble) and by traveling to Ghana, Togo, and Benin, as well as other key locations in this story, like New Orleans and Haiti.
Now plans are afoot to visit the Eastern section of Cuba, centered around Santiago, from March 13-23, 2025. It’s a section of the island called Oriente, a place that few outsiders now visit. It was there that thousands of Haitian planters and their captive workers fled after the Haitian Revolution. In exile twice over, the enslaved population there preserved the rituals, music, language and culture that had sustained them across both the Middle Passage and the Windward Passage (the straits separating Haiti and Cuba). To this day, those traditions can be found throughout Eastern Cuba, a living monument to the tenacity, courage, and creativity of a people across time and space.
In cities and mountain villages, we’ll be exploring those traditions. This will be a journey with a heavy emphasis upon music and dance, which is how religion is conveyed in this part of the world. We’ll be attending ceremonies every single day, and sometimes twice a day. We’ll learn the history of the traditions we’re encountering, and we’ll also do a deep dive into the history and culture of the entire region. We’ll be staying in the houses of locals. Because of conditions in Cuba, and because of the secretive nature of these traditions, this is a world that very few people get to access. But FCCOL will have that opportunity.
The journey will be organized and produced with our friend Ned Sublette, who has written the book on Cuban music, called, fittingly, Cuba and its Music: From the First Drums to the Mambo. Ned has joined us several times in Old Lyme, and he’s been exploring the music and rituals of Cuba for the past 35 years. He’s calling this journey Oriente: Buscando Haiti, which loosely translates as “looking for Haiti in Oriente.” It’s a resonant title, since our community hasn’t been able to visit Haiti over the past several years. But we’ll find Haiti, as it happens, in Cuba.
Email Steve Jungkeit if you’re interested in learning more about this journey (steven@jungkeit.net). It’s a standalone experience, but it builds upon what we’ve done in West Africa in early 2024, as well as our visits to New Orleans and Haiti. And so why not come and discover a world of spirit, music, and culture that has shaped the history of the modern world?
Addendum: in preparation for this journey, I’ll be exploring several key books this summer: Tell My Horse, by Zora Neal Hurston (the legendary folklorist and novelist who collected and preserved the stories of African Diasporic peoples throughout the Americas); Divine Horsemen, by Maya Deren (an experimental, avant-garde filmmaker in the mid 20th century, who was shaped by the traditions of Haiti); and Island Possessed, by Katherine Dunham (a dancer and choreographer who learned a crucial part of her art in Haiti, before sharing it more widely in the United States and beyond). In addition, I heartily recommend Ned’s book, along with Ada Ferrer’s Pulitzer Prize winning Cuba: An American History, for an overview of what we’ll be exploring.