Term applied to those areas of Central and South America where Spanish, Portuguese and French are spoken. The countries constituting Latin America and the Caribbean present cultural and musical traits mainly derived from their tri-ethnic cultural heritage. The expression of that heritage, however, is not homogeneous in the various countries and regions, but is dependent on various factors, such as the ethno-history of a specific country and the dynamics of its cultural history in contemporary times. Thus, in a number of cases, one strain of that heritage has predominated over the other two. In fact, many parts of what is called Latin America are virtually devoid of any Latin cultural elements. Until recently, some lowland Amerindian cultures, for example, and some Amerindian groups of the Andean highlands and Central America had remained relatively untouched by European or mestizo traditions. In other cases the prevailing cultural influences have been more sub-Saharan African than European. Thus the study of folk and traditional music in individual countries or territories is bound to be somewhat artificial, although there are common cultural traits in very large geographical areas and among ethnic groups with similar historical developments.
The systematic search for origins along the lines of the tri-ethnic heritage in Latin American and Caribbean musical expressions has had dubious benefit in relation to the configuration of contemporary societies. The general tendency in Europe and North America to view Latin America as a monolithic cultural area has often resulted in simplistic and reductionist generalizations of traditional musics of Latin America. The actual diversity of the musics of the Latin American continent has become clearer since the 1960s as a result of more extensive field research carried out by scholars from Latin America, Europe and North America. And yet, for some areas, not enough empirical knowledge of the vast music corpora of the continent has been accumulated to allow meaningful cross-cultural comparisons among music cultures that share a common ethno-history but have developed different expressions, as, for example, in the case of Afro-Caribbean communities of Cuba, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Western Colombia and north-eastern Brazil. One could argue that the prominent social stratification which typifies Latin America's social organization elucidates to a large extent musical expressions that function as symbols of class identity. This stratification provides the keystone to account for the various musical performative practices to be found in both rural and urban areas of the continent. And yet the lines of demarcation of such stratification can be blurred when one considers the thorny issue of self-identity of social groups vis à vis other groups and nations. Identity is frequently a process of negotiation resulting in various strategies of expression, including music.
Throughout the area the tri-ethnic heritage results in fundamentally mestizo (culturally and racially mixed) musical traditions whose nature varies according to the degree of prevalence of any one of the three sources. For the sake of clarity we refer to Iberian-American and Afro-Hispanic or Afro-American traditions, although the boundaries and borders of such traditions at the end of the 20th century reveal many more complexities. Indeed the old categories tend to fade away as people increasingly share the same space, frequently relying on several existing traditions while creating new ones. It should be borne in mind, therefore, that a great deal of fluidity prevails in most regions of Latin America and the Caribbean in terms of social stratification, ethnicities, regionalism, religions and generations. Because of their essential mestizo character, the musics of Latin America cut across ethnic and sometimes social lines. Moreover, the consequence of this fluidity has precipitated musical change in the whole continent, only a portion of which we seem to be aware of at the beginning of the 21st century.
The folk, traditional and popular musics of the region present therefore a very complex picture that can only be ascertained at the culture-specific level. Here, however, only an overview can be presented: for more detailed discussion, see entries on the individual countries.
II. Iberian and mestizo folk music
CAROLINA ROBERTSON (I), GERARD BÉHAGUE (II–IV)
The indigenous cultures of Latin America are neither obsolete nor waning in musical richness. Many Amerindian communities, though threatened by acculturation, development and hegemonic political programmes have managed to conserve their intrinsic character while incorporating new musical ideas and instruments. Linguists have differed over the number of indigenous languages found in the Americas. Depending on the classificatory methods used, South America alone has been estimated to have between 73 (Brinton) and 117 distinct languages (Loukotka, 1968). In his classic study, Loukotka lists over 2000 dialects from Venezuela to Tierra del Fuego. This linguistic diversity is reflected in an equally complex soundscape in which Amerindian, African, European and criollo musical traditions intermingle in instrumentation, concept, context and musical structures (see Americas, §II).
A few groups have managed to keep their distance from encroaching urban, Eurocentric influences. Nestled in remote mountain areas or dense rainforests, people like the Kogi of Colombia or the Lacandón of the Mexico-Guatemala border have preserved the integrity of their pre-Columbian musical traditions. But even the Kogi and Lacandón are keenly aware of their neighbours, and sometimes ‘borrow’ repertories from other communities. The fluidity of form and concept in indigenous cultures defies belaboured definitions and categories, which attempt to differentiate ‘pure’ from ‘acculturated’ forms; ‘Indian’ from ‘mestizo’; and rural folk from urban popular idioms. The contemporary musical panorama reflects change as a dynamic reality of peoples who have lived with conquest for 500 years.
The complexity and dynamism of this continually changing heritage are rooted in ancient times. In the 14th and 15th centuries the Nahuatl-speaking Aztecs or Mexicas of central Mexico turned the flourishing metropolis of Tenochtitlan into a centre for ritual, science and the performing arts. They took many ideas from the people they conquered and created a system of schools (cuicacalli) in which knowledge could be transmitted. In the high Andes, the Inca aristocracy propagated their hegemonic statecraft, their elaborate ceremonial calendar, their sophisticated approaches to agriculture and road building and their musical ideas about the interrelationships of hocket and melody throughout their vast empire. Urbanization, ethnic enclaves caused by mass migrations, acculturation through conquest and syncretism were important variables in pre-Columbian musical life, just as they are today.
These parallels are mentioned to underline certain areas of continuity between pre- and post-conquest musical traditions. They are in no way meant to minimize the systematic genocide of an indigenous population that in the 15th century equalled that of Europe, including Russia (Dobyns). The survival of Amerindian musics despite this onslaught points to the tenacity and strength of many notions of sound and cosmology nourished by a rich past. The emphasis of ethnomusicology on the ‘ethnographic present’ tends to obscure the fact that the present is but a small microcosm of human patterns that have cycled through many historical permutations.
2. Contemporary performance traditions.
3. History, context and performing practice.
Latin America, §I: Indigenous Music
Many documents that would have provided a more coherent understanding of the indigenous musical past were systematically destroyed by zealous missionaries in the 15th and 16th centuries; yet, as Eric Wolf aptly points out, the Indians of the Americas are not ‘people without a history’. A few enlightened priests, such as Bernardino de Sahagún, Diego Durán and Bartolomé de las Casas (1951) carefully recorded the cultural patterns and contributions of the people of the Americas. Through their efforts, and the testaments of Fernando Alvarado Tezozomoc, Fernando de Alva Ixtlixóchitl, Domingo Francisco Antón Muñón Chimalpain Cuauhtlehuanitzin, ‘El Inca’ Garcilaso de la Vega, Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala, Santacruz Pachacuti Yamqui and other native writers of Mexico and Peru, we can discern historical patterns that continue to inform indigenous music-making (for compilations of early indigenous chroniclers see Cornejo Polar, León Portilla and Wachtel). The richest footprints of the indigenous past are embedded in oral histories and performance traditions which persist to this day. Together, these written and oral histories point out several patterns that illuminate our later discussion of contemporary traditions.
The names of historical indigenous cultures most recognized today are Aztec, Maya and Inca. These peoples, located in central Mexico, Central America and highland Peru, were all empire builders who extended their governments, their scientific achievements, and their philosophies and theologies through trade and conquest. But even the Aztec, Maya and Inca recognized that their kingdoms were built on the achievements of earlier cultures. The Aztecs invoked the deeds of the Toltecs who had preceded them. Though they destroyed many of the records of the Toltecs to rewrite history in their own image, the Aztecs/Mexicans acknowledged artists, poets and composers of great worth with the greatest of compliments: ‘You are a true Toltec!’. Likewise, the Quechua-speaking Incas perfected their understanding of ceramics, acoustics, poetry, ritual and statecraft through what they had inherited from earlier Nasca, Moche and Tairona cultures. Thus the evidence for indigenous musical cultures of the Americas begins at least 3000 years ago, with the emergence of cultures that fashioned stone and clay into sound-producing instruments which have survived decay and can be studied by contemporary archaeomusicologists. We can also assume that musical sounds and instruments were brought across the Bering Strait from Asia in migrations which began 40,000 to 70,000 years ago.
Archaeological studies show great sophistication in acoustical thinking and in instrument-building technologies among pre-Columbian peoples. Studies by Martí, Nyberg, Olsen (1986, 1988), Silva Sifuentes, Rawcliffe and many other scholars show several notable characteristics in early American music: instruments were usually built by specialists who combined their knowledge of acoustics, ceramic techniques, metallurgy, mathematics and ritual purpose into a vast array of experiments with timbre, form and tonal distribution. Tonal organization seems more important here than tonal range. Thus, the Tairona and Nasca peoples of the Andes experimented with multiphones, creating aerophones that could produce more than one pitch at a time. They also created wind instruments that used combination frequencies to produce sharp-edged sounds called beat frequencies (Benade, 1960). These acoustical properties are characteristic of aerophones fashioned in the shape of snakes, jaguars or other animals with supernatural associations. Thus, the peculiar acoustical combinations gave the gods a distinct ‘voice’ which could be invoked in ritual contexts.
In both Mexico and the Andes, multiphonics were sometimes coupled in aerophones with multiple chambers. Ancient wind instruments from Veracruz contained chambers within chambers, all blown through the same aperture. An increase in air shifted resonance deeper and deeper into the flute or ocarina, producing a jump in pitch as well as a shift in resonance location. These pitch-jump whistles are unique to the pre-Columbian world and are one more example of sophisticated acoustical engineering. Duct flutes excavated in Mexico, Ecuador and Peru may have as many as four interconnected chambers, two blowholes and myriad combinations of partials and overtones. As Susan Rawcliffe (1988, p.58) summarizes:
What is remarkable about these pre-Columbian flutes is their diversity of form, timbre and partials, and tunings. Perhaps these instruments were meant to be played alone or accompanied by unpitched instruments. Perhaps ensemble pitch was organized around single related tones. Perhaps melodic contour or timbre was valued more than pitch or the kind of tonal organization we think of as scales. Certainly pitch relationships were organized in ways that challenge the ‘scientific’ acoustical principles developed by Europeans.
Archaeomusicologists of the Andes disagree as to whether the clay globular flutes of ancient times were played in ensembles (Olsen, 1988; Stevenson). Iconographic representations of musicians and instruments in pre-Columbian Andean ceramics imply that instruments were grouped into families and served specific purposes. Thus, performing practices were unique to each instrumental grouping, determined primarily by ritual context, supernatural association and social and hierarchical functions. Raft pipes (panpipes) in the early pottery traditions of South America are always depicted in pairs, with one raft pipe tied to its mate by a rope or string. This pairing implies that these instruments were used, as they are today, to create interlocking parts. In this style of performance, each instrument is equipped with only half the tones needed to complete a melodic idea. In the contemporary panpipe traditions of Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and northern Chile and Argentina, sicuri or zampoña players are paired into ira and arca parts, and interweave their notes to form a complete melody (analogous to the hocket technique in Europe).
Pre-Columbian traditions lead us into a view of performance that links the ways in which we must study the musics of both the past and the present. First, musical traditions cannot be extricated from a larger panoply of performance that often includes dramatization, text, dance and symbolic gesture, costume and body ornamentation and representations through all of these devices of larger views of the cosmos referenced in the microcosm of performance. Second, the phenomenon we usually call text creates multiple levels of communication. For example, the ancient hymn to the rain god Tlaloc found in the Madrid Codex compiled by Sahagún inflects a discourse that was chanted as a four-way dialogue between a congregation, priests, a sacrificial victim and the rain god. Although the goal of the ritual and its chants is the exchange of precious human blood for the nourishment of rain, it also contains a subtext central to 15th-century Nahuatl thought: just as plants nourish the human body, the sacrificed body becomes the food of plants, thus reversing or inverting the food chain and ‘loaning’ the sacrificial victim to the organic world of plants so that the cycle of life may always be renewed. This notion of transmogrification is evident in the opening stanza of the hymn as translated by Willard Gingerich (1977, p.79):
Ahvia! Mexico teutlaneviloc
amapanitlan nauhcampa
ye moquetzquetl
ye kena ichocayan.
(Ahuia! Mexico seeks a loan of the god;
paper-flag places in the four directions;
men stand forth;
finally the time of its weeping.)
The ancient hymn, which focusses on the ‘loan’ of a human life for renewed life on the planet, reflects a continued concern with the importance of sacrifice in the maintenance of balance in the cosmos. The pictographic texts of the Aztec and Maya and the oral traditions of the Andes outline a web of intricate relationships between aspects of creation. The interconnectedness of the universe is activated and maintained through intricate rituals involving music, dance and dramatic texts. Among the texts that survived the onslaught of Spain are the Popol Vuh, the Chilam Balam and Rabinal Achi of the Maya; and the vast collections of songs left behind by Aztec poet-composers. Inca literature was equally rich, and included plays as the Apu Ollantay and the wealth of epic songs known as the Cantares históricos. Many song forms, such as the harawi, were designated for performance on specific occasions and were divided into female (sung) and male (instrumental) genres (Harrison; Gruszczyńska-Ziólkowska). Among the Aztecs, Maya and Inca words were given so much ceremonial power that specialized priesthoods were developed to interpret sacred texts.
The great poet-composers of the Aztec world drew on the images of myth, ritual, nature and warfare to create a vast literature. Nezahualcóyotl (1402–72), Axayácatl (father of Montecuhzoma II) and the other great sages and composers of Mexico were known as tlamatinime, a title indicating that they embodied the highest notions of aesthetics and were masters of ‘flowers and song’, the metaphor for artful composition. The cuicapicque, who specifically composed songs for public rituals, were later folded into the service of the conquering Catholic Church, and continued to receive privileged treatment well into the 16th century. Like their amauta counterparts in Peru, who composed in the imperial runasimi and other Andean languages, the sages of Mexico documented the deeds of heroes and mused about the nature of Creation. The tlamatinime drew on theological tenets developed by the Toltecs, problematizing the nature of gods and men. Thus, in the Cantares mexicanos manuscript (Cantares mexicanos, MS, n.d., f.62r), an anonymous poet sings:
Where is the place of light,
for He who gives life hides Himself?
And also in reference to the notion of Ometéotl, the god of duality inherited from the Toltecs (Cantares mexicanos, MS, n.d., f.35v):
Where shall I go?
Oh, where shall I go?
The path of the god of duality.
Is your home in the place of the dead?
In the interior of the heavens?
Or only here on earth
is the abode of the dead?
The recreation of myths and cosmic forces through ritual enactment conflated time and space, giving humans access to ancestral and supernatural realms. The vehicle that opened the gates between these co-existing realities was performance, wherein music, poetry and dance commingled to open doors to other domains of experience.
All of these symbolic performances enact a relational world, i.e. a world in which music and dance embody the connections between various elements of creation. Thus music, or the act of performance, references the relation of humans to non-humans, of humans to other life forms, of humans to geographic and mythical places, of humans to ancestors, of humans to their past, of individuals and groups to community and of humans to their emotions. These emphases provide the framework for our discussion of contemporary Amerindian traditions.
Latin America, §I: Indigenous Music
A great deal of confusion has been engendered by scholarly attempts to classify peoples of the Americas into what are rather artificial groupings: indio, mestizo, criollo, acculturated, unacculturated. Usually, these categories are based on assumptions about racial purity, intermarriage, cultural contact as a purely post-colonial phenomenon and other fictions imposed by outsiders. Many so-called mestizo, or mixed-blood communities identify with the music of the indios. Many indio communities listen to rock and roll, cumbias and Mexican rancheras on the radio and at their public gatherings. Mass media, migration and an increased awareness of the politics of representation have created a musical continuum in many villages that stuns and confounds colonialist analytical categories. To further muddle our discussion, communities in Peru and Mexico often proclaim themselves as mestizo or indio, and structure their public festivals according to their conceptions of these terms. But even these self-designations are rooted in a concern with the relational world, for they describe an affinity with larger patterns of authority and cultural hegemony. Indio has usually signalled location at the bottom of the socioeconomic ladder; mestizo indicates a broader access to the Euro-focussed metropolis, as well as the pervasive influence of the Spanish language; criollo identifies the speaker with a culture of European origins and New World permutations. These are linguistic, economic, racial and cultural distinctions that negate the complexity of how traditions have been perpetuated and transmitted in Latin America. As used in Peru, Bolivia and parts of Mexico, mestizo refers not so much to racial phenotype as it does to the presence of bilingualism, styles of clothing and speech and socioeconomic status.
(i) Bridging cultural spaces through performance.
(ii) Myth, ritual and performance.
Latin America, §I, 2: Indigenous Music: Contemporary performance traditions
In his research among Aymara-speaking musicians in the Lake Titicaca region of Peru, Thomas Turino shows how music reflects the fluid nature of culture and identity. The people of Conima, a town situated 12,500 feet above sea level, organize their social and religious life around religious fiestas that merge Catholicism with pre-Columbian agricultural rites. Sicus, or raft pipes (panpipes), vertical duct flutes or pinkillus (or pincullos), pitu transverse flutes, drums called cajas, chants, dances and specific costumes punctuate fiestas that embody the social stratifications and spiritual dynamics of the community. In the annual Fiesta de la Candelaria (Candlemas Feast) celebrated on 2 February, the symbolism of the church is merged with the celebration of corn and of the ‘birth of the potato’, crops that are the main sources of sustenance in this region. Plant fertility and courtship are interwoven in songs, dances and instrumental pieces played on cajas and pinkillus.
The human and spiritual relationships traced in ritual contexts carry over into all genres of Conimeño music, creating an ethos of social interdependence that is reflected in the structure of siku, or panpipe melodies. Sikus are divided into two rows of tubes, known as ira and arca. In some communities, the division of a siku into two separate but interdependent sections played by two musicians is equated with male (ira) and female (arca) (Baumann; Grebe, 1980). Adjoining pitches are alternated between the ira and arca rows, resulting in melodies such as the one shown in ex.1.
Conimeños put great emphasis on competition and originality. Thus, each performance of this piece will expand its possibilities within an aesthetic that stresses repetition and contrast within a minimal body of musical information. Tonal materials rely on two basic scale formations: a six-note pattern with flattened third and seventh and a natural minor scale.
Just as important as its distinctive style is the significance of this style of music as a reflection of changing national attitudes towards indigenous peoples. In the past, Conimeños who immigrated to the sprawling coastal city of Lima might have been shunned because of their musical styles and cultural ways; but today the sound of panpipes has become emblematic of the rise of indigenous rights in the Andes. In fact, hybrid forms of panpipe music which adjust intonation to European notions of pitch have come to evoke Andean culture throughout Europe and the Americas. While shifting from regional voices of the disenfranchised to national symbols of ‘Andeanness’, the idiosyncratic musical idioms of Peruvian communities have been appropriated and glossed into a larger web of commodities and cultural representations (Fairley). This itinerary illustrates the way a tradition can navigate the complex waters of indio, mestizo and national identities.
The importance of performance as a way of enacting human relationships is also evident among the contemporary Suyá of Amazonian Brazil. Anthony Seeger (1979) has shown that Suyá men compose akia songs as badges of individual identity that bridge the social and physical space between the men’s hut in the centre of the village and each man’s natal household. Men in a village group sing their individual songs at the same time, shouting their message so that their sisters and mothers can hear their distinctive voices and styles above those of other performers. The akia repertory uses the village as a resounding space in which complex kinship ties are enacted in performances that are simultaneous yet conceptually independent. Although each rendition exhibits new aspects of composition, ex.2 illustrates how three men executed their songs in the same village performance space in 1976.
Akia songs emphasize the individuality of each male composer/performer. Stylistic characteristics reflect this intention through a strained, loud, almost shouted sound begun by each man in the highest part of his vocal range. Melodies terrace downwards, and need not begin or end on any particular pitch (this is true of many other indigenous singing styles as well).
Akia are intended as idiosyncratic statements of individuality that link each performer acoustically to the women who raised him. In contrast, the ngere repertory among the Suyá has a fixed tempo, a flat melodic contour, and purposefully unison, blended vocal style. In ngere performances men, sometimes joined by women, perform as part of their moiety or name-based ceremonial group. Texts conceal the secret of a supernatural entity associated with the moiety. This animal or plant protector is also the source of the song. Seeger (1987), in collaboration with Roseman, has demonstrated that ngere songs make noticeable and measurable rises in pitch during the execution of the song. In ex.3, numbered pitches indicate significant jumps in pitch location. For example, the number 3 indicates B minus 39 cents; and the number 4 indicates F plus 35 cents.
Although pitch stability is important in Western analyses of sound, it is neither named nor critiqued by the Suyá. The rising pitch phenomenon is absorbed as part of the natural path of the song. Seeger’s analysis of the issue of rising pitch in ngere is noteworthy, for it signals that, as among the Conimeños of Peru, an aesthetic quite distinct from the tenets and priorities of Western music criticism is at play. In fact, the ideas that inform many indigenous musical systems can seldom be depicted accurately through conventional staff notation.
The examples examined thus far emphasize originality and repetition, the relationship of the individual to the kin or name group and the relationship of the community to the spirit world. One of the most remarkable examples of performing human-supernatural relationships through specific musical structures comes from the Tepehua and Otomí Indians of Mexico. In a landmark article published in 1967, Charles Boilès demonstrated that in ritual contexts, Tepehua violinists articulate intervallic relationships that generate specific text associations. He called these violin melodies ‘Tepehua thought-songs’, for their textual references hold startling lexical specificity. Using extensive analysis of Otomí linguistics, poetics structures and field research, Boilès was able to translate the semantic signals of the Halakiltunti ceremonies used in healing illnesses, securing rain and restoring harmony in community life. Ex.4 illustrates a text generated by intervals holding this semantic code:
Textual translation of violin intervals:
There was the thought,
Which thought it had been,
Yet it still is.
Hardly had it been born
When there existed lads and lasses.
Even though they were not Old Ones,
In this manner they grasped the way.
Thus were they given the thought;
Thus was the life given them by their fathers.
When the music begins,
It refers to when the thought entered.
It wants to say it is happy.
Yonder it has to grasp the music
Because it knows where it is.
Now it knows where to come in,
For when it arrived where were its fathers,
It greeted them.
Boilès asserted that all traditional Tepehua could hear these violin melodies and easily translate them into words. Intervallic relationships in indigenous performance are rarely this specific. Meanings associated with texts are usually much more abstract. In the vocal genre known as tayil among the Mapuche of Andean Argentina, the combination of melodic contours with non-lexical texts is used to identify particular lineages. Texts of short, repeated syllables carry abstract references to the totemic association of each lineage. The Mapuche word for sheep is ufisha, but the sung ritual signature of ufisha kimpeñ, the sheep lineage, is we-ke. Thus, the phonemes ‘we, we-ke’ identify the shared lineage soul of families who constitute the sheep kin group. Examples of three distinct lineage chants can be seen in ex.5.
The melodic contour and signature syllables that characterize each totemically centred tayil constitute a sonic pathway to the ancestors and creator beings. This repertory can only be performed by women, whose ability to give birth gives them a direct channel to the dimension of ancestral time called takuifí or alüalüntu. In ritual contexts, women perform or ‘pull forth’ this chant for their fathers, husbands, sons or kinswomen. As in the case of the Suyá akia, each performance is considered an independent sonic event, even when it occurs simultaneously with other performances of the same chant. Thus, each woman begins her rendition on her own pitch and may not try to link her performance rhythmically or tonally to the chanting of her kinswomen.
Each tayil consists of four phrases that act as ‘conjugations’ of the chant into four dimensions of time and space: the first phrase connects the intention of the woman who is performing to the heart of the person she is performing for. The second phrase pulls the lineage soul out of the recipient of the chant, bringing that shared soul into sacralized space. The third phrase catapults the lineage soul into the domain of sacred ancestral time. The entry of the chant into this dimension is marked by a specific pitch and timbre referred to as chempralitún, the pivotal sound that engenders transformation. The fourth phrase brings the transformed or re-energized soul back into the present and safely places it back in the body of its owner (Robertson).
The Tarahumara of western Mexico also use sound to bridge spatio-temporal domains. Arturo Salinas has demonstrated that the large, double-headed frame drums of the Tarahumara are used across vast geographic spaces to create an experience of concentric sonic layering (A. Salinas Sound layering in Tarahumara Drumming, unpublished manuscript, Washington, 1988). When Tarahumara peoples gather in a central location for celebratory purposes, they begin their drumming performances at the periphery of each village. Drummers pound their instruments for hours as they slowly approach the central fiesta space. The effect on the celebrants is of layers of rhythm and timbre which circle in on the nexus of celebration. Each village brings a distinct rhythm into prominence. The intention of the performers is not necessarily to articulate specific rhythms, but rather to create patterned layers of sound that weave a sonic tapestry as village kin groups converge. The end result, moving through these concentric circles of sound, is an experience of sound that mirrors Tarahumara village organization.
Not all performance happens in public or in large social contexts. As in other parts of the world, parents sing lullabies to their children, lone shepherds play their flutes for their flocks, and travellers compose nostalgic songs and improvisations that link them to home and family. But even in these instances of isolated solo performance, individuals rely on the musical patterns that mark them as members of a social group, for even the explorations of isolated composers are directly linked to an indelible cultural identity and soundscape.
Latin America, §I, 2: Indigenous Music: Contemporary performance traditions
All of these examples imply that indigenous musical traditions are anchored to theories of sound, time and space and to more complex theories of what sound is, how it can be structured and how it can be used to articulate community values and beliefs. In turn, these theories of what music is and what it does are rooted in rich oral traditions that link performance to myth and ritual.
One of the oldest belief systems of the Americas is linked to the jaguar (Hill, 1993; Reichel-Dolmatoff, 1975; Robertson, 1998). Beginning about 1300 bce, the Olmecs of eastern Mexico fashioned stone into gigantic representations of their jaguar god. In the oral traditions of the Baniwa of the north-western Amazon the jaguar Yaperikuli gives birth to the primordial hero, Kuai. The voice of the jaguar is contained in the resonant bass voice of wooden trumpets. Furthermore, Wright asserts that ‘whenever the jaguar-song occurs in myth or shaman-song, it indicates a transformation – Ipadámawa – is being made’ (1981, p.82). In creation myths, the female jaguar brings fire to the world, thus signalling a transformational moment in history when the hearth becomes the nexus of villages and kin groups.
In many initiation rites, the novice must face his or her own terror of encountering the ancestral jaguar. Among the Barasana of Colombia, male initiates are warned of the power of the he trumpets, which contain the terrifying voice of the jaguar ancestor. As they are played during the ritual, these instruments come to life and pass the life-giving breath of the ancestor into the initiate. Passing through fear and being touched by the fierce life force of the archetypal jaguar brings the initiates into full membership in the community.
Initiation rituals are frequently representations of the tension between genders. Among many peoples of the lowland rainforests, male social control is enacted, sanctioned and maintained through rituals that exclude women and separate them from contact with the sacred flutes performed by men (Basso; Murphy). Given their shape, construction and male symbolic association, anthropologists and ethnomusicologists have assumed these instruments to be phallic objects that assert male primacy. However, myths prevalent among the Mundurucú, Kalapalo, Mehinaku, Trumaí and neighbouring groups narrate that women used to be the owners of the flutes. Through abuses of power and sexual privilege, women lost ownership of the flutes and must now be controlled by men. Ellen Basso, one of the few women to do research in this region, tells us that during certain times of the month, Kalapalo male elders hide these instruments in the rafters of the men’s house because the flutes are ‘menstruating’. This fact implies that the flutes are not (or not only) a representation of the phallus, but rather an embodiment of the birth canal and of a kind of female power coveted by men.
The complexity and multivalence of ritual symbols and performance defy reductionistic interpretations. Such is the case in the Baile de moros y cristianos, the dance of Moors and Christians; another ritual of broad distribution in the Americas. Versions of this 15th-century dance–drama, linked to the expulsion of the Moors from Spain in 1492, can be found wherever Spain extended her empire. From New Mexico to Bolivia, this representation of the triumph of ‘good’ (Christianity) over ‘evil’ (Islam) is known variously as ‘Las Moritas’, ‘Los Santiagos’, ‘Los Alchileos’, ‘Los Matachines’ and other names (Warman Gryj). Spanish chroniclers of the 16th century tell us that the dance was first performed in Cotzacoalcos to honour Hernán Cortés. Predictably, Mexican versions of this drama incorporate the mistress of Cortés as a central figure of conquest. Known as Malinalli in Nahuatl, her native tongue; as Doña Marina to the Spaniards; and as La Malinche to her mestizo descendants, this woman played a key role in the initial encounter between Spaniard and Amerindian. She was a gifted translator and linguist, a political mediator and a respected cacique (chief). Ironically, her liaison with Cortés identifies her to some as a betrayer of the Amerindian. The breadth of her identity parallels the breadth of musical and instrumental traditions in which this dance repertory is played. In Mexico alone, Moros y cristianos instrumentation can range from harp and guitar to chirimía (shawm) and huehuetl or teponaztli drums; from fiddle and rattle to marimbas. The rattles and wooden drums are pre-Columbian in origin. The marimba is believed by some to be an indigenous instrument and by others to be an African import. The shawm and string instruments were introduced by Spanish conquerors and missionaries. Again, the multiple origins and associations of these instruments signal the complex cultural intricacies and variations wrought by conquest. Today these types of dramatic performances are perpetuated throughout Latin America by cofradías, or religious brotherhoods centring on a patron saint (see Moreno Chá; Uribe-Echevarría; Verger). The proliferation and diffusion of cofradías is on the rise, and continually expands to include new costumes, dances and songs. This form of popular religiosity, born originally of indigenous attempts to assimilate and ‘convert’ Catholicism to local beliefs, has attracted people of all social classes who are willing to dance or sing for the saints in exchange for supernatural intervention.
The most broadly distributed and musically diverse category of indigenous performance regards healing the body and spirit through sound. Healing is facilitated by the ability of a shaman (an anthropological term of Siberian origin) to mediate between the human and spirit worlds. This ancient role is linked to music in pre-Columbian ceramics from the Recuay, Wari and Chincha periods of Peru, where the healer is shown playing flutes, panpipes and drums. Detailed descriptions and transcriptions of healing songs among the Mapuche of Chile, the Warao of Venezuela and the Mazatec of Mexico are provided by Balada (1981), Grebe (1980) and Olsen (1996). These authors demonstrate that the details of performance, ranging from rattle and drum rhythms to the timbre and structure of songs, are relevant to the curing process. In his analysis of a Mariusa healing ceremony in Venezuela, Briggs (The Effectiveness of Poetics, unpublished manuscript, Briggs, 1991, cited in Olsen, 1996, p.190) delineates the relationship of the ceremonial rattle to actual healing procedures conducted by the wisiratu, or shaman, for a sick child:
… The slow tempo rattling enables the kareko in the rattle – who are the shaman’s helpers – to establish contact with the kureko aurohi ‘the fevers of the stones’, in the child, and this part of each section is referred to as dokotebuyaha ‘starting up the song’. The fast tempo rattling that follows is termed hebu nayaha ‘spanking the hebu’. Here the shaman either leans forward or crouches above the patient so that the rattle is directly over his body. With the increase in tempo and the intensity of movement, the revolutions become more ellipsoidal than circular, with rapid downthrusts constituting the blows to the hebu. This ‘spanking’ loosens the hebu’s grip on the child, paving the way for its extraction.
Specific tones, timbres and rhythms, sometimes combined with hallucinogens, also serve to establish and regulate the shaman and patient’s state of consciousness, and move the ceremony through successive stages in which the malady may be diagnosed, treated and transformed with the aid of the spirit world.
Indigenous communities are not static cultural entities. They continue to be permeated by internal and external changes that often modify or nullify ancient practices or even generate new genres of performance. In highland communities of Peru, the ancient ceremony honouring the sun, Intip Raymin, was incorporated into Corpus Christi celebrations. In recent times, Peruvians have reinvented a version of what they now call Inti Raimi, an elaborate pageant of pseudo-Inca characters played by criollos for the benefit of tourist audiences. But many traditionally rooted historical dramas have re-emerged in the 20th century as statements of Amerindian identity.
Among the Chamula of southern Mexico, Passion cults in which ritual players impersonate Jesus Christ constitute a central part of village life. The theme of the fiesta is not really Jesus of Nazareth but 500 years of resistance to external authority structures. In particular, the people of Chamula (a village in the state of Chiapas) commemorate the Caste War of 1867–70. This rebellion originated in Chamula. The indigenous leaders of this war exhorted their followers to reject the Catholic Church. On Good Friday of 1868 they crucified a young boy named Domingo Gómez Checheb so that he could be worshipped as the Indian Christ of Chamula. According to Bricker (1973, p.89), ‘There is abundant evidence that the Christ whom the Passion impersonates is the Indian Christ rather than the Ladino [Spanish-speaking] Saviour’. The focus on ‘Indianness’ is further marked by the playing of drums and cane flutes of pre-Columbian origin.
Luis Millones has documented a play popular in the Carhuamayo area of Peru that depicts the life, uprising, defeat and execution of Atahualpa (on 29 October 1532), the last Inca to lead an uprising against the Spanish invaders. The play ‘The Death of Atahualpa’ conflates the image of Santa Rosa de Lima, patron saint of many Andean communities, with the concept of Pachamama, the pre-Hispanic Earth Mother. The story is staged with elaborate costumes, songs and dances executed by the Inca Atahualpa and his entourage of warriors, priests and Coyas (royal consorts of the Inca). In a heightened dramatic moment, the invading conqueror, Francisco Pizarro, stealthily penetrates the formation of royal women dancing to the sound of drums and panpipes, draws his dagger and slits the throat of the lead Coya. Chicha (corn liquor), a symbol of life-sustaining wira energy, flows from the throat of the massacred ancestral mother to the ground. In this moment the course of history is forever changed and historical drama and ritual become one in the narrative of a people.
Latin America, §I: Indigenous Music
In pre-Columbian times, repertories, instruments and ideas were traded over vast geographies. Both Guaman Poma de Ayala and Garcilaso de la Vega, chroniclers of the Inca empire, asserted that the panpipes we have come to associate with the descendants of the Incas were actually imported from other lands. These instruments, which seem to have originated somewhere in the central Andes some 7000 years ago (Pérez de Arce) were traded out of the Peruvian area and then returned to their general place of origin many centuries later. Through trade and imperial expansion, the Incas redistributed this instrument as far north as Panama and as far south as Patagonia. The conch-shell trumpet (Strombus galeatus) was also traded from the Caribbean Sea into the Andes. It is possible that the scale patterns, rhythms, dance styles and spiritual practices were also exported through the routes created by commerce. This would explain the wide distribution of various kinds of pentatonic scales, for example.
Today musical ideas are more commonly traded by radio and television. It is not uncommon for the Mapuche of Chile and Argentina to listen to Mexican mariachi music on the radio and imitate the ranchera falsetto style at their social gatherings. In Peru, composers of huaynos may reach a relative who is hiding from the authorities by performing their compositions at independent radio stations and folding hidden political messages into their Quechua and Aymara texts.
From Mexico to Bolivia, instruments are seen as belonging to ‘families’. This kinship between instruments may be determined by their mode of production or by associations provided by contexts. Among the Aymara of Bolivia, one characteristic that marks Amerindian identity in performance is that panpipes should only be played with other panpipes, tarkas with tarkas, kenas with kenas; or, at least, when all these wind instruments are combined in one performance they should not be mixed with string instruments. Mixing winds with guitar or the armadillo-backed charango is a practice that identifies a genre and its performers as mestizo. This does not mean that traditional Aymara performing groups cannot perform a wide variety of styles, but instrumental combinations do signal cultural associations and socioeconomic variables.
Tonal organization among indigenous peoples defies the facile categories devised by scholars to describe how we, as Westerners, might apprehend performance. Pentatonic scales are common in the Americas; but in early ethnomusicology (Aretz, 1952; Izikowitz, 1934; Vega, 1946) scholars tended to reduce the music of a community to the particular scale that had caught their fancy. Thus, cultures that used many different scales became characterized by the tonal patterns of a single genre, a reductionistic practice that haunts us to this day. The key questions that have yet to be answered satisfactorily by ethnomusicology are, ‘How many systems of musical organization co-exist within one performance region? How are tone, rhythm and timbre perceived by the members of a particular culture? How does music interface with other ways of knowing the universe?’. Until we are able to decode the subtleties of time and tune as heard and used by indigenous people we will only be describing ourselves.
Regardless of how disparate or unusual indigenous tunings of musical structures may sound to the European ear, performance is always intentional and carries embedded assumptions about the nature of sound, the efficacy of form and the purpose of making music. McCosker has demonstrated that among the San Blas Cuna of Panama even lullabies, which are improvised to both comfort and educate children, follow a specific and predictable format. An example of the melodic characteristics of one of these lullabies is given in ex.6.
Intentionality of construction and inflection are important in indigenous approaches to tonal organization. In the archaeological heritage of central Chile we find pifilca flutes that were carved in stone or wood with a double bore that narrowed in the middle and flared at the ends. The resulting timbre created a shrill sense of dissonance that could be magnified by playing several of these flutes at once (Pérez de Arce). As in the timbre of Bolivian tarkas, the voice of the pifilca is meant to draw the attention of ancestors and supernaturals to the ritual ground. Among contemporary Araucanian Indians pifilcas are often made out of mountain bamboo. The same effect is achieved by cutting the stalks to specific lengths, pairing them and tuning them with water so that they generate shrill tones less than a major 2nd apart.
Rituals change; repertories change. It is true that many aspects of Amerindian life and performing practice have been altered, repressed and even rendered extinct by encroaching national and ladino interests. In Brazil, the fragility of rainforest cultures equals the fragility of rapidly disappearing ecosystems. But the survival of Amerindian cultures over 500 years of struggle attests to their tenacity and depth. Among the Aztecs, Maya and Inca of pre-conquest times, music education played a central part in socialization, empire building and ritual coherence. Linda O’Brien has shown that among the contemporary Tzutuhil-Maya of Atitlán, Guatemala, music continues to be a central vehicle for enculturation. Performance is at the core of traditions that the Tzutuhil speak of as ‘the heart and centre of the world’, the ‘ancient source of power and contentment’ and the ‘roots of life’ (1976, p.384). Music is an essential key for understanding the world of the indigenous peoples of Latin America; for we find that both before and long after European presence, theirs is a sonic universe.
Latin America, §I, 3: Indigenous Music: History, context and performing practice
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J.H. Steward, ed.: Handbook of South American Indians (New York, 1963)
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M.A. Guzman Anleu: Danzas de Guatemala, Folklore de Guatemala, i (Guatemala City, 1965)
I. Halmos: ‘Das Verhältnis von Instrument, Stimmung und Tonart in Langsflöten-Melodien der Nambikuara-Indianer’, Abhandlungen und Berichte des Staatlichen Museums für Völkerkunde Dresden, xxiv (1965), 49
L.P. Ramón y Rivera: ‘Música de los motilones’, in O. d’Empaire: Introducción al estudio de la cultura Bari (diss., Central U. of Venezuela, Caracas, 1965), 156
R. Toledo Palomo: Los bailes del Tum en los siglos XVI y XVII, Folklore de Guatemala, i (Guatemala City, 1965)
H.F. Dobyns: ‘Estimating Aboriginal American Population: an Appraisal of Techniques with a New Hemispheric Estimate’, Current Anthropology, vii (1966), 395–416
C. Boilés: ‘Tepehua Thought-Song’, EthM, xi (1967), 267–92
D. Durán: Historia de las Indias de Nueva España e islas de Tierra Firma, ed. A.M. Garibay (Mexico City, 1967) [written 1557–81]
M. León Portilla: Trece poetas del mundo azteca (Mexico City, 1967)
M. León Portilla: Tiempo y realidad eb el pensamiento maya (Mexico City, 1968, 2/1986; Eng. trans., 1973, 2/1988)
C. Loukotka: Classification of South American Indian Languages, ed. J. Wilbert (Los Angeles, 1968)
G. Reichel-Dolmatoff: Desana: simbolismo de los indios tukano del Vaupés (Bogotá, 1968, 2/1986; Eng. trans., 1971, as Amazonian Cosmos: the Sexual and Religious Symbolism of the Tukano Indians)
R. Stevenson: Music in Aztec & Inca Territory (Berkeley, 1968)
L.F. Ramón y Rivera: ‘Formaciones escalśticas en la etnomúsica latinoamericana’, YIFMC, i (1969), 200
N. McQuown and J. Pitt-Rivers, eds.: Ensayos de antroplogía en la Zona Central de Chiapas (Mexico City, 1970)
N. Wachtel: La vision des vaincus: les Indiens du Pérou devant la conquête espagnole, 1530–1570 (Paris, 1971; Eng. trans., 1977)
J. Castillo: Música Maya-Quiché (Quezaltenango, 1941)
A. Prado Quesada: Apuntes sintéticos sobre la historia y producción musical de Costa Rica (San José, Costa Rica, ?1941)
A. Warman Gryj: La danza de moros y cristianos (Mexico City, 1972)
V.R. Bricker: Ritual Humor in Highland Chiapas (Austin, 1973)
R. Murphy: ‘Social Structure and Sex Antagonism’, Peoples and Cultures of Native South America, ed. D.R. Gross (Garden City, NY, 1973)
R. Gablis: ‘Métodos de curación entre los Cunas y los Otomi: estudio comparativo’, América indigena, xxiv/4 (1974), 939
P.K. Jones: ‘Una breve descripción de la cutura musical Chirripo’, América indigena, xxxiv/2 (1974), 427
E. Lopez de Piza: ‘Xirinachs de Zent, una comunidad Cabécar de Costa Rica’, América indigena, xxxiv/2 (1974), 439
B. and J. Nietschmann: ‘Cambio y continuidad: los indigenas Rama de Nicaragua’, América indigena, xxxiv/4 (1974), 905
J.L. Nyberg: An Examination of Vessel Flutes from Pre-Hispanic Cultures of Ecuador (diss., U. of Minnesota, 1974)
M.W. Helms: Middle America: a Culture History of Heartland and Frontiers (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1975)
G. Reichel-Dolmatoff: The Shaman and the Jaguar: a Study of Narcotic Drugs Among the Indians of Colombia (Philadelphia, 1975)
S. McCosker: ‘San Blas Cuna Indian Lullabies’, Enculturation in Latin America, ed. J. Wilbert (Los Angeles, 1976), 29–66
L.L. O’Brien: ‘Music Education and Innovation in a Traditional Tzutuhil-Maya Community’, ibid., 377–94
A. Estrada: Vida de María Sabina: la sabia de los hongos (Mexico City, 1977/R; Eng. trans., 1981, as María Sabina: her Life and Chants)
W. Gingerich: ‘Tlaloc, his Song’, Latin American Indian Literatures, i/2 (1977), 79–88
T. Gregor: Mehinaku: the Drama of Daily Life in a Brazilian Indian Village (Chicago, 1977)
J.E. Silva Sifuentes: Instrumentos musicales pre-colombinos (Lima, 1978)
J. Uribe-Echevarría: Fiesta de la Virgen de Candelaria en Copiapó (Valparaíso, 1978)
J. Hill: ‘Kamayurá Flute Music: a Study of Music as Meta-Communication’, EthM, xxiii (1979), 417–32
C. Robertson: ‘“Pulling the Ancestors”: Performance Practice and Praxis in Mapuche Ordering’, EthM, xxiii (1979), 395–416
A. Seeger: ‘What Can We Learn When They Sing? Vocal Genres of the Suya Indians of Central Brazil’, EthM, xxiii (1979), 373–94
M.E. Grebe: ‘Relaciones entre música y cultura: el kultrún y su simbolismo’, Revista INIDEF, iv (1970–80), 7–25
M. de Civrieux: Watunna: an Orinoco Creation Cycle (San Francisco, 1980)
M.E. Grebe: Generation Models, Symbolic Structures, and Acculturation in the Panpipe Music of the Aimara of Tarapaca, Chile (diss., Queen’s U. of Belfast, 1980)
R. Wright: History and Religion of the Baniwa Peoples of the Upper Rio Negro Valley (diss., Stanford U., 1981)
M.P. Baumann: ‘Music of the Indios in Bolivia's Andean Highlands (Survey)’, World of Music, xxiv.2 (1982), 80–96
E.R. Wolf: Europe and the People Without History (Berkeley, 1982)
J. Estrada, ed.: La música de Mexico, i: Período prehispánico (ca. 1500 a.C. a 1521 d.C.) (Mexico City, 1984)
E.B. Basso: A Musical View of the Universe: Kalapalo Myth and Ritual Performances (Philadelphia, 1985)
E. den Otter: Music and Dance of Indians and Mestizos in an Andean Valley of Peru (Delft, 1985)
D. Olsen: ‘The Flutes of El Dorado: an Archaeomusicological Investigation of the Tairona Civilization of Colombia’, JAMIS, xii (1986), 107–36
A. Seeger: Why Suyá Sing: a Musical Anthropology of an Amazonian People (Cambridge, 1987)
Musical Repercussions of 1492: Washington DC 1988 [incl. C. Robertson: ‘The Dance of Conquest’, 9–30; S. Rawcliffe: ‘Complex Acoustics in the Pre-Columbian Flute Systems’, 35–63; D. Olsen: ‘Implications of Music Technologies in the Pre-Columbian Andes’, 65–88; L. Millones: ‘The Death of Atahualpa’, 237–56; E. Moreno Chá: ‘Encounters and Identities in Andean Brotherhoods’, 413–27]
J. Bierhorst: The Mythology of South America (New York, 1988)
J. Fairley: ‘“The Blind Leading the Blind”: Changing Perceptions of Traditional Music: the Case of the Peruvian Ayllu Sulca’, Music in the Dialogue of Cultures: Berlin 1988, 272–89
L.E. Sullivan: Icanchu’s Drum: an Orientation to Meaning in South American Religions (New York, 1988)
R. Harrison: Signs, Songs, and Memory in the Andes: Translating Quechua Language and Culture (Austin, 1989)
A. Cornejo Polar: ‘El comienzo de la heterogeneidad en las literaturas andinas: voz y letra en el “diálogo” de Cajamarca’, Revista crítica de literatura latinoamericana, xvii (1990), 155–207
M.R. Key, ed.: Language Change in South American Indian Languages (Philadelphia, 1991)
R. Wright: Stolen Continents: the Americas through Indian Eyes since 1942 (Boston, 1992)
C.L. Briggs: ‘Personal Sentiments and Polyphonic Voices in Warao Women's Ritual Wailing: Music and Poetics in a Critical Collective Discourse’, American Anthropologist, xcv (1993), 929–57
J.D. Hill: Keepers of the Sacred Chants: the Poetics of Ritual Power in an Amazonian Society (Tucson, AZ, 1993)
T. Turino: Moving Away from Silence: Music of the Peruvian Altiplano and the Experience of Urban Migration (Chicago, 1993)
W.B. Taylor and F. Pease, eds.: Violence, Resistance, and Survival in the Americas: Native Americans and the Legacy of Conquest (Washington DC, 1994)
A. Gruszczyńska-Ziólkowska: El poder del sonido: el papel de las crónicas españolas en la etnomusicología andina (Lima, 1995)
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D.A. Olsen: Music of the Warao of Venezuela: Song People of the Rainforest (Gainesville, FL, 1996)
H. Tomoeda and L. Millones, eds.: La tradición andina en tiempas modernos (Osaka, 1996)
C. Robertson: ‘Myth, Cosmology, and Performance’, The Universe of Music: Latin America, ed. M. Kuss (New York, 1998)
The Spanish and Portuguese presence in the western hemisphere for over five centuries obviously resulted in various forms of retention and transformation of music and dance expressions of Iberian origin. Latin American and Spanish Caribbean countries retained not only Iberian traditions in songs and dances but also developed genres of their own emanating from those traditions generally referred to as criollo (originally meaning ‘born in the New World’ of Iberian origin). Particularly significant was the widespread retention of the old Iberian romancero or ballad repertory in all of Spanish and Portuguese America, the adoption and adaptation of Iberian musical instruments (especially string instruments), of dance genres, and of specific style and performance characteristics. Concurrently, the contact of Europeans with Amerindian cultures created musical traditions that exhibit varying combinations of elements of corresponding origin. The hybridization of these traditions is clearly not homogeneous in the various countries and territories, since it depends on numerous factors such as the nature and structure of native cultures, the relative degree of acculturation, the level of native resistance to the process of colonialization and the relative importance attributed to a given region by the colonizers. Thus, the degree to which a single culture predominates, whether Iberian, Amerindian or African, varies greatly among nations, and, within nations, among regions.
1. Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.
Latin America, §II: Iberian and mestizo folk music
The existence of a fairly sophisticated musical system by high Amerindian cultures of the Aztecs and Mayas in pre-Columbian Mesoamerica is demonstrated by archaeological evidence, the testimony of early Spanish missionaries in the form of detailed chronicles, and the study of Mexican codices and Amerindian language lexicons. At the time of the conquest in 1521, the Aztecs in central Mexico ruled over a large confederation of peoples; and their empire extended to present-day El Salvador. From their own domination of older Amerindian cultures, they inherited numerous ideas of instrument making and performance techniques.
The early missionaries in Mexico and Central America tried hard to suppress the native Amerindian musical culture. While they did not entirely succeed, as a result of their effective work much of the folk music of the Hispanic tradition found its way into the culture of almost all Mexican and Central American Amerindian groups. For example, obvious traces of Gregorian chant intonation and of old European modal melodies can be found in the shamanic chanting and singing performance of the Mazatec Indians in Oaxaca, Mexico. Moreover, songs of the Otomí Indians of north-east Mexico follow the characteristic triplet figurations of Spanish folksong and have elements of major tonality emphasizing tonic and third, as shown by the studies of Vicente Mendoza, a well-known authority on Mexican traditional music. Other Otomí songs give even greater evidence of European influence in their parallel 3rds and 6ths. Concurrently, these songs retain traditional Amerindian traits, such as small range and short melodies with but a few tones. Regardless of the origins of the varied elements of their musical expressions, contemporary Amerindian groups have fully assimilated them as integral parts of their cultures.
Despite its strong Amerindian roots, Mexican and Central American folk music derives substantially from its Spanish heritage. This Hispanic domination is not only the result of the early missionary work in the area but also of the Amerindians’ highly praised aptitude to learn and assimilate European music, a fact made possible by the existence of strong indigenous musical traditions in pre-Columbian times. Contemporary mestizo music exhibits a variety of scales, but the classic European major and minor modes predominate, especially in the various regional sones and other song types. Iberian folk polyphony (parallel 3rds and 6ths) as well as hemiola rhythmic structure constitute conspicuous traits of Mexican and Central American folk music in both instrumental and vocal performances. Likewise, Spanish popular literary forms (décima, copla) are the most frequently found in folksongs of the area.
Several membranophones, idiophones and aerophones of pre-Columbian origin are still in use in contemporary Mexico and Central America. The huehuetl single-headed drum is still played in central, southern and south-eastern Mexico. The teponaztli slit drum is even more widespread, as is its Mayan counterpart, the tun or tunkul, in Guatemala. Turtle-shell rasps continue to accompany sones in the isthmus of Tehuantepec. Whistle flutes, vertical flutes with varying numbers of finger-holes and panpipes are found throughout the area. The African-derived marimba is especially popular in Oaxaca, Chiapas and from Guatemala to Costa Rica in various forms. Despite the numerous attempts in Guatemala to prove the pre-Columbian origin of the marimba, there is no definite archaeological evidence to indicate that the original marimba de tecomates (i.e. of calabash resonators tuned to a diatonic scale) is of Amerindian provenance, despite the popularity of the instrument among Amerindians since the 18th century. The Guatemalan marimba was probably introduced in the early colonial period by African slaves, since it is remarkably similar to African xylophones, not only in its actual construction but in the particular buzzing sound resulting from a vibrating membrane attached to a circle of wax around an opening at the bottom of the resonators. All other folk instruments are derived or adapted from European instruments. Particularly significant are string instruments, including the standard violin, diatonic harp (the largest one of 35 strings), and a large number of instruments relating to the Spanish vihuela and guitar families, among them the standard guitar, the vihuela (five-string with convex shape), jarana or guitarra de golpe (five-string small guitar), requinto (six-string guitar somewhat smaller than the classic guitar), cuatro, guitarra huapanguera (eight strings in five courses), guitarrón (large five-string bass guitar), bajo sexto (six courses of double strings), mandolin and psaltery. The accordion (primarily the diatonic, button type) is the principal instrument of the northern conjuntos (or ensembles) but also appears as far south as Chiapas. The tradition of the brass band, developed in both Amerindian and mestizo communities, has proliferated everywhere. This is in part due to military service and military band traditions and constitutes a matter of civic pride in all communities.
The major genre of mestizo folk music in Mexico is the son which, despite its many regional differences, can be defined as music associated with dance, with specific literary form and verse contents and with specific regional instrumental ensembles. Although primarily an instrumental genre, the son includes singing as a rule, in alternating instrumental (‘música’) and vocal (‘verso’) sections. The main secular vocal genres of Mexican mestizo folk music are the corrido and the canción. Related to the Spanish romance, the corrido is the main ballad of Mexico, Central America and some of the Spanish Caribbean countries. Set in the usual copla (four-line stanza of octosyllabic lines) or décima form (ten-line verse), the corrido (also designated as romance, historia, tragedia, bola, mañanitas, versos etc.) exhibits a general melodic structure of one or two symmetrical and isometric phrases, repeated as often as the text demands it (the length varies from six to 78 stanzas), in typical strophic form. Corridos deal with a wide array of subjects, from old chivalry and love stories to historical events and figures (particularly significant is the corrido repertory of the Mexican Revolution of 1910), to local current events and sociopolitical protest. The corrido singer or corridista follows certain general formulae in telling the story: calling the audience’s attention, statement of the place and date of the event to be narrated and the name of the main character of the story; presentation of the main parts of the story; message; farewell of the main character and the corridista. A corrido is performed by one or two voices, with the accompaniment of guitar, violin and guitar, accordion or harp. With the increased popularity of conjuntos norteños (northern ensembles consisting of accordion, bajo sexto and double bass) and mariachis (developed in the state of Jalisco and consisting of male voices, violins, guitars, vihuelas, jaranas, guitarrón and trumpets), corridos written by popular composers such as José Alfredo Jiménez (1926–72) are sung by a solo voice with the support of an orchestra, in Mariachi or norteño style.
Although the term canción is applied generically to any song, it is more specifically understood as a Mexican mestizo song of lyric expression, outside any dance context (with a few exceptions, such as the polka songs of northern Mexico and the waltz songs of Tehuantepec). The wide range of sources of this lyric expression explains the great diversity of the genre, but many of the characteristics of 19th-century Italian opera and musical comedy have exerted profound influence on the canción, such as long, expanded melodic phrases and operatic vocal style of performance. Vicente Mendoza has classified the canción according to the following criteria: the metre of the versification, the musical structure, the geographical features which it describes, the area of the country in which it is sung, the character of the tune, the age or occupation of the users and the rhythm of the accompaniment expressed in terms of European dance forms. The canción appears both in rural and urban contexts. Numerous songs of the canción romántica mexicana (Mexican romantic song) type, written by such venerated composers of popular music as Agustín Lara, Tata Nacho and Guty Cárdenas, have won such lasting recognition that they are part of the repertory of the whole mestizo population. Among the songs of the northern region of Mexico (canciones norteñas) are rancheras, extremely popular sentimental songs with march-, polka- or waltz-influenced accompaniment in varying tempos. An affected performance style (ringing vocal production, contrasting dynamics) is particularly appropriate for conveying the melodramatic character of many rancheras.
Numerous dramatic dances of Iberian origin, such as the dance of Christians and Moors, illustrate the integration of indigenous and mestizo Christian and musical practices in Mexico and Central America. In Mexico the tradition of the concheros is especially symbolic of that integration. Also known as danzantes de la conquista (‘dancers of the conquest’), corporaciones de danza Azteca or chichimeca (‘corporations of Aztec dance or chichimeca’), they supposedly represent defeated Amerindians who converted to Catholicism and became active soldiers of spiritual conquest in the 16th century. Contemporary concheros consider themselves the descendants of the ancient Mexicans, marking their identity through Amerindian dress, elaborate feather headdresses, use of teponaztli and huehuetl, and observance of some ritual elements which could be pre-Hispanic. Their main melodic and harmonic instrument is the concha, a guitar of five courses of double strings made from an armadillo shell, from which their name derives. Mandolins are also added to the ensemble. They wear large jingles (huesos) made of seed shells around their ankles. They organize themselves as a sort of spiritual army, with military titles, but their musical instruments are their weapons, their rituals entirely musical and choreographic. The two principal ceremonies are the velación, private rite to Catholic saints and to the spirits of ancestor-concheros (known as ánimas conquistadoras or ‘conquest souls’) and the danza itself. The latter is a public ceremony, performed at least four times a year, in four major sanctuaries, of which those of Chalma and Villa de Guadalupe are the most important. The greeting, offering and praise songs follow a familiar Hispanic-mestizo style, in call and response, with the choral answers in characteristic parallel 3rds and 6ths; popular Catholic hymns and alabanzas (praise hymns) are the main genres. Strictly instrumental music (mandolins, conchas, huehuetl, teponaztli) accompany the public dance. Since the 1970s, the danza azteca and the conchero groups have spread throughout the south-western United States, from Texas to California, as a strong key symbol of Mexican-American identity.
The ‘Spanish’ Caribbean, composed of the islands of Cuba, the Dominican Republic and Puerto Rico, demonstrate more their Hispanic than their African heritage, although the contribution of the latter to mestizo folk music is considerable. Hispanic-related genres among the Cuban guajiros (rural farmers) of the eastern provinces and the interior of the country, include the song types décima guajira, guajira and punto, all exhibiting the same main stylistic peculiarities as most Iberian-mestizo folk music throughout Latin America. The décima represents the improvised song text, frequently in controversias, poetic-singing contests. As a song and dance, the punto is found not only in Cuba but in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Colombia and Panama. Among Puerto Rican jíbaros (peasants) the prevailing genre is the seis whose Spanish character comes not only from the use of the décima espinela in its song text but also from the frequent harmonies based on the ‘Andalucian cadence’ (a descending conjunct motion of the roots of alternating major and minor triads) and a specific tense vocal style associated with cante hondo or flamenco music. The typical accompanying ensemble of the seis includes a guitar, a tiple (small guitar of five courses of single or double strings), a bordonúa (large six-string guitar) and the Puerto Rican cuatro (a guitar-like instrument with five courses of double strings).
The impact of African culture on Caribbean music is so pre-eminent that the most important genres of song and dance music belong properly to the Afro-Caribbean tradition (see §III below).
Latin America, §II: Iberian and mestizo folk music
(ii) Dances, autos and dramatic dances.
Latin America, §II, 2: Iberian and mestizo folk music: South America
Because song functions in conjunction with dancing in a very high proportion of repertories, there are relatively few independent song genres in South American folk music. Throughout the continent one finds several song types derived from the old Spanish romance, the typical ballad dating to the early Renaissance, based on the décima (ten-line verse) form or four-line stanzas with octosyllabic lines (the copla poetic structure, with rhyme schemes of ABCB, known as rima romancera). Under different local names, romances have been preserved, sometimes in their original form (e.g. in the Chocó province of Colombia) and sometimes with significant variations which reveal the characteristic feeling and world view of the mestizos of a given region. Improvised coplas of a narrative nature frequently replace the romance as the ballad genre (although they are derived from it), especially in Mexico, Colombia, the Andean countries and Argentina. Typically, romances and coplas describe, in an epic lyrical manner, famous historical events of a region, the feats of a folk hero or episodes of daily life. Apart from their poetic and musical value, they often provide significant sociological data, expressed for the most part in metaphorical language. Ex.7 shows two versions of a traditional romance known in Lima, Peru. Entitled La esposa difunta o la aparición, its origin has been traced to 16th-century Spain. The regular two- and four-bar phrases and their isometric structure are characteristic of Spanish folksong. Literary versions of the same romance have been collected from New Mexico, California, Mexico and Nicaragua to the Spanish Caribbean, Venezuela, Ecuador and several provinces of Argentina, confirming the wide diffusion of the romance tradition.
Other folksongs, such as the Argentine and Chilean tonadas and tonos, have maintained other old Spanish literary forms. The glosa and the décima are, respectively, a quatrain which sets the basic subject or story and a development of the basic subject in a stanza of ten octosyllabic lines. This structure is found in Chilean, Peruvian, Ecuadorian and Colombian décimas, Argentine estilos and cifras, and in many other genres, such as the guabina of Colombia or the romances and xácaras of Luso-Brazilian folk music. The classical rhyme scheme of the Spanish décima, abbaaccddc, known as décima espinela (after Vicente Espinel who first introduced it in the 16th century), prevails in most of the folksong types mentioned.
Actual Iberian folk melodies extant in Spain and Portugal, however, are very rare in Latin America. Children’s songs (particularly round-play songs and lullabies) seem to be the notable exceptions, for many of them remain basically the same in both areas. The problem of determining the sources of Iberian tunes in Latin American folk music is generally unsolved. But we can say with some certainty that the tunes sung in Latin America are for the most part not simply imports from Spain and Portugal, although the texts more frequently are. They are more usually songs composed in Latin America in the styles brought from Europe, or those brought from Europe centuries ago but so changed by oral tradition that their European relatives can no longer be recognized. It should also be considered that perhaps the European tunes have themselves undergone change. This situation is not paralleled among the minority groups living in South America, including Germans, East Europeans and Italians, for although they have preserved many songs brought from Europe, they have not created much new material in corresponding styles.
An extensive study by Grebe in 1967 of the Chilean verso (also known as canto a lo poeta), a traditional type of sung poetry, has conclusively shown stylistic similarities with Spanish medieval and Renaissance genres such as cantigas and villancicos, especially regarding modality, cadential practices and both strict and free metrical and rhythmic styles. The poetas or cantores perform versos accompanying themselves with a guitar or more commonly the guitarrón (not to be confused with the Mexican instrument of the same name), an older type of guitar of 25 strings, 21 of them grouped in five courses, the remaining four (sympathetic) strings directly attached in pairs to the table of the soundbox on each side of the neck. The accompaniment alternates mostly between tonic and dominant chords. Quite apart from their poetry, which ranges from biblical stories to Spanish historical and legendary accounts of the Middle Ages, the musical behaviour and customs of the folk cantores reveal striking similarities to the Spanish medieval juglar and other European types of troubadour.
Lyrical love songs abound in South American folk music. Generically known as tonadas in the Spanish-speaking countries and toadas in Brazil, they appear, typically, in four-, five-, or ten-line stanzas, sometimes incorporating a refrain. The Argentine estilo will serve as an example. According to Isabel Aretz (1952), the estilo is a well-defined lyrical song genre made up of two melodic ideas, the ‘theme’, properly speaking, and somewhat faster strain known as alegre. The overall form of the song is ternary, ABA. The text of the estilo is generally set in quatrains or in décimas. The estilo is also common in Uruguay. Ex.8 illustrates the characteristics of the genre: guitar accompaniment (both picked and strummed styles), vocal duet in parallel 3rds and the theme and alegre sections.
A fairly important body of folksongs in South America comes from folk and popular religious customs accompanying the liturgical calendar of the Catholic church. Here too the repertory exhibits a close relationship with the Iberian peninsula. The hymns and songs of praise brought over by Spanish and Portuguese missionaries are variously known as alabados, alabanzas, salves (hymns of praise) in Spanish, and cantigas de romarias (songs of pilgrimage) in Portuguese. Most of them are predominantly modal and follow the traditional pattern of folk hymn singing, i.e. alternation of the estribillo (the refrain), performed by the chorus and the copla (stanza), performed by one or two soloists. In the Chocó province of Colombia, inhabited mostly by black Colombians, alabados, romances and salves are performed antiphonally at various wakes for an adult or a child to pay tribute to the dead person; the text is improvised and frequently alludes to the life story of that person. In responsorial style, these songs maintain an archaic character through the modal structures of the solo lines and polyphonic choral responses in parallel 4ths and 5ths. Many religious folksongs are associated with the Christmas season. Thus the traditional Spanish villancico has developed into many folksong types, known as aguinaldo, adoración, coplas de Navidad, esquinazo and others in the various countries. While most of them obviously relate to their Spanish counterpart, they also show many mestizo or criollo characteristics. For example, the Venezuelan villancicos and aguinaldos are in 2/4, 6/8 or 3/4 metres, with regular phrases of two- and four-bar lengths, major and minor mode or bi-modality, melodies in parallel 3rds with a range not exceeding a 6th, almost total absence of modulation and chromaticism and syllabic setting of the text. All are features occurring in the Hispanic-American Christmas repertory. But most aguinaldos differ from the Spanish villancico in their complex rhythmic accompaniment, provided by an ensemble consisting of cuatro (a small four-string guitar, different from the Puerto Rican instrument of the same name) and various percussion instruments, based on the alternation of binary and ternary rhythmic figures common in mestizo dances such as the merengue and the guasá. The melodies of the Venezuelan aguinaldos tend also to be more syncopated than those of the Spanish villancico. Ex.9 shows some of the features of the aguinaldo.
Latin America, §II, 2: Iberian and mestizo folk music: South America
Among the main social dances of the Andes is the huayno (commonly called huayño in Bolivia), popular among Amerindians and mestizos from north-west Argentina to Ecuador, where it is known as sanjuanito (a term that could be derived from use of the diminutive huaynito rather than San Juan). Originally an Amerindian dance, the huayno has been adopted by mestizos as their own and continues to be very relevant in contemporary societies. Huayno music can be strictly instrumental or both vocal and instrumental. Vocal Amerindian huaynos are generally sung in the native languages (Quechua and Aymara), although lyrics in both Spanish and Quechua are not uncommon. Aymara huaynos tend to be strictly instrumental, performed by sicuri bands (panpipes) or pincullo (vertical flute) or tarka (duct flute) ensembles. In lively tempo, the huayno appears most of the time in duple metre and in binary form, consisting of two phrases of equal length (frequently isometric) repeated ad libitum. Versions alternating triple and duple metre (or compound duple), or simply alternating binary and ternary divisions in a single metre, are fairly frequent. Ex.10 shows one of the most typical versions of the huayno, from the Cuzco area, with a standard descending anhemi-pentatonic tune (mode E–C–B–A–F), with common syncopated lines and the usual cadential falling minor 3rd.
1. Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean.
Latin America, §III: Afro-American Music
The most important Afro-Cuban religions include the Lucumí (derived from the Yoruba of Nigeria), the Kimbisa or Mayombé (from the Congo area) and the Abakuá (combining beliefs of the other cults; its members are referred to as ñáñigos). Various societies such as the Regla de Ocha (Santería), Regla de Palo Monte, and Regla Arará, among others, present complex corpora of ritual elements in which music and dance are fully integrated. Lucumí music typically is made up of responsorial singing (the solo lines often performed by the cult leader or the master drummer), with monophonic choral responses, accompanied by drums and bells. The Yoruba sacred batá drums (double-headed with each head of a different size) are played with bare hands, as in Nigeria, in a battery of three: the largest (iyá, i.e. ‘mother’) played by the master drummer with frequent improvisations, the medium-sized (itótele) and smallest (okónkolo) drums performing a set rhythmic pattern with slight variants (ex.11). Cycles of songs are performed in a prescribed ritual order, according to specific liturgical functions, and the texts of the songs appear mostly in the Yoruba and various Congo languages.
Latin America, §III: Afro-American Music
The rhythmic structure of candomblé music reveals a typically African sense of rhythm whereby regular motoric unchangeable parts are contrasted with improvised parts. Ritual drumming occurs as an accompaniment to song performances and solo (ex.12). Specific rhythmic patterns are associated with specific gods, such as alujá for Xangô, the god of thunder and fire, bravum for Ogum, the warrior deity and god of metal tools, aguerê for Oxossi, the hunting god, and igbim for Oxalá, the god of creation. To each rhythm corresponds a given choreography also associated with a specific god. The type of interlocking rhythmic organization so common in traditional West African and Afro-Cuban religious music does not prevail in Brazil. However, the African type of hemiola is quite frequent. Cone-shaped, single-headed drums, known in Bahia as atabaques, are played in a battery of three different sizes. The largest drum, called rum, is played with a stick and a bare hand by the master drummer who, through his improvisations, controls the ritual dance. The middle-sized drum, the rumpi, and the smallest drum, the lê, played with sticks in Gêge-Nagô music, perform standard, unchanging patterns. The agogô (cowbell), played with a metal stick, completes the accompanying ensemble. As drums constitute a very significant symbol of communication with the 0rixás, they go through a sort of ‘baptism’ ceremony before they can be used in ritual contexts. The sacred role of drummers (alabês) is recognized by means of a confirmation ceremony. Their primary function is to call the gods, hence to bring about spirit possession of the initiates, but they themselves never fall into a trance while drumming.
Capoeira songs (some 139 have been collected) constitute a rich source of Afro-Bahían expressive culture relating to slavery time, to local language and poetics. With the exception of the song of the hymn of the capoeira and to ladainhas (litanies), the capoeira song repertory borrows a great deal from other corpora, such as children’s game songs of the ciranda genre. Other songs invoke religious themes and figures, such as Santa Maria, mãe de Deus (St. Mary, mother of God).
Latin America, §IV: Popular music
Mesomusic is the aggregate of musical traditions (melodies with or without words) functionally designed for recreation, for social dancing, for the theatre, for ceremonies, public acts, classrooms, games etc. adopted or accepted by listeners of [the] culturally modern nations. During recent centuries, improvements in communication have favoured the dissemination of mesomusic to such a degree that today the only exceptions to its influence are the more or less primitive aborigines and the national groups that have not yet completed their process of modernization. But, since mesomusic is not an exclusively Western music rather a ‘common music’ of mankind, there can exist eccentric foci with dispersal over wide areas of the world. Mesomusic, then, coexists in the minds of urban groups along with fine-art music, and participates in the life of rural groups along with folk music.
In effect, this definition is only useful at the most general level of functionality and fails to consider the specific attributes of the makers and consumers of ‘mesomusic’. In addition, it tends to be too inclusive, admitting all species or genres that are deemed outside the art music, folk music or traditional music repertories. In its basic conceptualization, however, ‘mesomusic’ is the equivalent of the contemporary use of urban pop music.
Habanera, Argentine tango, rumba, guaracha, bolero, Brazilian samba invaded the world with their rhythms, their typical instruments, and their rich percussion arsenal nowadays incorporated by right to the battery of symphonic ensembles. And now musics from Mexico, Venezuela and the Andes (and a renewed tango in sound and style) are heard everywhere, with their bandoneones, guitars, kenas of very old ancestry, llanera harps … All music due to the inventiveness of semicultivated, popular, populachero (common, vulgar) musicians, or however they might be called by certain clerical verses, well versed in the arts of harmony, counterpoint and fugue. But musics that have been much more useful, quite frankly, for the strengthening of a national accent of our own, than certain ‘symphonies’ on indigenous themes, inumerous orchestral ‘rhapsodies’ with strong folk background, symphonic poems of ‘vernacular inspiration’ (almost always terribly impressionist …), that remain only as documents, reference titles, milestones of local history, in the archives of conservatories … For there is something evident: Latin American music must be accepted en bloc, in and of itself, recognizing that its most original expressions can just as well come from the street as from the academies. In the past, peasant musicians, instrumentalists from the slums, obscure guitarists, movie-theatre pianists (such as those in Rio de Janeiro who caused Darius Milhaud's admiration), are the ones that gave to this music its identity cards, its presence and style. And there rests the essential difference, in our opinion, between European music history and that of Latin America, where, in still recent periods, a good local song could result in a stronger aesthetic enrichment than a moderately successful symphony that added nothing to the universal symphonic repertory (Carpentier, A1977, pp.17–18).
Without dismissing, however, the value and place of art music in Latin America, Carpentier advocated an integrated view of all traditions, with particular importance assigned to popular music. Vega also stated that ‘mesomusic is the most important music in the world; not the greatest, from a Western point of view, but the most important’ (A1966, p.9), in the sense of its overwhelming place in music consumption and in national economies.
It is worth pointing out that, although the diffusion of our popular music was a positive fact, reflecting to a great extent its creativity, aesthetic quality and rhythmic and sound vitality, the fact of its appropriation by the Yanqiu music enterprises for many years also had negative consequences, such as the distortion and commercialization of this music, and the falsification of its most authentic values (A1982, p.54).
He singles out Xavier Cugat as the ‘pioneer in the spoliation and distortion’ of Latin American music and its characteristics in favour of a commercial music with ‘tropical flavour’.
Thus, while for the pride of the colonized middle class, the multinational (recording industry) was in the process of internationalizing the sounds of Brazil from its headquarters (much in the same manner that bankers were internationalizing the result of the labour of millions of Brazilians, through the collection of a debt of 120 billion dollars), the most humble social strata, heirs of a cultural continuum of almost five centuries, continued to play their bombos vigorously in the traditional metre of 2/4, waiting for their turn in History, perhaps in the 21st century (D1990, p.276).
Latin America, §IV: Popular music
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