Republic of (Sp. República de Guatemala).
Country in Central America. It is bordered at the north and west by Mexico, at the north-east by Belize and at the south-east by El Salvador and Honduras. The capital is Guatemala City.
GERARD BÉHAGUE (I), LINDA O'BRIEN-ROTHE (II)
In pre-Columbian times the culture of the Mayas spread over most of the present territory of Guatemala. After the Spanish Conquest (1523–4) Guatemala rapidly became a significant centre of music. The musical life of the country has always been concentrated in the capital, Guatemala City. Its cathedral had, from the time of its construction (1534, seven years after the foundation of the city), a regular organist and a chantre to conduct and intone. Hernando Franco worked in Guatemala from 1554 to 1573, before moving to Mexico in 1575, and two of his works, a five-part Lumen ad revelationem and a five-part Benedicamus Domino, are in the cathedral archives. The colonial archives of S Miguel Acatán, other smaller communities in the Huehuetenango province and Guatemala City Cathedral give ample evidence of the splendour of the country’s early musical life. They contain works by composers active in other Spanish colonies (such as Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla, Torrejón y Velasco, Zumaya and Salazar), several manuscripts of some of the greatest Spanish and Flemish Renaissance composers (Morales, Guerrero, Victoria, Ceballos, Isaac, Compère, Mouton, Sermisy) and works with both vernacular and Spanish texts by local maestros de capilla, such as Francisco de León and Tomás Pascual.
Records of late colonial composers are more precise. Among several maestros de capilla of the late 18th and early 19th centuries were Esteban de León Garrido, Miguel Pontaza (1747–1807) and Vicente Sáenz (1756–1814), who wrote the popular Villancicos de Pascua. The Sáenz family was important in local music in the early 19th century. Benedicto Sáenz, father (d 1831) and son (1815–57), were cathedral organist and maestro de capilla respectively, and were both influential music teachers. The son also contributed to the diffusion of Italian opera in Guatemala.
The first native composer to draw on Guatemalan folk idioms was Luis Felipe Arias (1870–1908), a pianist who wrote mainly for his own instrument. Jesús Castillo employed Indian subjects and musical themes directly in his instrumental works (Oberturas indígenas, Suites indígenas, Tecúm Umán) and in his operas Quiché Vinak (1917–25) and Nicté (1933, unfinished). In 1941 he published his important study La música Maya-Quiché. His younger brother Ricardo Castillo, who studied in Paris in the 1920s, wrote in an impressionistic style and turned to national sources only later; his many works include incidental pieces such as Ixquic and Quiché Achí (both 1945), and the ballet Paal Kaba (1951), which won him wide recognition.
The most representative figures of the next generation were Salvador Ley, who cultivated an imaginative national style, and Enrique Solares who lived for some time in Europe and turned to serial techniques after the mid-1950s. Younger composers who came into prominence in the 1960s include Joaquín Orellana and Jorge Alvaro Sarmientos. More recently, avant-garde trends in Guatemalan composition have been limited, partly because of the lack of support from official music and cultural institutions in the country. A number of composers, however, have renewed efforts towards new techniques and aesthetics. As well as the influential work in the 1970s of composers such as Jorge Sarmíentos, Joaquín Orellana and Enrique Anleu-Díaz, other names have emerged subsequently, including Humberto Ayestas, Rodrigo Asturias, Igor de Gandarias, Igor Sarmíentos, Pablo Alvarado, Antonio Crespo, William Orbaugh and Dieter Lenhoff. These composers are, as a rule, also active performers, conductors and music researchers, and cultivate different contemporary styles.
StevensonRB
J. Saenz Poggio: Historia de la música guatemalteca desde la monarquía española, hasta fines del año de 1877 (Guatemala City, 1878); repr. in Anales de la Sociedad de geografía e historia de Guatemala, xxii (1947), 6–54
V.M. Díaz: Las bellas artes en Guatemala (Guatemala City, 1934)
S. Ley: ‘Cultural Aspects of Music Life in Guatemala’, Latin-American Fine Arts: Austin 1951 (1952), 78
R. Stevenson: ‘European Music in 16th-Century Guatemala’, MQ, l (1964), 341–52
D. Lehnhoff: Espada y pentagrama: la música polifónica en la Guatemala del siglo XVI (Antigua, Guatemala, 1986)
A.E. Lemmon: La música de Guatemala en el siglo XVIII/Music of 18th-Century Guatemala (Guatemala City, 1986)
F.Ll. Harrison: ‘The Musical Impact of Exploration and Cultural Encounter’, Musical Repercussions of 1492: Encounters in Text and Performance, ed. C.E. Robertson (Washington DC, 1992)
The traditional music of Guatemala is a product of two contiguous rural cultures: Ladinos or creoles of Spanish language and musical heritage, and the Maya, who constitute more than 50% of the population and maintain one of the strongest indigenous music traditions of North and Central America. A small population of Garífuna or black Caribs lives on the Caribbean coast, especially in Puerto Barrios and Livingston, and has a distinct musical tradition.
Guatemala, §II: Traditional music
Ladino music flourishes in the large Ladino populations concentrated in urban centres, the south coast (in the departments of Retalhuleu, Escuintla, Santa Rosa and Jutiapa) and the eastern lowlands (in Chiquimula, Jalapa, El Progreso, Zacapa and southern Izabal). Their music shows a long-standing and pervasive influence from Spain as well as more recent influences from Mexico, Colombia, the other Central American and Caribbean countries, and the popular music of the USA. The direct influence of Maya music on Ladino styles is comparatively small although there is a common folk repertory performed by both Ladino and Maya musicians, with some differences in interpretation.
The Guatemalan marimba is the most popular folk instrument with both Ladinos and the Maya and has come to be a symbol of the independence of the Guatemalan Republic. The marimba is believed to be of African origin, introduced during the early colonial period by African slaves. The earliest form of the marimba is a xylophone consisting of a keyboard of parallel tuned wooden bars or percussion plates suspended above a trapezoidal framework of cords which pass through threading pins and the nodal points of each key. Beneath each key hangs a tuned resonator of calabash. The keys are struck with wooden mallets (baquetas, pallilos, bollilos) with raw rubber tips (fig.1). Technological improvements of the marimba took place in the last quarter of the 19th century by adding cajones harmónicos, wooden box resonators constructed to resemble gourds, to form the marimba sencilla. The addition of a second row of chromatic keys to this keyboard to form the marimba doble followed. Later, the keyboard of the marimba doble was extended to six and a half octaves (marimba grande), and a smaller, five-octave marimba (marimba tenor) was combined with it to form an ensemble. A variety of other instruments are added to the ensemble to form the marimba orquesta, or simply, marimba.
The most popular and widespread form is the son guatemalteco (also called son chapín), the national dance of Guatemala. The son guatemalteco is played by marimbas, singly or in ensembles, and by ensembles of six- and twelve-string guitars, guitarrillas and maracas. It accompanies a couple-dance in which the partners dance together without touching, emphasizing the son rhythm with zapateado or foot-stamping which relate the dance to Spanish flamenco style. The son guatemalteco is often sung by a male duet, trio or quartet, to a pastoral or folkloric text with strophes usually of four octosyllabic lines. Each son contains two or three different but related melodies, which are repeated and combined, more freely in instrumental versions than in vocal. The son guatemalteco is characterized by a homophonic texture, major tonality, predominantly diatonic melody, triadic harmony and a moderate to rapid 6/8 metre with accents on the third and fifth beats in the rhythmic line and zapateado, allowing frequent hemiola, as in ex.1. An opening motif beginning on the fifth beat is common.
Also widely heard are locally composed corridos which closely resemble Mexican corridos in form and style. In Guatemala corridos are sung to the accompaniment of six- or twelve-string guitars and sometimes guitarrilla and harp, or marimba ensembles, though marimbas more frequently perform corridos as instrumental solos. Corrido texts are narrative and topical, often political, and may have 20 to 30 strophes. Frequently texts are anonymous and distributed in public places, intended to be sung to familiar melodies. Guatemalan corridos are predominantly diatonic and major, with triadic harmonic structure and homophonic texture.
Also popular are the corridos, canciones rancheras and huapangos of the Mexican mariachi band repertory, adapted for the instruments of the Guatemalan marimba and string ensembles, as are also the vals, marcha and a wide range of internationally popular styles.
Guatemala, §II: Traditional music
The various language groups of the Guatemalan Maya belong to the Mamean, Quichean and Kekchian branches of the Maya family, inhabiting respectively the western and north-central, south-central, and north-eastern highlands. Their traditional music displays stronger influences from Spanish colonial music than from its more ancient Maya roots. However, the reverence with which they regard their ancestral heritage, the source of their mythology, ritual, arts and music, discourages the modification of traditional ways, and accounts for the preservation of some instruments and stylistic elements of their ancient music. Music is an essential part of public and private rituals and celebrations of rites of passage and events in the Maya agricultural calendar as well as Christian and secular calendars. Notable occasions for the public performance of instrumental music are the numerous dance–dramas performed annually at village festivals, or the frequent processions in which the images of the saints are carried through the streets. The more abundant, but less researched, private ritual music includes vocal as well as instrumental forms.
There are many sources for pre-Columbian Maya music, including numerous archaeological remains of instruments, portrayals of instruments and ensembles in sculpture and murals and on painted vessels, three pre-Columbian written codices, and Maya and Spanish literature of the early colonial period which describes Maya culture at the time of contact. Still in use among the highland Maya, and integral to indigenous ritual, are a variety of idiophones and aerophones of types found in pre-Columbian sources, whose musical style is still predominantly autochthonous, although little of a wholly indigenous character is to be found.
The tun (also called c'unc'un or tunkul), a horizontal percussion tube with two vibrating tongues, and known as a ‘slit-drum’, is common in the highlands. The tun is struck with a plain or rubber-tipped mallet or antler, producing two pitches, approximately a 4th apart. Two tuns of different sizes are sometimes played together.
The tortoiseshell gong beaten with bone, stick or antler, is used by the Ixils of El Quiché in the baile del venado ensemble, together with the tun and long, wooden, bark or metal trumpets. (A confusion in the literature arises from the use in Quichean languages of the word tun or tum to refer both to the slit-drum and to the trumpet). The tortoiseshell gong is also commonly used in the originally Spanish Christmas processions, posadas. An ensemble of tuns and trumpets is used for the accompaniment of the ancient dance-drama, Rabinal Achí, of the Quichés of Rabinal. Pre-Columbian ocarinas and whistles unearthed by Maya agriculturalists are regarded as sacred and powerful, and may be used during shamanic curing. Conch-shell trumpets are also known, but are rare. Metal clapper-bells, bone rasps and vessel stick-rattles of gourds, pottery or metal filled with seeds or pebbles, called chin-chines, are used in dance-dramas and processional ensembles (fig.2).
The cane flute combined with a European drum is common as a processional ensemble. The flute, called xul, zu or tzijolaj but also referred to in written sources by the Spanish word ‘pito’, is an end-blown, open duct flute of cane, usually having six tone-holes and ranging from a few centimetres to a metre in length. The k'jom (Spanish tambor, tamborón), a cylindrical double-headed drum of the European type, has replaced older Maya types. To this ensemble a trumpet may be added, or a tun may replace the tamborón. The Tzutujíls and Cakchiquels of the region of Lake Atitlán use a side-blown cane xul, closed at the embouchure end by a hollow ball of black beeswax. Into this ball, which has a mirliton, rattlesnake rattles are inserted. This instrument, in ensemble with a small marimba sencilla played by two men, is used for the baile del venado. This ensemble is notable because it demonstrates the African roots of the marimba ensemble. The side-blown mirliton flute, of which a single example was found in 1971, resembles Central African prototypes and the marimba music is similar in some elements to certain African marimba styles. Of uncertain provenance are the zambomba, a friction drum with fixed stick, and the caramba or zambumbia, a monochord musical bow with gourd resonator.
Notable features in the playing styles of these instruments in ensemble are their complex rhythmic patterns, independent but related to the other instruments in the ensemble; a heterophonic texture in which the leading melodic voice is imitated by secondary voices in their different ranges (sometimes almost simultaneously, as when the marimba sencilla is followed by the mirliton xul, or after a delay, as in trumpet duets); an essentially non-Western tonal and harmonic character, with residual traces of Hispanic styles; and formulaic opening and closing motifs appended to the piece, in contrasting or free rhythm.
Vocal music that is predominantly indigenous in its musical and ritual character includes prayer- and curing-chants of shamans and midwives, sung to simple melodic formulae in the native language. More elaborate melodies are known among the Tzutujíls, who, having acquired their songs in dreams, often accompany them on a five-string guitar (ex.2). Musically these songs resemble the son guatemalteco, modified, however, by the asymmetrical rhythms and free intonation typical of Maya style (ex.3). Narrative songs and laments, courting, rain, planting and magic songs correspond to events of the life cycle and the agricultural calendar. The partly improvised poetic texts of both prayer-chants and songs preserve and transmit native mythology.
The Spanish Conquest in 1523–4 was soon followed by nearly a century of intense missionary activity, during which Spanish music, instruments and styles, both ecclesiastical and secular, were introduced to the highland Maya. This period was followed by three centuries of relative isolation, during which some elements of Spanish culture, particularly religion and music, were modified and incorporated into the Maya way of life.
Central and north-eastern highland string ensembles, called zarabandas, derive from a colonial prototype, and usually include one or more three- or four-string rabels or violins to play the melody, some rudely constructed of half a calabash, or of wood with deerskin sides, and played with loose horsehair bows; one or more six-string guitars or five-string guitarrillas or tiples, or the now disappearing twelve-string bandurria, bandola or bandolin; and an arpa, a diatonic frame harp with 28 to 32 strings, manual tuning action and a wide resonator box, often beaten with a padded stick by a musician who alternately beats a snare drum (fig.3). The arpa may provide melody as well as rhythm and bass, in which case it may be played with a wooden plectrum. To this ensemble may be added an adufe (a square, double-skin frame drum, often with an interior rattle) or an accordion. Also common are harp, violin or guitar solos with adufe accompaniment.
In the 1970s the typically Indian marimba de tecomates began to disappear, though it is still in use as a solo instrument or in combination with the chirimía, a shawm of Spanish introduction, and the xul and tamborón. The more common marimba sencilla is used for festive dancing, processions and dance–dramas. To it are added, when available, double bass, chirimía or xul, saxophones, trumpets, accordion, bass and snare drums, cymbals, bells and one or more vocalists.
Zarabanda string ensembles and marimba ensembles share common styles and repertories, playing the typical genres son guatemalteco, barreño and corrido, as well as traditional ritual music. Chirimía and drum ensembles (fig.4) accompany the very prevalent baile de la Conquista. Large ensembles of up to eight chirimías, eight xuls and four or five drums sometimes play for large festivals.
Vocal music stemming from colonial Spanish liturgical music is used for Catholic ceremonies that have been incorporated into Maya ritual. Examples of Latin and Spanish hymnody, psalmody and plainchant, such as the yearly singing of Tenebrae in some villages, have been found.
Guatemala, §II: Traditional music
A black Carib population known as the Garífuna inhabits the Caribbean coast from Belize to Islas de la Bahía in Honduras. In Guatemala they live mainly in the urban centres of Livingston and Puerto Barrios. They stem from the indigenous Arawak of the island of St Vincent and from African slaves, and came to Central America in the late 18th century. Their culture and musical traditions are distinct and separate from those of the rest of Guatemala.
The principal instrument of the Garífuna is the garaón, a wooden membranophone about 60 cm in length and slightly conical, with a deer-skin head. The garaón primera is larger and plays a more virtuoso role than the garaón segunda. An ensemble is formed with the sísira (chíchira), a spiked gourd rattle containing seeds or stones, and sometimes a conch-shell trumpet (weiwintu). A vocal soloist and chorus complete the ensemble. The audience participates with clapping, commentary and sometimes dancing. This ensemble plays for religious festivals and processions. The repertory and style are Afro-Cuban, including the forms punta, parranda, yakunú, jungujugu and samba. Further definition and documentation of forms and repertory is needed.
The Garífuna also play a fusion of popular and Caribbean styles on electric guitar, electric bass and keyboard with drums and percussion, sometimes adding trumpet, trombones, saxophones and voices. Vocal music is mainly responsorial between a small group or soloist and chorus. The punta is the best known Garífuna dance-song genre, with texts that may be topical, erotic or moral and serve as social regulators.
J. Sáenz Poggio: Historia de la música guatemalteca, desde la monarquía española hasta fines del año de 1877 (Guatemala City, 1878); repr. in Anales de la Sociedad de geografia e historia de Guatemala, xxii (1947), 6–54
J. Castillo: La música Maya-Quiché (Quetzaltenango, 1941)
D. Vela: Noticia sobre la marimba (Guatemala City, 1953)
P. Collaer: ‘Musique caraïbe et maya’, Studia memoriae Belae Bartók sacra, ed. B. Rajeczky and L. Vargyas (Budapest, 1956, 2/1957; Eng. trans., 1959), 125–42
L. Paret-Limardo de Vela: Folklore musical de Guatemala (Guatemala City, 1962)
V. Chenoweth: The Marimbas of Guatemala (Lexington, KY, 1964)
L. O'Brien: Songs of the Face of the Earth: Ancestor Songs of the Tzutuhil-Maya of Santiago Atitlán, Guatemala (diss., UCLA, 1975)
L. O'Brien: ‘Music Education and Innovation in a Traditional Tzutuhil-Maya Community’, Enculturation in Latin America, ed. J. Wilbert (Los Angeles, 1976), 377–93
L. O'Brien: ‘Music in a Maya Cosmos’, World of Music, xviii/3 (1976), 35–42
L. O'Brien: ‘Marimbas of Guatemala: the African Connection’, World of Music, xxv/2 (1982), 99–104
A. Arrivillaga Cortés: ‘La música tradicional Garífuna en Guatemala’, LAMR, xi, (1990), 251–80
J.B. Camposeco Mateo: Te' son, chinab' o k'ojom: la marimba de Guatemala (Rancho Palos Verdes, CA, 1992, 2/1994)