Dictionary of

Caribbean
and AfroLatin
American Biography
Franklin W. Knight
and Henry Louis Gates Jr.
Editors in Chief
VOLUME 2: CABRFENT

1
Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford.
It furthers the Universitys objective of excellence in research, scholarship,
and education by publishing worldwide. Oxford is a registered trade mark of
Oxford University Press in the UK and certain other countries.

Published in the United States of America by

Oxford University Press
198 Madison Avenue, New York, NY 10016.
Oxford University Press 2016
Preface and Introduction 2016 by Franklin W. Knight and Henry Louis Gates Jr.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means,
without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press,
or as expressly permitted by law, by license, or under terms agreed with
the appropriate reproduction rights organization. Inquiries concerning
reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the
Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above.
You must not circulate this work in any other form
and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Dictionary of Caribbean and Afro-Latin American biography /
Franklin W. Knight and Henry Louis Gates Jr., editors in chief.
volumescm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
9780199935796 (set) 9780190614393 (vol. 1) 9780190614409 (vol. 2) 9780190614416 (vol. 3)
9780190614423 (vol. 4) 9780190614430 (vol. 5) 9780190614447 (vol. 6)
1. BlacksCaribbean AreaBiographyDictionaries. 2. AfricansCaribbean AreaBiographyDictionaries.
3. BlacksLatin AmericaBiographyDictionaries. 4. AfricansLatin AmericaBiographyDictionaries.
5. Caribbean AreaBiographyDictionaries. 6. Latin AmericaBiographyDictionaries.
I. Franklin W. Knight. II. Henry Louis Gates Jr.
F2191.B55 D53 2016
920.0092/09729B2015024366

135798642
Printed by RR Donnelley
in the United States of America
on acid-free paper

74 C a s a s o l a ,

F l o s s Eff i e

Woods, Silvana. Mothers of Modern Belize: Profiles of

Four Belizean Patriots. Belize City: National
Womens Commission, 1991.

Lawrence Vernon

Casaverde, Flix (19472011), guitar player, composer, arranger, and musical director, was born in
Lima, Peru, on 23 April 1947, the son of Luis Alberto
Casaverde Ardiles, a professional musician, and Feli
cita Maria Vivanco Vivanco, wet nurse for Chabuca
Grandas younger brother and later housewife.
Flixs father split his time between studying radio
broadcasting and performing at private parties for
the elite of Lima in the 1950s, and was skillful with
the guitar, accordion, and piano and knowledgeable
on diverse music styles played for ballroom dances.
Luis transferred his artistry to Flix, who soon
became a versatile music interpreter for different
types of audiences. During his high school studies
and still an adolescent, Flix Casaverde formed a
band called El Sexto Poder (The Sixth Power), its
name inspired by the black power slogan coined
by black social movements in the United States in
the 1960s. The members of Casaverdes band were
six black friends, and they interpreted the music of
a particular generation of Puerto Ricans established
in Harlem, New York, by the mid-twentieth century,
such as the Palmieri brothers, the Lebron brothers,
Richie Ray, Boby Cruz, Gilberto Miguel Calderon,
and Jos Cheo Feliciano.
In 1969, during the military government led by
General Juan Velasco Alvarado, Casaverde joined
the air force. He worked as a mechanic on airplane
motors and later was commissioned to perform investigations that led him to discover a series of illegal
practices involving high-ranking officials. He was
asked to disregard these findings, but refused to obey,
so he was imprisoned at a military detention center.
In 1973 the penalty was revoked, and Casaverde abandoned his military life and returned to his civil, professional, and family lives. In 1975 he married Sabina
Ramos, with whom he had two children, Luis and
Yaninha. Casaverde lived in different countries, but
it was Mexico where he lived the longest outside
ofPeru.
Flix Casaverde collaborated as guitar player with
the renowned Peruvian composer and singer Cha
buca Granda between 1974 and 1977. Together, they
recorded the album Tarimba Negra (Madrid, 1978),
on which Casaverde performed for the first time one
of his most popular compositions, Cuatro Tiempos
Negros Jvenes (Four Young Black Rhythms). This
piece was composed in the form of a suite for one

guitar and one cajn (Peruvian wooden drum box)

and inspired by four Peruvian coastal rhythms: the
zapateo, marinera limea, land, and festejo. Cuatro
Tiempos is the first step Casaverde took to define
himself as an experimental and black musician, and
as an autodidactic guitar player without academic
training within the Peruvian musical tradition. It is
in this piece that Casaverde synthesized his aesthetic
and political vision in the midst of the social and cultural tensions of the late 1970s: criollo coastal music
with a Hispanic vision in contrast to an Afro-Peruvian
coastal tradition. Many of the musical influences that
marked Casaverdes professional life are present in
this suite (e.g., bossa nova, jazz, Cuban son).
In Peru, he served as a music instructor at the
Escuela Nacional de Folclore Jos Mara Arguedas
and Centro de Musica y Danza de la Pontificia Uni
versidad Catolica del Per. He spent most of his
professional life accompanying and recording with
female singers devoted to coastal Peruvian and some
Latin American musical genres. Besides Chabuca
Granda, he additionally accompanied Susana Baca,
Eva Aylln, Tania Libertad, Olga Milla, Carmina
Cannavino, Julie Freundt, Marcela Prez Silva, and
Patricia Saravia, among others. He also received
two opportunities to register his work as a soloist:
in Somos Ad (IEMPSA, 1986) and Memorias des
Flix CasaverdeGuitarra Negra (IEMPSA, 1990).
In Somos Ad Casaverde highlights his work as a
lyricist through arrangements in the rhythm of fes
tejo, panalivio, valse, tambarria, zapateo, and marinera. Guitarra Negra is acoustic and instrumental in
its entirety and arranged for one guitar and one cajn.
Casaverdes musical landscape was incredibly
diverse, with cultural influences that ranged from
ballroom dance genres, to classical music, through
jazz, traditional Cuban music, Brazilian rhythms, and
Peruvian coastal folklore. Casaverdes work explored
artistic pathways across musical styles and genres
that were discriminated among the majority of traditionalist musicians he knew well. He built, in a
very personal way, his own instrumental synthesis
based on contemporary and experimental principles,
something rare in the history of Peruvian music.
He avoided participating in nationalistic discourses
or essentialist debates that linked Peruvian coastal
music to African countries. He believed these tendencies divided and did not embrace all sectors in the
Peruvian social and musical spectrum. Casaverde
died at age 64 in Lima on 16 October 2011.
[See alsoAylln, Eva;Baca, Susana; andFeliciano,
Jos Cheo.]

Casimir, Lumane

Bibliography

Feldman, Heidi Carolyn. Black Rhythms of Peru: Reviving

African Musical Heritage in the Black Pacific.
Middleton, Conn.: Wesleyan University Press, 2006.
Len Quirs, Javier Francisco. The Aestheticization of
Tradition: Professional Afroperuvian Musicians,
Cultural Reclamation, and Artistic Interpretation.
Ph.D. diss., University of Texas at Austin, 2003.
Llanos, Fernando. Flix Casaverde, violo negro:
Identidade e relaes de poder na msica da costa do
Peru. So Paulo: Instituto de Artes, Universidade
Estadual Paulista, 2011.

Mnica Rojas and Fernando Llanos

Casimir, Lumane (c. 1914c. 1955), popular singer,

guitarist, and composer, was likely born in the village of Dubdou, Haiti, not far from Gonaves. The
date of Casimirs birth is contested, although it most
likely would have been around 1914. Little is known
of her origins, except that she had a difficult childhood and purportedly left Gonaves alone at age 14
to seek a happier life in Port-au-Prince, traveling
the hundred miles by foot with only a guitar on her
back. One story explains that better fortune began
when painter Alix Roy heard Casimir singing on
the Champs de Mars (a public square in downtown
Port-au-Prince) and took the gifted teenager to meet
his aunt, Lina Mathon Blanchet, a pianist, composer,
folklorist, and arts promoter, who is credited with
discovering Casimirs talent. Another story relates
that Blanchet, at the insistence of spectators who
knocked at her door during siesta one afternoon,
went directly to the Champs de Mars to witness
Lumanes crowd-captivating performance in person.
Either way, this fortuitous encounter is purported
to have taken place around 1930.
Blanchet promptly integrated the young Casimir
into her vocal ensemble, the Chorale Legba. The
Haitian historian Georges Corvington noted that early
in her career she was also a member of the Trio Astoria,
directed by Jacques Nelson, and that her regular
visits to the home of Madame Ludovic Boucard,
located on Rue Lafleur-Ducheine, would draw passers-by as she sang and strummed the guitar for the
mistress of the house (Corvington, 1977). Later, Casi
mir collaborated frequently with the Super Jazz des
Jeunes, the hottest dance band of the era; with celebrated master drummer Ti Roro; and with the
Orchestre Issah El Saieh, another leading big-band
jazz ensemble. She soon earned a coveted place with
the Troupe Folklorique Nationale, the newly formed
national dance troupe then under the direction of
the dancer and choreographer Jean-Lon Destin.

75

The woman famously described as the premire

vedette du chant en Hati (first star of Haitian
song) formally debuted at the inauguration of the
border town Belladre in 1948, stunning audiences
with her dynamic voice and commanding stage presence. In 1949 Casimir caused a similar uproar when
she performed with the Jazz des Jeunes at the Thatre
de Verdure. That same year, she sang the national
anthem at the Place des Hroes de lIndpendance
(a public square commemorating figures of the
Haitian Revolution) during the Exposition Inter
nationale du Bicentenaire de Port-au-Prince. This
worlds fair, a bicentennial celebration of the found
ing of Port-au-Prince and a $4 million ploy of
President Dumarsais Estim to boost international
tourism to the country, provided Lumane the opportunity to charm international crowds with her
rendition of folk songs such as Panama m tonbe
and Carline Acao. Estims successor, the junta
leader Paul Magloire, selected the Jazz des Jeunes
and Troupe Folklorique Nationale to represent Haiti
abroad in 1951, which afforded Casimir the opportunity to tour in Canada, the United States, and
Cuba. Although a New York Times critic sniffed in a
published review at Casimirs performance at New
Yorks Ziegfeld Theatre, mostly because she sang in
Haitian Kreyl, Newsweek anointed her Queen of
the Mringues in reaction to her public appearances in North America. Besides bringing new life
to traditional Haitian melodies and mringues of
the past, Casimir composed songs remembered to
this day, including Lumane pa bl fanm (Lumane
Is Not a Beautiful Woman) and Larivy mwen te
ye (I Was at the River).
In terms of her personal life, Casimir was briefly
married to a Mr. Jean-Bart (first name unknown),
who was in the military, around 1949. She had no
formal education, and some reports claim that she
was a homely woman (a well-circulated rumor presumably alluding toor leading toone of her
most popular songs, the self-deprecating Lumane
pa bl fanm, which translates as Lumane is not a
beautiful woman), but all agree that she possessed
a magnetic personality and an irresistible voice that
captured the imagination of the population. Yet despite the tremendous popularity Casimir enjoyed
at the height of her career, she was virtually abandoned by her friends and fans toward the end of
her life. Her increasing distance from society was
accompanied by a steep decline in both her pro
fessional standing and physical health, which may
have been precipitated by excessive alcohol consumption, illness, loneliness, and the fact that she never

Mnica Rojas and Fernando Llanos. 2016. "Casaverde, Flix.". in Dictionary Of

Caribbean And Afro-Latin American Biography, edited by Franklin W. Knight and
Henry Louis Gates Jr. Vol. 2 (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016), 74-75.