Banner image above: Cristóbal Díaz-Ayala
Every year, the Cuban Research Institute (CRI), the Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center, and Florida International University Libraries offer the Díaz-Ayala Library Travel Grants to study the special collections related to Cuba and Cuban Americans. These awards are offered in honor of Cristóbal Díaz-Ayala, the prominent music collector and independent scholar who donated his Cuban and Latin American Popular Music Collection to FIU in 2001. The grants provide scholars and graduate students the opportunity to conduct research on Cuba and its diaspora at the FIU Green Library, thereby expanding access to the library's unique holdings and enhancing its value as a national resource.
CRI, LACC, and FIU Libraries offer research stipends of up to $2,000 each to offset the costs of a minimum one-week stay (five working days) in Miami to consult the collections. Scholars in the humanities and the social sciences whose work will be enhanced by using the resources of the collections are encouraged to apply. Priority is given to scholars who are not previous recipients of the award. Two of the awards are given to U.S.-based scholars or graduate students, in accordance with the requirements of the U.S. Department of Education Title VI Grant. Those residing in other countries are encouraged to apply for the remaining grant.
As a condition of the award, recipients give a lunchtime lecture at FIU for faculty and students on their recent research. Any publications resulting from research conducted at FIU during the grant period should acknowledge the Cuban Research Institute, the Kimberly Green Latin American and Caribbean Center, the FIU Libraries, and the U.S. Department of Education Title VI Grant for their support.
The Díaz-Ayala Cuban and Latin American Popular Music Collection is the most extensive publicly available collection of Cuban music in the United States. Its approximately 150,000 items span the history of popular Cuban and other Latin musics. Originally valued at nearly one million dollars, the collection features 45,000 LPs; 15,000 78 rpms; 4,500 cassettes containing interviews with composers and musicians, radio programs, music, and other materials; 5,000 pieces of sheet music; 3,000 books; and thousands of CDs, photographs, videocassettes, and paper files. Among the collection's rarest items are early recordings made in prerevolutionary Cuba.
A portion of the collection can be searched online here. However, the vast majority of items are only searchable and accessible in person. Supplementing the Díaz-Ayala Music Collection is an excellent and varied collection of Cuban and Cuban American materials and electronic resources available at the FIU Libraries. For more information on the Díaz-Ayala Music Collection and to determine if your research project will be enhanced by this collection, please contact the Sound & Image Resources Department at FIU Libraries.
Previous Awardees
Past recipients of the award have included the following scholars:
- Dr. Gabriela Alfaraz, Michigan State University, "Linguistic Change in Cuban Spanish" (2016)
- Dr. Galina Bakhtiarova, Western Connecticut State University, "Cuando salí de La Habana: The Habanera beyond the Caribbean" (2005)
- Dr. Charisse Baldoria, Kutztown University of Pennsylvania, "The Piano in Expressions of Cuban Identity: Stylizing Folk and Popular Styles" (2010)
- Matthew R. Berger, independent scholar, "La Batería: Jazz and the Drum Set in Cuba" (2015)
- Yurima Blanco García, University of Valladolid, Spain, "The Lyric Theater in Expressions of Cuban Identity: Study and Reconstruction of El sombrero de Yarey, Opera by Ernesto Lecuona" (2018)
- Hannah Burgé Luviano, Queens University, Canada, "The Ajiaco of Mambo: Transnational Pathways in the Mexico City Mambo Bands of Dámaso Pérez Prado" (2023)
- Dr. Beatriz Calvo-Peña, Christopher Newport University, "Hermanas Márquez: Playing Guaracha and Son since the 1930s" (2007)
- Dr. Madeline Cámara, University of South Florida, "White Skins, Black Masks: The Mulatta in the Zarzuela and Cinema about Rumberas in Cuba" (2006)
- Dr. Jorge Camacho, University of South Carolina, "A History of José Martí's Archive" (2018)
- Dr. Amaya Carricaburu Collantes, International University of Valencia, Spain, "The Cuban Punto: The Study of Its Discography during the Period 1906–1958" (2024)
- Liliana Casanella Cué, Center for Research and Development of Cuban Music, Havana, Cuba, "The Guaracha: Approaching National Identity through Its Texts" (2016)
- Dr. Anita Casavantes Bradford, University of California, Irvine, "Remembering Pedro Pan: Faith, Family, Freedom, and Cuban American Collective Memory" (2014)
- Dr. María Elena Cobas Cobiella, University of Valencia, Spain, "The Mario Díaz Cruz Law Collection: Studies and Reflections on the Topic" (2015)
- Gilberto Conill Godoy, Universidad Jaume I, Spain, "The Miami Sound: An Analysis of the Sociocultural Movement, Its Significance and Impact" (2013)
- Barry Cox, musician and independent scholar, "Toward a History of Rumba on Record, 1899–1948" (2011)
- Dean Craven, King's College, London, "Manufacturing Montuno, Manufacturing Identity: Human Agency and Improvisation of Piano Accompaniments in Cuban Dance Musics" (2019)
- Emilio Cueto, independent scholar, "The Province of Oriente in Music" (2013)
- Dr. Duanel Díaz Infante, Virginia Commonwealth University, "Sweetness and Cubanness: The Place of Sugar in the Cuban Imagination" (2013)
- Michael Eckroth, New York University, "The Popular Cuban Piano Style of the 1940s and 1950s" (2012)
- Dr. Jorge Felipe-González, University of Texas, San Antonio, "The Cuban Slave Trade: An Atlantic History" (2022)
- Dr. Manuel Fernández, University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire, "Trauma, Identity, and Nation in Music of the Cuban Community in the U.S." (2010)
- Yesenia Fernández Selier, New York University, "The Circulation of Cuban Cultural Production before 1930 in the Caribbean" (2017)
- Dr. Licia Fiol-Matta, Lehman College (CUNY), "Latin Music: Gender Narratives, Female Figurations" (2006)
- Dr. David Font-Navarrete, Lehman College, CUNY, "Art at the Edge of Tradition: Notes on Orisha and Music in the Age of Multimedia, 1936–2021" (2021)
- Dr. David García, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, "Afro-Cuban Jazz: Beyond 'Rhythm' and the Primitivist Myth" (2005)
- Andrés García Molina, Columbia University, "Aural Economies and Precarious Labor: El pregón, or Street Vendor Songs in Cuba" (2019)
- Dr. Lillian Guerra, University of Florida, "Patriots and Traitors in Revolutionary Cuba, 1961–81" (2019)
- Dr. Charlie Hankin, Pitzer College, "Poetas del son: Lyrics and Letters in Cuban Popular Music" (2024)
- Dr. Adrian H. Hearn, University of Technology, Sidney, Australia, "Musical Bridges between Cuba and China" (2008)
- Dr. Marta Hernández, Conservatorio de Música de Puerto Rico, "Caribbean Children's Music: Rhythms, Melodies, and Lyrics" (2017)
- Juliet Hill, London University, "The Piano in the Cuban Conjunto, 1940–51" (2006)
- Sophia Kitlinksi, Yale University, "Deporting the Sacred: The Circulation of Abakuá Visual and Material Worlds across the Spanish Empire, 1875–1898" (2022)
- Dr. Benjamin Lapidus, John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY), "Como un milagro: The Musical Influence of Juanito Márquez on the Popular Song of Four Continents" (2015)
- Kimiko Nicole LeNeave, University of California, San Diego, "Rhythms of Revolution: A Cold War History of Cuban-Chilean Cultural Exchange and Political Transformation" (2022)
- Dr. Bonnie Lucero, Texas Christian University, "The Land of the Skinny Cow: Beef Politics in Cuba" (2024)
- Dr. Noriko Manabe, Princeton University, "A Mulata's Memory: Musical Mestizaje in the Characterization of Femmes Fatales in Cuban Zarzuelas" (2007)
- Dr. Adriana Méndez Rodenas, University of Missouri, "Transculturated Poetics: La Tumba Francesa and Cuban Cultural Identity" (2021)
- Dr. Ricardo Pelegrín Taboada, Western Oregon University, "Legal Culture and the Formation of National Identity: The Legal Profession in 19th- and Early 20th-Century Cuba" (2020)
- Dr. Gustavo Pérez-Firmat, Columbia University, "Cuba in the American Imagination" (2008)
- Juliana Pérez González, University of São Paulo, Brazil, "The History of the Concept of 'Popular Music' in Latin America (1890–1930)" (2011)
- Dr. Pierpaolo Polzonetti, University of California, Davis, "Cuban Sound Recipes: Songs about Food from Son to Salsa" (2023)
- Marysol Quevedo, Indiana University, "Negotiating Cubanness through Art Music: Composers in Socialist Cuba, 1959–1989" (2014)
- Josean Ramos, independent scholar and writer, "The Dust Jackets in the Puerto Rican Record Industry" (2009)
- Dr. Cecilia Rodríguez Milanés, University of Central Florida, "Cultivation: A Video Poem" (2024)
- Dr. Noraliz Ruiz Caraballo, Hunter College (CUNY), "The Transatlantic and Caribbean Manifestations of Cuban Décimas" (2016)
- Dr. Salvador Salazar, Bronx Community College (CUNY), "General History of the Cuban Republic Printed Journalism (1902–1959)" (2023)
- Dr. Enrico Mario Santí, University of Kentucky, "Carlos Ripoll's José Martí" (2017)
- Ned Sublette, New York University, "Teaching the Cuban Discography" (2021)
- Darío Tejeda, General Archive of the Nation, Dominican Republic, "Reinforcement of the Study of 'Music and Dictatorship in the Dominican Republic (1930–1961)'" (2014)
- Sarah Town, Princeton University, "Mambomania: The Explosion of Cuban Popular Dance Styles in the 1940s and 1950s" (2012)
- Alejandro Ulloa, Universidad del Valle, Colombia, "Musical Cultures and Musical Identities in Salsa" (2009)
- Dr. Alexandra T. Vázquez, New York University, "Lost at C: Cuban Women Vocalists in Miami" (2020; declined)
- David Virelles González, independent researcher and performing artist, "Tracing the Cinquillo Cubano: De la Trova al Danzón" (2018)