Buried is Cuban professor and musicologist Lino Neira Betancourt

December 9, 2019

The renowned Cuban instrumentalist, professor, and musicologist Lino Neira Betancourt was buried in the Colón necropolis in Havana, after passing away this past weekend in the capital due to complications from the cardiovascular disease he suffered from.

A statement issued by the University of the Arts recognizes that the late percussionist was until his final days a member of the Scientific Council, the Commission on Scientific Degrees, and the Permanent Court for the Ratification of Teaching Categories at that prestigious institution of artistic education.

In the same text, the unifying role of Lino Neira Betancourt in the memorable percussion festivals in April is equally noted, which later gave rise to the now-defunct Society of Percussionists of Cuba (PERCUBA).

That project by the ever-present researcher and pedagogue of the Higher Institute of Art (ISA), brought together for the only time composers, scholars, performers, and percussion instrument makers, in what are called the classical and popular branches of music.

At ISA, Lino Neira Betancourt was vice dean of the Faculty of Music, Head of the Percussion Department, where he is considered the introducer of this multi-timbral modality in the study programs of artistic education in the country.

In the numerous forums where his scientific merits were recognized, he constantly worked to vindicate a segment of popular music that was insufficiently taken into account, and to conceive a perpetual tribute to his teacher, the Professor Emeritus of ISA and National Prize Winner in Music and Artistic Education, Domingo Aragú Rodríguez.

Lino Neira Betancourt was the author of the books How an Abakuá Drum Sounds (1991), Percussion in the Musical Genres of Cuba (2004), and Percussion in Cuban Music (2005), as well as a prolific number of articles for publications in the country and other parts of the world.

There was always a veiled prejudice about so-called popular music. And within it, percussionists regularly occupied the lowest scale of value. And from a young age, Lino Neira Betancourt was concerned and committed to vindicating, to transposing work into justice. And slowly as the day (as the poet described the passage of beautiful work), that monumental task was carried out, which validated, gathered, and instructed.

Lino Neira Betancourt has just taken his leave, the man of the Percuba Society, of the fantastic percussion festivals of the third week of April, which managed to bring together what once seemed almost impossible. There came together composers, performers, researchers, and percussion instrument makers, in what are called the classical and popular branches.

Both the festival and the association had a precarious, troubled life, with scant institutional support, until they succumbed. But the sowing of Lino Neira Betancourt bears fruit in the tocata and in the morphological study, permanently inscribed in the programs of artistic education in Cuba.

The enslaved African, denied the ability to forget and cease to be, invented another drum head and crafted the drum to conceive the music of his heart, as Martí defined it in the essay Our America. I believe that, until Lino Neira Betancourt, all that world of sounds happened instinctively. The musicologist determined the wavelength in the hand that strikes. From acoustics, one can well determine how an abakuá drum sounds. And the professor had the gift of knowing how to teach it, of being able to disseminate it from the pulpit, of leaving it well written in books.

He lived obsessed with those pages of Black cabildos that managed to expand their traditions through time across Cuban geography, despite the walls of slavery and racial prejudice. In each disciple of Lino Neira Betancourt there would surely be pride in that component of Cuban identity, as well as the awareness awakened by him about the inner rhythm of the Homeland, with a place in percussion.

In all of them he fixed gratitude to the old masters, which will always be the best formula to follow. Lino Neira Betancourt has departed, but there remain the young percussionists from his open-minded cloister, with better-trained ears, ready to recreate the heartbeat of Cuba in the infinite event of the drums.