There are three areas of influence in Latin music
1. Native/Indigenous people – both from lowland and from highlands
Areas with the most Native American flavor in music today are in Amazon, lowland forests, Mesoamerica and Andes.
2. African traditions – Areas with the most African influences are on the coast – Venezuela, Columbia, Ecuador, Guiana region, NE Brazil
3. Iberian (Spanish and Portuguese)/ cosmopolitan influences - Areas with the most European influence are Argentina, Chile, Uruguay, and Paraguay.
Spanish and Portuguese have influenced S America since the 16th century. This influence is the most profound common denominator – found in language and in religion (Catholicism).
Overall instruments – marimba
– African Influence
Guitar derivatives – Spanish
influence
Drums – African influence
Steel bands – African influence
Pan pipes – Indigenous influence
MESTIZO MUSICAL VALUES AND STYLES
Mestizo = people of Spanish and indigenous heritage.
The Wayno is the most important Peruvian genre. It wavers between duple and triple feel. It is a song and dance. The words are a joke, or political comment, or topical theme. It is closest to the indigenous roots.
The Marinera is a more European style song and dance. It is a light love song with hemiola rhythm.
The Yaravi is not danced, but expresses deep feeling. Slower. It is similar to cueca in Chile and Brzil, the zamba in Argentina, the triste in Bolivia and Argentina.
Mexico has a variety of music, influenced by the Caribbean culture.
The most important Mestizo
song-dance genre is the son.
La Bamba is a Veracruz variant
played in V for a century! It is a son jarocho. Sones usually have
duple/triple meter.
Native influences are less
in Mexico, and all sones are sung in Spanish only.
Different types of guitars:
huapanguera – larger than a guitar with 8 strings in 5 courses
Jarana – smaller 5 stringed
guitar (sometimes in courses??)
Requinto – small four string
guitar
Viheula – small five string
guitar with convex back
Guitarron – large acoustic
bass guitar with convex back
Bajo sexto – 12 string guitar
Mariachis – Mexico’s
most famous type of ensemble. Originated as a local string band in state
of Jalisco.
Earlier they included several
violins and were accompanied by vihuela, guitarron, band
instruments like trumpet, trombone,
flute. During Mexican revolution (1910) the peasant music
was more valued. Mariachi bands
were featured on the radio and in movies (by 1931). They then grew in size,
and became more polished. They played music from other regions.
Conjuntos Nortenos
– music from
northern Mexico and southern Texas. Played in restaurants and cafes.
Marimba Groups
– also playedin
restaurants and cafes.
Ranchera songs
– usually
sung by conjuntos nortenos – have a working class and romanticized rural
association. It is sentimental,
crying in your beer, truck driving, hard drinking, cantina music. The
Mexican equivalent of Country
western.
NATIVE AMERICAN MUSICAL
VALUES AND STYLES
Because of years of intermixing,
the influence of Mestizos styles is great. Still there is a distinguishable
element that is not mestizos. They have also maintained their own language.
Among the Aymara of southern Peru (highland Indians), reciprocity, egalitarian relations and community solidarity are important social values.
Wind instruments and drums
are the indigenous instruments.
Siku = panpipes
Kenas = vertical cane flutes
Pinkillus and tarkas = vertical
flutes with a recorder like mouthpiece (made of cane and wood, respectively)
Pitus = side blown flutes
Wankara or bombos = large
double headed drums
Different sized flutes of
the same type are played together to make up parallel harmonic lines.
Stringed instruments came
after the Spanish.
Charango = 10 stringed guitar
the size of ukulele
Vocal music is rare.
Music is played only communally.
Practicing alone is rare.
Anyone can join in and no
one comments on how good or bad they are.
The purpose of music is for communal solidarity. Quality of music is judged not on the sound but on the experience and social relations engendered.
Dense well-integrated sound.
Women are not musicians,
but dance in festivities.
Indian music of Titicaca
region – large ensembles of wind instruments which play a form AABBCC
Some indigenous traditions
use 5 or 6 note scales, some use 7 note scales.
There is a "collective brainstorming"
among the musicians at rehersal the night before a fiesta. Indian music
has set forms, scales and rhythms for different genres.
Music of the lowland Indians
is similar but features voice.
The Suya sometimes have a performance of several people singing their own different songs – a dense combination of multiple, relatively independent sounds.
Songs come from nature.
Musical genres are distinguished
by age and gender.
They have fewer instruments
but use the voice in many different ways, from chants to melodic solos.
There are some panpipes
and flutes, trumpets, drums and percussion instruments
AFRICAN AMERICAN MUSICAL VALUES AND STYLES
Call/response, interlocking
melodic and percussion parts, dense overlapping textures are typical in
Latin Music.
Marimba is used for currulao
in Ecuador (a community dance for men and women)
Types of drums: singleheaded
conical drum – dif sizes identified as male and female.
Bombos – deeper double-headed
drums
Bamboo shakers
Basis of the marimba music
is ostinato with improvised variations.
Drums play interlocking
rhythms.
Solo voice is interlocked
with instruments and with female chorus – voice style is African, not mestizos
Women sometimes yodel
They also use the lamellaphone
or mbira (thumb piano)
Northeastern Brazil – uses drum, bell and songs of Yoruba religion of Nigeria. "The bell plays an ostinato pattern that serves to orient the other musicians, the twosmaller drums interlock to play the ground ostinato part, and the largest, or mother drum, is used by a lead drummer for improvisation to interact with the dancers. Even West African words are retained in the songs, although their meanings are largely forgotten."
Carnival in Rio de Janeiro
is Brazil’s most famous musical event.
Samba is Brazil’s most famous
musical genre – has some rural and urban variants.
1930s and 40s a ballroom
samba was popular around the world.
Carnival samba comes from
the Rio slums. Lots of interlocking percussion. Sung in Portuguese
Surdos – large bass drums
Agogos – double bells
Pandeiros – tambourines
Tamborim – small hand held
drum with stick
Reco-recos – metal spring
scrapers
Cuicas – friction drums
Cavaquinhos – small 4 string
guitar
Song, dance and parade accompanies the music. Escolas de samba are neighborhood institutions to teach the art (?) located in black neighborhoods. The schools have grown and developed specialties – composing, dancing, percussion. During Carnival the schools compete against each other.
The composition is expensive and some complain that it has become commercialized.
Cuba -
The most well known Latin
music has come out of Cuba.
The music is a mix of African
influence and Spanish – the indigenous population was wiped out by the
early Spanish conquerors.
Cuban genres evolved during the 19th and early 20th centuries.
Danzon – derived from European contradanze. Used a cinquillo rhythm (similar to the distinctive habanera rhythm). Performed by large orchestras or salon instruments (flute, piano, bass, violin and drums).
Son is a genre with two sections. There is a strophic section (verse and refrain) and a montuno section (call and response over an ostinato musical form. The rhythm is (3+3+2) and later a clave pattern. In the 1930s the son was popular in Cuba. In the 40s and 50s it was introduced elsewhere. Today it is salsa.
Rumba guaguanco – similar to son but more African because of the drums. The form is similar to the son, but there are not so many instruments.
Mambo, chachacha, bolero, rumba are all genres that developed from the three genres above.
Salsa developed among the Caribbean residents in NY, then spread to Latin communities in Miami, LA, Venezuela, etc. It is dance and song music with strong African type percussion.
Other Latin Forms
Tango - Argentina
Calypso - Trinidad
Samba – Brazil
Bossa Nova – Brazil – similar
to samba with more harmonic content, sophisticated words
Mambo - Cuba
Chachacha - Cuba
Bolero – Cuba
Rumba - Cuba
Harry
Belafonte – Popularized the Calypso (B. 1927)
A Harlem born young man
spent his boyhood in Jamaica. He returned to NY for high school, then joined
the Navy. When he returned he joined the American Negro Theatre and the
Dramatic Workshop, rubbing shoulders with the likes of Marlon Brando and
Tony Curtis. Singing in NY nightclubs led to the opening of a restaurant
with folk song performances. A performance at the Village Vanguard led
to a record with RCA Victor. His pure voice and clear diction made him
a success. "Calypso" sold 1 million copies. "Jamaica Farewell" (1956) and
"Banana Boat" (1957) also sold well. His movies included Bright Road and
Carmen Jones, Buck and the Preacher (1972) and Uptown Saturday Night (1974).
Broadway appearances include Three for Tonight in 1955. His handsome features
contributed to his success in Europe as well as in the US.
The Man With The Message
David Michael Rudder (Calypso)
He was one of the most prolific
Calypso songwriters. But also controversial. He was the lead singer for
the brass band Charlie’s Roots, defying tradition and proving wrong those
who said he couldn’t be successful on his own. Prior to Dave Rudder, a
musician had to have the blessings of the established calypsonians to succeed.
He was considered to bastardize the art form. Rudder became an immediate
success. He was the King of Calypso in Trinidad’s competitions. After winning
calypso competitions in the Caribbean, he turned to the international arena.
He showed to the world that one doesn’t have to be from Trinidad to feel
and like calypso music. Largely due to Rudder the calypso became popular
in Europe and the US. He rose to fame in 1986.
The following is from
Echoes of Africa by Beatrice Landeck, David McKay Company Inc, 1969
Cuban Music –
"African and Spanish cultures have been juxtaposed throughout Cuba since
the 16th century. …The music of the land makes use of every
type of percussion instrument, including maracas, guiro, cabaca, claves,
jawbones of animals, and cowbells, the tall congo drum, the small bongo,
the marimbola." Voice is used in a variety of ways – holding a tone, cutting
it off, sliding into a falsetto for accent, shading the tones to fit the
song. During the comparsas, or carnival celebration "The whole city danced,
the whole city sang, as if possessed by deified jubilation." It was a collective
experience. "Dialogues would spring up between performer and audience with
an enthusiastic spectator interjecting phrases, which were picked up and
chanted by the crowd until they had satisfactorily expressed the group
feeling. Spontaneous shouts of approval, of encouragement, of advice, of
appreciation, often punctuated the end of a solo, rounding out the music
with a chorus of individual voices. Almost inevitably the audience participated
throughout the whole performance with a rhythmic accompaniment of stamping
feet on the basic beats and clapping hands on the offbeats until the pulsating
rhythms exercised a virtually hypnotic power over the throng. These group
expressions, based on ancient African traditions – were perfected by a
thousand repetitions in which the individual recreated and elaborated the
original version. Thus it became a living folklore – an esthetic version
of functional living – with a special beauty of it own because of its spontaneity
and genuine emotional outburst. …The Cuban name for Havana is Habana, from
which the name of the indigenous habanera rhythm was derived. The habanera
rhythm gave rise to the tango; the Afro-Cuban festival Dia de Reyes to
the conga; a dramatic dance that mimes the antics of two roosters to the
guaracha and finally the rumba; the Afro=Cuban love of complex rhythms,
coupled with his skill and inventiveness, produced the mambo and chachacha."
Puerto Rico – Here the culture is almost totally Spanish, but from present day, not the past. Improvised songs are childlike. Local instruments include claves, maracas, guiros, guitars. Ballads are common.
Calypso – Trinidad and Jamaica. "In calypso song, elements of African musical structure are united with a type of lyric that is indigenous to this region of the Caribbean. The unique character of the lyric is undoubtedly due to the old habits of speech that have persisted in a new language. For, until the beginning of the 20th century the native of Trinidad spoke a French patois, traces of which are still distinguishable in the equal stressing of syllables in an English word and certain contraction of phrases. …Traditionally the popular songs of the day are those that have been created for contests held annually in a two day carnival before Lent. In these competitions, solo verses are improvised on subjects that reflect the daily work and play and love life of the people. Those with the wittiest and most topical lyric win the honors."
The tin whistle is used. Percussion instruments were important. "However, when both drums and bamboo tubes were banned in Trinidad by government decree (as instruments of potentially dangerous incitement), the islanders devised a new instrument, the steel drum, now widely used in other islands of the Caribbean. It is made from the head of an oil drum, heated and hammered into circular depressions of different sizes, each of which sounds a different tone. Help horizontally by a strap worn around the neck, the player beats out a tune with two drumsticks. When 15-20 steel drums are played together in a marching band, the undampered reverberations of overtones that fill the air causes an exciting, cacophonous sound more like bagpipes than anything else. How like their forebears it is to experiment with whatever is at hand to produce sound and to organize eccentric noises into a musical scale!"
Mexico – There were 20,000 Africans in Mexico by the mid 16th century. Songs and dances reflect the African influence. "the music is full of rhythmic complexities, combining or alternating uneven and even subdivisions of the beat (triplets and duplets) in a meter than often alternates between 6/8 and ¾. The music is gay and high spirited in contrast to the more somber quality of Indian music. The people sing about the beauties of nature, about humorous incidents, and about romantic love, but their sentiments are never banal." At fiesta, percussion instruments are commmon – drums, claves, maracas, guiro amd Marimba. Onlookers clap while dancers dance. "This type of music has permeated other parts of Mexico as well. In urban centers, sophisticated bands treat Mexican melodies in Latin style. They rely heavily upon the drum to set a basic pattern around which the percussion group weaves intricate rhythms. Here, as on the islands, the floor drum pronounces a strong up beat (in contrast to the customary first or down beat accent) and the syncopated rhythms of percussion are clearly heard above the melody and harmony of the soft toned guitars. Unique in Mexico are groups of wandering minstrels called mariachi. Each instrumental ensemble is comprised of large and small guitars, two violins, a trumpet, trombone and string bass. They play out of doors on the streets, in the market place, and at religious festivals or indoors at cafes or at private parties. Dressed in typical Mexican costumes with wide-brimmed hats, cloaks, and sashes, they entertain the passerby for a few coins and add a picturesque note to n already abundantly colorcul country. Their music is gay and noisy and also of an improvisational character. In certain cities, especially Guadalajara, the mariachi compete in contests as singers do in other Latin countries."
Brazil – Song dance and playing are interrelated. Millions of blacks were brought in 1538-1850 – from Nigeria, Dahomey and Gold Coast, from Angola and Mozambique, and from Sudan. "They possessed a culture superior to that of the native Indians; they presented an advanced political organization, a flowering art, and a wealth of mythology and folklore. In their contact with Portuguese families, both in the home and in the fields, their culture was allowed to flourish. Being a vital living force, it played an important role in shaping Brazilian music beyond that of Western influences."
"Afro-Brazilian religious music is of two main types: incantations to a deity or saint for protection against supernatural forces; and ritual or dramatic dances involving elements of witchcraft. ..The names of gods and saints are used interchangeably, both personifying nature or natural phenomena; and cult symbols are freely mixed with those of the Catholic religion."
Batuque dances (variants include the samba, carterete, coco, lundu, jongo) – rural dance in a circular form. Soloist in the center, with no fixed dance steps. "Variants differ mainly in degree of vehemence and sensuality." Song verse is sung by dancer, refrain by spectators. There are many singing contests and games.
Samba is music of the annual carnival. Everybody dances. "The dancing is heedlessly exuberant, uninhibited, but it is the essence of innocence and purity, untouched by the pretensions of a tutored society. Each group participating reenacts a scene of an ancient legend….Because the rural samba symbolized the gaiety and high spirits of the carnival, it was soon imitated by composers who titled their compositions Samba Carioca for salon music. Urban versions of the dance rhythm became popular and eventually took the place of the maxixe…The dance was further adapted when the Cuban rumba was introduced to Brazil and in this form dropped both rural and carioca from its name and became simply samba, a social dance once the rage and still widely known throughout the world today."
"In both Brazil and Cuba the custom of crowning a local king (by the blacks in imitation of their African custom) persisted among subjugated people until the middle of the 19th century. The custom was encouraged by rulers who yearly designated one day of liberty as the Day of Kings. In Havana, the coronation was followed by a march to the governor’s palace to receive a gift. The Afro=Brazilians also celebrated by singing and dancing through the streets after a coronation at the door of the church. It is interesting to note that the king and queen were chosen by the Brotherhood and Sisterhood of the Virgin Mary and were crowned by the priest, who consecrated the ceremony to the Virgin. Moreover, the celebration occurred on the patron saint’s day. In this way, the survival of a purely African custom became associated with the Catholic Church." Dances are collective creations – created during rehersal for the carnival. "Melody and text of a song are examined in a collective consultation, tempo set, and instrumentation decided upon. The musical leader of the community is circled by a large group who move and clap their hands in response to the drum, which directs the proceedings. Other players of percussion enter at will with improvisations on the basic beat. The soloist in the center steps out the rhythms, tentatively at first, experimenting, until patterns of movement evolve. As he becomes more certain, he tries out a lyric, which the dancers answer either by repeating his words or by singing syllables to keep the musical conversation going; text and melody thus emerge as a framework for development." Panama – "The Afro Latin songs identified with the Isthmus of Panama are genial in spirit and lively in performance. Songs accompany a dance called the tamborito, derived from the drum, tambora. It is danced by couples within a circle of participants who clap hands and stamp feet as they sing; the woman coyly whirls away from her partner as he attempts to face her directly. The music is played on rustic instruments: A five stringed guitar, a three stringed violin, drums of various sizes, gourd rattles, heavy brass bowl struck to give a sharp metallic ring."
GUANTANAMERA (Cuba) Original music by Jose Fernandez Diaz Music adaptation by Pete Seeger & Julian Orbon Lyric adaptation by Julian Orbon, based on a poem by Jose Marti Yo soy un hombre sincero De donde crecen las palmas Yo soy un hombre sincero De donde crecen las palmas Y antes de morirme quiero Echar mis versos del alma Chorus: Guantanamera Guajira Guantanamera Guantanamera Guajira Guantanamera Mi verso es de un verde claro Y de un carmin encendido Mi verso es de un verde claro Y de un carmin encendido Mi verso es un ciervo herido Que busca en el monte amparo Chorus Cultivo la rosa blanca En junio como en enero Qultivo la rosa blanca En junio como en enero Para el amigo sincero Que me da su mano franca Chorus Y para el cruel que me arranca El corazon con que vivo Y para el cruel que me arranca El corazon con que vivo Cardo ni ortiga cultivo Cultivo la rosa blanca Chorus Con los pobres de la tierra Quiero yo mi suerte echar Con los pobres de la tierra Quiero yo mi suerte echar El arroyo de la sierra Me complace mas que el mar Chorus I am a truthful man from this land of palm trees Before dying I want to share these poems of my soul My verses are light green But they are also flaming red I cultivate a rose in June and in January For the sincere friend who gives me his hand And for the cruel one who would tear out this heart with which I live I do not cultivate thistles nor nettles I cultivate a white rose ©1963,1965 (Renewed) Fall River Music, Inc (BMI)