Juan de Dios Alfonso Armenteros (San José de Las Lajas, 1825 –Guanabacoa, 29 June 1877), was a blackCuban band leader,composer andclarinetist. He founded the small orchestraFlor de Cuba, which played at dances and in theatres in the middle 19th century in Havana.[1]
In Havana, Alfonso played clarinet in Feliciano Ramos's bandLa Unión in 1856, and directedLas Almendares in 1859. It is not known precisely when he formedLa Flor de Cuba, but it must have been in the 1860s. It became one of the most popular bands in the middle to late 19th century. They playedcontradanzas, and other dances of the time. The orchestra was atípica in format, based mainly on wind instruments.
Flor de Cuba also played inmusical theatre tozarzuelas and bufos. Cuban Bufo theatre was a form of comedy, ribald and satirical, with stock figures imitating types that might be found anywhere. They contained a musical form,guarachas, with spicy lyrics on current events and personalities.[2]
The band was playing in theTeatro Villanueva in Havana in 1869 when the Spanish Voluntarios attacked the theatre, killing some ten or so patrons who had been watching abufo and applauding its revolutionary sentiments. The context was that theTen Years' War had started the previous year, whenCarlos Manuel de Céspedes had freed his slaves, and declared Cuban independence. Creole sentiments were running high, and the Colonial government and their rich Spanish traders were reacting. Not for the first time, politics and music were closely intertwined, for musicians had been integrated since before 1800, and "from 1800 to 1840, blacks were the clear majority of the professional musicians".[3] Bufo theatres were shut down for some years after this event.
OrquestaFlor de Cuba continued until its leader's death, when it was taken over by one of its long-term members,Raimundo Valenzuela.
However, from other passages, such as p153, it is clear that Carpentier means "blacks and mulattos" because the census data he relies on uses the phrase "males of color"