The polyrhythmic skin of Echo Park Lake, Los Angeles: Brujeros and rumberos teaching solidarity

• In Event: Historicizing Los Angeles : Envisioning New Educational Futures in Latinx Radical Imaginations

Abstract

Amalia Daché “highlights hemispheric ancestral memory, connecting an urban Los Angeles space - Echo Park Lake - to a Caribbean knowledge system. The epidermis of Echo Park Lake reverberates with sonidos ancestrales, polyrhythms embedded in Los Angeles's vibrant urban geography. These ecos create learning and development across space and time, centering African drums and Cuban cultural sounds known through genres like salsa and rumba (Ortiz, 1965). Afro-Cuban ancestral beats form diasporic bridges, connecting spiritual memory and contemporary activism as a form of knowledge. Cubans across racial lines largely embrace African-derived religious traditions, from Yoruba-based Santería to Congo-rooted Palo Monte, once stigmatized under the term "brujería" in the 19th century, now proudly reclaimed (Palmié, 2013). These religious practices deeply inform Cuba’s musical traditions, influencing award-winning music, Broadway productions, and critically fueling activist movements such as the "Patria y Vida" protests (Moore, 1997). Professor Katherine Hagedorn’s ethnographic work further highlights these cultural intersections, as she studied batá drumming directly in Los Angeles with renowned master Francisco Aguabella, illuminating the city's vibrant Afro-Cuban religious and musical networks (Hagedorn, 2001). From Echo Park’s historic “Little Havana” era to recent ICE and homelessness protests, the lake is a site of diverse learning, knowledge production and activist solidaridades. El eco resonates profoundly at the park’s bronze bust of José Martí, a Cuban intellectual and a leading Latin American anti-racist scholar (PBS SoCal, 2021; Los Angeles Explorers Guild, 2024). Retumbar, Afro-Cuban resistance and musical practices studied through ethnomusicological scholarship highlight percussion as sacred dialogue (Hagedorn, 2001). Resonancia during the 2021 "Patria y Vida" protests rooted in Afro-Cuban expression and Cuban political demonstration. A site of rhythmic geography, of collective resistance and spiritual invocation, teaching a future across Echo Park Lake’s urban placeness.

Author

• Amalia Z. Dache, University of Pennsylvania