Congo night at the Cento PanUSA
by Eric Jackson
The whole world is awash with Hollywood culture, which helps with
the US import-export balance but also stokes the fires of nationalism
everywhere. Really, the same specific criticisms about shallow
sex-and-violence fare coming our way from Tinseltown that one
hears from cultural nationalists abroad are also part of the American
discourse on the arts. The added nationalist element to the critique
is the complaint that this mass-produced culture drives the best
works of most nations to the fringes or out of the picture entirely.
This allegation, too, has its US domestic counterpart. Hence public
television, the State Department's Jazz Ambassadors, and other
public sector efforts to spread the good stuff that doesn't bring
in enough money to pique the Hollywood and recording industry
moguls' interest.
As it affects Panama, that puts much of the best American music
on the Worldnet cable channel (Cable Onda channel 73). It also
makes the Centro PanUSA an important cultural institution here.
February is Black History Month in the United States, and as a
US government institution, the Centro PanUSA takes annual note
of that, with the highbrow standards that director Ray Underwood
maintains there. This year's observances, which took place on
February 13, included an interesting mix of Afro-American and
Afro-Panamanian cultures, with the accent on colonial black, rather
than West Indian, Panamanian culture.
Out in the hallways, the center had a display on the contributions
of black women to US society, and warming up for the main event
there was a video about the Sunday-best hats that African-American
ladies wear to church.
Inside the center's little auditorium there was a photo exhibit
by Marshall Esquina Jr., "Congos y Diablos de Costa Arriba de
Colón." The congos are a direct Panamanian descendant of West
African music, dance and mask arts, a tradition that was kept
alive by the Cimarrones, slaves who fled to the jungle and maintained
old country ways in remote communities. The photos showed the
canon as expounded in Cativa, Portobelo and Nombre de Dios.
The main event, which started late due to a traffic tie-up that
delayed the performers' arrival, featured the Reyes Congos de
Cativa.
Those who waited patiently were not disappointed. The six men
and five women performed their Spanish-language, African-style
call-and-response vocals to the beat of drums and whistles, the
men in patchwork skirts and conical hats decorated with mirrors,
and the women in long dresses and headwear of the style from which
the pollera is descended. The dance routines were sexual without
being pornographic, with men interested in one thing in particular
being led on by the women, only to be fended off at the last minute.
This was the tease without the stripping, the popular culture
that has been displaced by vulgarity in most of Panama's commercial
nightclubs.
The costumes, the barefoot choreography, the Afro-Panamanian dialect
and the music were all priceless aspects of Panamanian culture
that are rarely seen in Panama City. The audience was about evenly
divided between black Panamanians and white Americans, with a
sprinkling of other races and nationalities on hand as well. People
went away edified and entertained. Count that as another success
for the Centro PanUSA, and a refreshing break from Hollywood pablum.
