Timbalaye artistic precepts – 2° edition - 3rd-4th-5th-6th September 2009

Timbalaye Festival is based on the concept of transculturation created by Fernando Ortiz to denote the origin of Cuban identity as a result of the fusion among different cultures and ethnics during the Spanish colonization in the island.

According to us this concept is useful to represent also Rumba origin both as musical and artistic genre in the broad sense. It’s just because Rumba represents the concept of “Cubania” in its deep meaning, that it can be considered as an exemple of transculturation, a result of a cultural contamination, in which the features of every human being can be expressed without loosing their own peculiarities. For this reason Rumba is an unifying phenomenon, neither closed nor excludent. It originates from the sidelines, from the modesty and necessity of human beings to find free expression and at the same time to identify themselves in shared values, without presuming to conform to the distant models of élite.

In the light of these remarks the Festival main theme will be the “contamination”, analysed from an artistic, cultural and social point of view.

The contamination from which Rumba derives and develops in the contemporary age will be represented by specific artistic chioices: after demostrating the fact that Rumba belongs to the fields of theatre, poetry, anthropology, visual and plastic arts, besides music and dance, our aim is to show how these artistic and cultural genres succeed to integrate and express the same theme from different points of view, becoming symbols of the sense of cultural identity and belonging.

Moreover we aspire to propose a polyhedric and versatile programme, to show how every participant can construct a personal critical path, choosing freely the cultural activities that interest him both to create a personal interpretation and to share his own likings with other partecipants.

In this way we are sure to offer an artistic product that enriches partecipants knowledge and mirrors the historical value of this cultural phenomenon.We believe that this is the only real precept on which we can build an authentic learning of Rumba. We hope that our project will be introductory to a coherent development of it, respecting its traditions and its values.