This article examines the musical traditions of North and South America. The two continents, joined by a land bridge and embracing the Caribbean islands, present a multitude of genres and styles performed in a complex network of contexts by communities of diverse cultural and religious backgrounds. The regions, and often the countries, are often described separately (e.g. Chase, 1967; Béhague, 1979; Manuel, 1995). In spite of their differences, certain continuities extend far beyond the boundaries of any nation state, or even continental land mass. These continuities stem from somewhat similar histories of settlement, cultural development and technological innovations and long histories of intense trade and cultural exchange.
I. Music traditions of the Americas
II. Encountering and mixing communities and traditions
III. Music of the Americas as commodity
Copyright law was extended to music publishing in the late 18th century, and both copyright and patents were established in the USA shortly after independence. Sheet music and instrument manufacture were transformed by evolving technologies and growing markets during the 19th century, and recorded sound and video industries wrought further changes in the 20th (Frith, 1993) (see Sociology of music, §8).
The music publishing industry would have been of little influence without important changes in music education. In the USA, singing schools and church choirs, in which participants learnt to read music and to sing in groups, created a market able to use printed sheet music. The foundation of secular music academies, conservatories and amateur musical groups in the new national and provincial capitals also stimulated music publishers and the music market. Piano makers in the USA patented numerous changes in the design of the piano, and the centre of piano production shifted from Europe to the USA for over 100 years, before moving to Asia in the late 20th century. In the 19th century, the guitar was also a fashionable instrument for accompanying popular song, but the accordion was replacing other instruments in ensembles throughout the Americas and used to play European dances such as polkas and waltzes at social gatherings. The African-introduced banjo underwent a transformation from a homemade, gut-string and fretless instrument with a gourd resonator to a steel-string, metal-rimmed, fretted and mass-produced instrument that was well suited to playing in ensembles. Whether purchased in showrooms or through rural mail order, musical instruments that could accompany song and encourage dancing became popular throughout the Americas.
Although art music composition was copyrighted from the 19th century onwards, the largest profits for many years were in church music and popular song publications. The collaboration of popular theatres with publishers of songbooks created an integrated and profitable industry. Popular songwriters such as Stephen Foster sold over 100,000 copies of their most popular compositions, although they often received little in royalty payments. Hymnals and other religious music were also a large business, and some music publishers hired bands that toured widely and sold their songbooks. Sheet music and the instruments with which to perform it were also popular and widely distributed in the 19th century. In the USA, many of the songs that were later labelled as ‘folk songs’ were first distributed as sheet music, then entered oral tradition to be later collected by folklorists. There was a strong interdependent relationship between regional styles and printed music, with one often influencing the other.
Issues of copyright and intellectual property were accentuated when artists adopted and popularized traditional musical forms from the Americas. International copyright law did not recognize orally transmitted knowledge as a community's intellectual property, and such materials were widely appropriated and copyrighted by popular performers (Malm and Wallis, 1992). Several countries enacted or considered new intellectual property laws to protect local or Amerindian knowledge from external exploitation. By the end of the 20th century, intellectual property law had become an issue of international contention, a reflection of its importance to individual, corporate and national interests.
The commodification of musical sounds, beyond the sales of admission tickets in the burgeoning concert halls, required the invention of audio recording in 1877. Within a few years, several competing formats for audio recording battled for supremacy in the markets and in courts of law. A recording made by the renowned tenor Enrico Caruso, the first to sell over 2 million copies, is generally credited as the first large-scale hit in the emerging recording industry. With the spread of radio, first commercially broadcast in the 1920s, and talking and musical films in the 1930s, and eventually with the addition of television, popularized in the 1950s (music television in the 1980s), a complex and integrated entertainment industry grew up around popular music. This industry sought to promote hits through the constant introduction of new performers and recordings that were marketed through radio and television, sold in recording stores and exported from the USA to the rest of the world. Broadway musicals and film songs were also very popular and continued to be so throughout the 20th century.
Audio recordings and radio did not become limited-repertory, hit-driven industries immediately. The audio recordings and radio programming of the first half of the 20th century in the USA demonstrate the tremendous musical diversity among immigrant communities and regional styles in rural areas. A seven-volume discography of emigrant music between 1893 and 1942 (Spottswood, 1990) documents the amount of recording in emigrant communities in the USA. Radio also presented live performances of local musicians during the first half of the 20th century, but increasingly depended on recorded sound after that. European art music, too, was programmed separately and often played only on specific radio stations. Local programmes, when they existed, were sometimes used to serve local emigrant communities (Olumba and N'Diaye, 1996). A great deal of what we know or learn about emigrant and regional music in the USA can be found on early recordings and broadcasts.
With the large influx of emigrants and nascent industrialization, cities in the Americas began to generate their own specific musical genres, which were later popularized in recordings. Among them were the Tango in Argentina, the Habanera and Rumba in Cuba, Ragtime and Jazz in the USA, and the Choro in Brazil. These genres were established or influenced by Black musicians and have features that can be traced to African roots. Arising in port cities, they were also strongly cosmopolitan and popularized by sheet music, live performances and recordings.
In most countries there were several distinct genres of popular recorded music in the late 20th century, often directed towards different audiences. In addition to urban popular musical styles in such countries as Brazil, Mexico and the USA, there were also genres characterized as rural or country which received extensive radio play time and achieved high sales in specific regions. Award programmes often indicate areas of commercial interest. The annual awards of the National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences (NARAS) or ‘Grammy Awards’ in the USA present a set of ‘American native music categories’ for recorded sound in that country; awards are granted in the categories of popular, alternative, polka, traditional folk, modern folk, children's music, spoken word and classical music, among many others. Yet actual musical variety is greater, as many independent record companies in different countries respond to different markets that are unrepresented in such national awards.
The emergent technologies of sound recording, radio, films and television not only increased the reach of musical performances, they also encouraged particular sounds through their limitations and potentials. Wax cylinders held no more than two to four minutes of music, and for decades most recorded songs were three minutes long, a length that remained common even after long-playing records and CDs freed musicians of the four-minute limitation. The radio microphone was more effective if a singer did not project loudly, thus radio performances encouraged the use of a soft, crooning voice that became standard in some forms of popular music. Amplification and electric instruments both increased the size of audiences and created new musical possibilities. Music television also encouraged the use of visual images in popular music performances, and musicians emerged who danced to their prerecorded sounds.
The spread of mass communications media throughout the Americas carried recorded musical performances to distant places. Rural electrification, the transistor radio and satellite television discs are important steps in the globalization of access to music throughout the Americas. Mass media also raised a number of critical political and cultural issues for many nations and created considerable concern about political influence, national identity, intellectual property and the contrast between local values and national or international broadcasts.
In the political arena, mass media were effectively used by governments for propaganda purposes, and censorship bureaux or more informal blacklists were used to keep ‘undesirable’ artists or musical genres from being heard. In many countries, including the USA in the 1950s, Brazil in the 1960s and Chile in the 1970s, musicians who were considered threats to national security were prevented from performing for radio and television, exiled or killed. Issues of politics and morality were often invoked in efforts to increase censorship or restrict access to certain types of music such as rap music in the 1980s and 90s in the USA, and the development of a computer chip to restrict access to performances deemed immoral or obscene.
The preponderance of American and European recordings broadcast in Latin American and Caribbean countries raised concerns about the integrity of national cultures and the survival of national genres. Attempts by nations to restrict international influence by legislating a certain percentage of airtime for national music were only partially successful. Short-wave radio and television satellite dishes enabled people to receive direct international broadcasts, thus evading all local control. Many national governments began to produce their own recording series that focussed on national genres, among them Argentina, Brazil, Cuba, Mexico, Peru, the USA and Venezuela.
A number of countries established local recording industries, radio networks and television channels; Canada, Mexico, Brazil and Cuba are among the largest. Canadian broadcasting was controlled by the CBC, a state corporation, but the prominence of the free-market approach to broadcasting and the power and production quality of the transnational entertainment industry often made it difficult for national music industries to compete in more than a few genres. Cultural policies related to music and mass media continue to be heatedly debated in every country in the Americas.
Music and dance were part of the development of tourism, and, reciprocally, tourism influenced the way music and dance were performed. Music was part of the search for the exotic in tourism from early in the 20th century, as demonstrated in films about Hawaii, Brazil and the Caribbean. Music and dance became a principal attraction of travel, whether to a nearby urban area to go to the theatre or opera, to a theme park in the USA to be impressed by illusion, to a ‘tropical paradise’ in the Caribbean where typical and often dated styles of local music were played in hotels, or on an ecological tour in the Amazon where Amerindian music might be heard.
Tourism had antecedents in the 19th century, but became a major source of income throughout the Americas during the 20th century. While tourism sometimes benefited local musicians by encouraging state support, creating new performance venues in hotels and at festivals and raising wages, the tourists’ stereotypes, lack of knowledge of local language and culture, and tight schedules often transformed traditional musics into something quite different (Lewin and Kaeppler, 1988).
By the late 20th century, residents of the Americas could access an unprecedented number of musical traditions through radio, television, satellite dishes, individual players and computers. Some musicians sought to increase their understanding and mastery of their own traditions, others embraced new sounds and experiences by adopting entirely new traditions. University music departments supplemented offerings in European art music with performance courses in Indonesian gamelan, Caribbean steel band, Brazilian samba, Bulgarian song and old-time Scottish fiddle music, among others. Ethnomusicology courses on world music were well attended in a growing number of universities and colleges, and many community culture centres welcomed pupils from other communities who wished to learn the intricacies of dance or musical performance. While European missionaries taught Amerindians and Africans to compose and perform European genres as early as the 16th century, the influences were reciprocal in the 20th century. For example, tango clubs became popular in Helsinki, (although the dance originated in Argentina), Amerindian music and traditions were popular in Germany (although relatively few Amerindians had moved there) and African musicians emulated African American styles and were in turn emulated in the United States.
Opera halls and symphony orchestras found it increasingly difficult in the latter half of the 20th century to raise the funds necessary to perform full seasons, and many domestic genres disappeared as the contexts in which they were performed were replaced by other forms of entertainment such as radio and television. Audio-visual archives became repositories of traditions that were no longer performed. The commodification of music has spread some musics worldwide and driven others into silence.
From the inequities and tragedies and the successes and celebrations in the Americas have arisen musical forms that express their history in their very structure and performance style. In nation-states now characterized more by diversity of origin and culture than by homogeneity, the music of the late 20th century often provides both intense satisfaction and provokes intense concern. But no matter where they are in the world, people everywhere hear sounds influenced by social and musical processes that were generated in the Americas.
ANTHONY SEEGER
Americas, §I: Music traditions of the Americas
In order to understand similarities in musical processes throughout the Americas, chronologies associated with specific centuries must be discarded. Social processes that influenced musical styles occurred at different times and in different places. Amerindian populations were converted to Christianity and their traditional music replaced or modified by Christian church music in the late 16th century and in isolated locations in the Amazon in the late 20th century. Slavery ended at different times, and free African populations varied widely in size in different countries according to the importance of plantation economies. Immigrants moved to different places in the Americas at different times, and musical maintenance and innovation within immigrant traditions were often affected by the number of generations that lived in a country, as well as relationships with neighbours. The influence of mass media was felt in the USA and Canada in the 19th century, and radio and television had a tremendous impact on regional culture in the USA and Canada by the mid-20th century. But in places without large-scale literacy in the 19th century or electricity in the 20th, the mass media may have had a more limited impact on local traditions; in small countries without television programming, the only broadcasts available in the late 20th century were from transnational providers. Thus, when speaking of the Americas, it is sometimes better to describe the processes at work than to focus on particular periods, because the dates vary more than the processes themselves.
Most of the musics performed in the Americas at the end of the 20th century were musical hybrids, unique musical traditions that were distinct from their originating cultures. There is a continuum on which musical traditions may be imagined to fall; at one extreme they are identical with an original, extra-American or pre-Columbian tradition, and at the other extreme they are completely subsumed by a different tradition. Amerindian performances might thus fall on a scale from vocals with drum to electric guitars, drum set and reverb, with only textual indications of Amerindian origins. African-influenced traditions similarly range from sacred music with percussion and song texts close to the West African originals to compositions for orchestras strongly characteristic of the Western European tradition but with African rhythmic and timbral influences. The same may be said of European, Asian and other traditions performed in the Americas today. In many cases, a musical tradition is not described by its practitioners as ‘a little bit of this and a little bit of that’ but as ‘our music’ (Seeger, 1997). A style may be claimed as truly ‘African’, ‘European’, ‘Amerindian’ or belonging to an originating community, although musically it reveals a unique mixture of sounds and rhythms found in no single place. The sections that follow focus on the social determinants and interpretations of the musical forms practised today, and historically, in the Americas.
The terms used to describe the musical traditions in the Americas reflect political processes and academic sensitivities that have changed over the decades. While national identity was a preoccupation of the 19th and early 20th centuries, the use of ethnicity and cultural distinctions as organizing concepts (both within a single nation or throughout a multinational region) grew in importance during the latter part of the 20th century (Béhague, 1994). The musical traditions of ethnic or cultural groups within each nation in the Americas resulted from local variations of general historical and musical processes. The specific mixture of groups in a given region, their economic and political interaction with one another and with transnational economic and cultural processes, and the influence of individual composers, musicians, critics and local cultural policies have created specific music histories for nations and specific regions within nations.
Music has been used to create boundaries and express the frustrations and aspirations of groups formed by nationality, ethnicity, gender, social class and religion, as well as political and economic power. Technology, law and commerce also have significantly shaped musical styles throughout the Americas. But the performance of and identification with musical styles does not always divide clearly along any single social dimension. Members of an ethnic group do not necessarily perform or attend the same type of music; they may divide their interest by class, gender or other factors. When social or political conflicts become intense, however, music has often been the subject of conflict between groups, and a focus of solidarity within them, whether the conflict is between nations, classes, political parties or generations.
Americas, §I: Music traditions of the Americas
Most late 20th-century accounts of the music in any given nation or region of the Americas tend to be historical in approach and fusion-oriented in their conclusions (seeAmerindian music, Latin american music and individual country articles); the present is often viewed as the combination of past influences. Yet histories are as much the products of specific groups’ ideologies as the musical traditions they describe. Both the facts and the interpretations of the traditional histories of music in the Americas are hotly debated today. In many countries, scholarship and music education are complex and emotionally charged parts of conflict-ridden political processes. A history cannot be presented without reflection on its limitations.
One such limitation is that a great majority of the early historical documents and a large number of histories were written by members of the European ruling élite. Many histories relegate other social groups to being ‘people without history’ (Wolf, 1982) through their almost exclusive reliance on written manuscripts. Descendants of the Amerindian groups that were already in the Americas and of groups that were forced to come to the Americas as labourers often feel that their history and their contributions to contemporary musical life have been slighted or misrepresented. Attribution of the origins of specific emergent musical styles of American music was a particularly complex and heatedly argued subject. In the sections that follow, the development of musical styles among large ethnocultural groups of all types is traced, often using ethnomusicological documents and recordings from the 20th century to supplement historical sources. Yet the history of some groups is still to be written.
The passage of centuries has seen a transformation in the type of documents available to researchers. The earliest musical documents are archaeological artefacts (instruments) preserved without writing. Written documents later supplemented the objects. Transcriptions of music and dance were relatively rare and restricted to certain genres until the late 19th century. After about 1890, audio recordings and silent (and later sound) film and videotape transformed the nature of musical documentation. Audio and visual materials have superseded printed documents as central documents for musicological research in the 20th century.
Our musical sources before about 1500 are restricted to archaeological remains, especially those in the highland region of the Andes and in parts of Mexico. The presence of musical instruments, or their depiction in pottery or carvings, indicates relatively little about how they were played and what they sounded like. They do, however, establish the presence of wind instruments and some drums, as well as their performance in ensembles that were of sufficient significance to be preserved or memorialized in artistic depictions. Most instrument collections are found in natural history museums, in association with other artefacts, and necessarily but unfortunately quite removed from issues of sound and their musical attributes.
After 1500, and throughout the colonial period, many important documents were kept by the colonial powers and can be consulted today in archives in Spain and Portugal, and to a lesser extent France, England, the Netherlands and other countries. Bureaucratic reports often mention musical events, and ecclesiastical documents also refer to the principal musical affairs of colonial churches. Later colonial church documents are housed in the national, regional and church archives of each country. These are sometimes difficult to consult, and discoveries of new documents continue to this date. These can often be supplemented with the accounts of travellers or explorers such as the German scientists Humboldt, Steinen, Koch-Grunberg and others whose ethnographic descriptions of local life often include detailed descriptions of dances and musical performances.
Nationalist movements in the Americas were frequently accompanied by the documentation and valorization of local folk and Amerindian cultures. This expanded in the late 19th century with the efforts of folklore archives and museums such as the Brazilian Folklore Institute, the Mexican Museum of Anthropology, the US Archive of Folk Culture and the Canadian Museum of Civilization, to name just a few.
By the late 20th century many communities had founded their own museums and were actively documenting and representing their own cultures. The Shuar in Ecuador and Amerindian communities in Canada were among the many groups that wanted to control the ways in which they represented themselves and in which they were represented by others. Community control over self-representation changed the nature of many national museums and created new formats for representing them. National museums have been increasingly complemented by regional and local museums.
In the late 20th century, too, the archives of local, regional, national and transnational communications companies became important resources for studying the evolution of musical styles. The condition and accessibilty of such archives varied greatly. In addition, sheet music publishers, radio and television stations and record companies provide massive exposure to certain types of music. There are also vast collections amassed by private collectors that are often more accessible than those of commercial enterprises.
Secondary sources on the musics of single countries and regions are legion (see entries on individual countries). Many nations have created their own musical dictionaries or encyclopedias, such as the Enciclopédia de la música popular brasileira (1977), as well as their own musicological journals and carefully researched historical studies. Certain scholars have written books about continental regions (Béhague, 1979; Hamm, 1983) and others are particularly well known for their extensive research on a given time period (Stevenson, 1968).
In spite of the difficulties of writing history, chronology has its benefits for narrative presentation. There is no doubt that a great deal of the complexity of musical life in urban neighbourhoods and rural settlements, in kitchens, churches, shopping malls and concert halls, on compact disc and the internet in the Americas today can be traced to specific historical processes. And today, using technologies once unimaginable, musicians and their audiences continue to revitalize and transform earlier styles as well as create new ones in the radically multicultural and multinational musical environment of the early 21st century.
Americas, §I: Music traditions of the Americas
The study of music in the Americas requires an understanding of the peoples who make it. The arrival of Christopher Columbus and other Europeans in the Americas during the period following 1492 was the first contact with Amerindian societies that appears to have had a strong impact on both Europeans and Amerindian communities. The initial European interest in the Americas was mercantile, and Europeans came to dominate the other groups in the Americas by the force of their technology, the power of their commerce and the virulence of the diseases they transmitted. Europeans soon established trade networks throughout the Americas for extracting wealth in the form of gold, brazil-wood, dyes, furs and export crops such as tobacco, sugar-cane and later cotton.
The European nations’ division of the Americas among themselves had a strong impact on subsequent musical developments in the region. The Portuguese and Spanish divided the South American continent between them (except for part of the coast on the Caribbean); the Spanish also ruled Middle America. The British, French, Spanish, Dutch and Russians all claimed parts of North America, and all but Russia claimed parts of the Caribbean. With the possible exception of the Russians, each ruling country left a strong mark on the music in its colonies. (see Colonialism.)
Wherever Europeans established colonies, distinct sets of social groups emerged, partly defined by and defining themselves through their musical tastes and activities. The terms for these groups are partly ethnic and partly cultural and are often reflected in the musical activities of their members. Although the terms are unsatisfactory, they are commonly encountered in the literature about music in the Americas.
In every colony, Europeans were at the top of the social, economic, governmental and ecclesiastical hierarchy. This social group was initially constituted of native-born Europeans whose cultural orientation intellectually, and in food, architecture, clothing, music and dance, was towards Europe. Europeans created most of the documents from which we now write the history of music in the Americas. In addition to European religious and secular art music, they must also have practised children’s songs, ballads, popular lyrical songs and other secular genres from the regions of their origin. Members of this group often established cultural policies and educational systems that promoted their own musical forms rather than those of the other social groups who attended the schools. They encouraged composers and performers from European home countries to perform and establish schools to teach European musical forms.
Although it came to have different meanings in different places, the word ‘creole’ is often used to designate a distinctive emergent local group, culture or language that grows out of the meeting of two or more ethnic groups, cultures or languages. Initially it referred to a social group of lower status than European-born colonists, comprised of people born in the Americas of European descent who shared an orientation towards Europe and things European. In the Spanish colonies they were usually called criollos, in French Louisiana créoles. A slightly different meaning evolved in Trinidad, Guyana and Brazil where the term was used to refer to any person of African descent (Manuel, 1995, p.14, n.3). In general, the word has been used to mean ‘distinctive local’ as opposed to specifically ‘European’. Some local traditions of music, cuisine, clothing, architecture, religion and language emerged in the Americas that were unlike those of any particular originating country or community.
Many communities emigrated to the Americas from homelands in different parts of the world over the past 500 years, a process that was continuing at the end of the 20th century. These emigrants had often fled from war, famine or religious persecution, and looked to the Americas for improved living conditions. Emigrants were rarely members of the ruling élites of their home countries (although there were exceptions). Emigrant communities often broke ties with their homeland, and either moved to fairly isolated rural communities or settled in urban areas. The Mennonites, who founded rural communities in Canada, the USA, Brazil, Paraguay and elsewhere are an example of rural migration, while many Italian emigrants formed urban neighbourhoods and established strong urban traditions. Irish and Scottish emigrants brought fiddle tunes and dances that spread to other groups, as did Scandinavian emigrants to Canada and the USA.
Most emigrant communities encouraged the maintenance of traditions of their home countries for at least a generation. Apart from European art music, the older court-related traditions of emigrants had fairly small audiences in the Americas, and many emigrant artists found they were more often called to perform less elaborate genres at celebratory events such as birthdays and weddings. While traditions related to local religious practices and family ceremonies were often maintained for one or two generations, others were abandoned and new traditions were frequently adopted from other communities, as a result of exposure in schools and local secular settings. Communities differed considerably in the degree to which they maintained ‘homeland’ traditions. New emigrants continued to refresh older traditions, and social, economic or political conflicts with other groups sometimes led to revivals or renewals of earlier community musical forms. In the 20th century, local festivals, often encouraged by tourism councils or nationalistic policies, provided venues for public performances of older traditions.
Enslaved and freed Africans comprised a significant proportion of the non-Amerindian population during the colonial period in the Americas. Enslaved African populations were concentrated in large plantations that stretched from north-eastern coastal Brazil through most of the Caribbean to south-eastern North America. Their forced transport from Africa continued from the early 16th century to the 19th, and the characteristics of the plantation system created a specific culture dynamic. Free Africans outnumbered enslaved Africans in Peru, Argentina, Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela and Ecuador by 1800, but the ratio was the reverse in the islands of Jamaica and Cuba and other strong plantation economies. As time passed, however, an increasing population of free black citizens played important roles in the sacred and art music of the Americas.
Important, too, were communities of escaped slaves, who set up self-governing communities in a number of countries, including Jamaica, Brazil, Guyana, Mexico and the USA. These communities often established enduring social and cultural traditions distinct from those of African communities. Because of the distinction between African and European musical traditions, especially concerning musical instruments, rhythm and the interaction of melodic parts, the contribution of musicians with musical roots in African styles was clearly marked and has come to dominate the musical expressions in many regions, as well as popular music.
‘Mestizos’ (caboclos in Brazil, métis in French Canadian usage) denotes the offspring of the union of Europeans or Creoles and Amerindians. Mestizos often occupied an ambiguous position between Europeans and Amerindians, especially in the Andes. The word is also sometimes used to indicate individuals of Amerindian descent who have made cultural decisions based on European models, including wearing European clothing, living in urban areas, speaking only Spanish or Portuguese, and performing or attending European music genres. Mestizos are thus defined by both cultural and physical attributes.
Amerindians are called Indians or indios (Spanish and Portuguese), Native Americans (in the United States) and First Nations (in Canada) and are the descendants of the original inhabitants of the Americas prior to European colonization. In most countries, the Amerindians were relegated to the bottom of the social hierarchy headed by the Europeans. Deemed unsatisfactory as slaves in most parts of the Americas and, until baptized, condemned as heathens, they were frequently the victims of genocidal wars whose objectives were to remove them from lands they occupied. Thousands of communities disappeared completely (most strikingly in the Caribbean, but also in many other parts of the Americas) or were absorbed by neighbouring groups, but others managed to preserve a degree of linguistic and cultural singularity nearly impossible for the enslaved Africans.
In the Andean region of Chile, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador and parts of Mexico and Central America, Amerindian populations were large enough to survive the epidemics and continued to occupy much of their traditional lands as labourers under Spanish domination. Elsewhere, Amerindians were frequently forced to resettle on less desirable lands or moved away from frontier diseases and violence. The communities that survived often maintained or revived some forms of traditional music and abandoned others in the face of missionary and government pressures. Many Amerindian communities today include different factions, whose attitude towards European values and music are a significant issue of contention.
3. European music in the Americas to 1850.
4. African music in the Americas.
5. Immigrant musics, 1800–present.
Americas, §II: Encountering and mixing communities and traditions
Most local music in the Americas is a mixture of musical traditions, creating something quite distinctive and unique to the hemisphere. This uniqueness has sometimes been intentional, as in many of the nationalist compositions of the 19th century, and sometimes it has been the product of interaction between musicians of different styles. The members of the different social groups described above often encountered each other both in urban and rural areas, influencing one another in a variety of ways. The issue of how one describes musical styles that clearly combine traces of traditions from two or more communities can be a sensitive one. Many musical genres in the Americas are described as mestizo or mixed; they are sometimes referred to as hybrid or syncretic in the sense that a given style mixes, combines or synthesizes two or more traditions. From a sonic point of view, the terms are all correct; a string band comprised of a banjo, fiddle and guitar (or winds, harp and drum in Andean South America), combines instruments and sounds from different sources, producing something quite new and unique to the Americas. Even though most of the musical forms combine traditions, it is appropriate to outline the characteristics of the principal originating traditions, and then discuss some of the products of these encounters.
Americas, §II: Encountering and mixing communities and traditions
Anthropologists generally agree that the pre-Columbian inhabitants of the Americas came across the Bering Strait in a series of migrations, settling into most parts of North and South America over a period of thousands of years. The dates of the earliest occupation of the Americas are often revised as remains of earlier settlements are discovered, and some Amerindian communities maintain that they originated in the Americas. The migrating communities probably brought with them some musical traditions from north-eastern Siberia – similarities between Inuit and Siberian traditions exist today – and moved easily southwards and eastwards through rich hunting and gathering areas. As they travelled, their languages and cultures became differentiated. Their interaction with one another and with their environments led to the development of somewhat distinct cultural regions.
Some Amerindians lived in small settlements, subsisting largely by hunting and gathering, and used only a few musical instruments to accompany singing. Other Amerindians lived in large communities, supported by sophisticated agricultural systems. These communities were organized into large empires with complex social and political structures which included musical ensembles, formal musical training and increased musical specialization. Many communities, however, fell between the two extremes.
20th-century musical ethnographies (McAllester, 1954; Merriam, 1967; Seeger, 1987; Turino, 1993; Olsen, 1996; Beaudet, 1997) and videotapes of Amerindian musical performances (e.g. JVC, 1990, tape 29; JVC, 1995, tapes 5–6) indicate that certain stylistic and functional continuities stretch from the Arctic regions of Canada to the southern areas of Chile and Argentina. This homogeneity is partially due to the common ancestry and history that unite these extensive communities. Other factors contribute to the homogeneity, including the elimination of musical traditions of Amerindian ruling élites in Peru and Mexico following the Spanish conquest (Stevenson, 1968) and the massive depopulation suffered by almost every group in the Americas. To a certain extent, the most elaborate musical forms have been removed or replaced by European-influenced genres, thus producing a substratum of similar forms.
From southern Argentina to northern Canada there are broad continuities in purpose, style, performance practice and dance in Amerindian musical performances. These include: (1) the association of music with powerful spirits, animals or gods; (2) the use of music in shamanism, healing and direct contact with spirits or gods which is often accompanied by the use of tobacco, alcohol or hallucinogens; (3) a preponderance of vocal music and elaborated speech styles over instrumental ensembles; (4) the unity of music and dance; (5) the general appearance of the body in dance; (6) the types of musical instruments employed; and (7) certain structural features of music, including the extensive use of repetition and the widespread presence of ‘non-musical’ sounds. These are discussed briefly below.
Amerindians describe music throughout the Americas as originating from outside sources, such as from the spirit world, ancestors or semi-human beings, and maintain that its performance is often the means through which a connection is established or renewed between humans and a powerful spiritual entity. Music is often thought to be imbued with the power of the original source, and the performance of music re-creates and re-introduces the original power back into the community.
The association between music and spirituality is expressed in the practice of shamanism in many communities from Chile and Argentina to the USA and Canada. Shamans are humans who enter into direct contact with spirits to cure sickness or spirit attack and to ascertain the future. Many shamans employ song (sometimes accompanied by the use of tobacco and narcotics) to ‘travel’ to distant places and later report on their travels to spirit lands. The shamans’ musical instrument, a drum among the Argentine Mapuche (Grebe, 1978) or a rattle among the Venezuelan Warao (Olsen, 1996), is often both a highly symbolic and sacred object and a sound-producing instrument. Shamans’ songs are sometimes the means through which cures are effected. Not all shamans employ song. In some societies tobacco, other narcotics and hallucinogens are used without musical accompaniment.
Music is associated with physical and spiritual metamorphosis. Musical performance frequently facilitates a transformation in both shamanic and ritual music, such as the transformation of a shaman into a flying spirit, of a singer or dancer into a being that is at once human and spirit or animal, or an individual to a new social status in a rite of passage. These metaphysical transformations may occasionally be brought about by musical sounds themselves, but musical performances were often accompanied by strenuous dance, the use of tobacco (found throughout the Americas), mind-altering drugs (among them hallucinogens in the Amazon and Peyote in North America) (Harner, 1973), or significant quantities of alcoholic beverages (in parts of the Andes, Amazon and Central America; Fuks, 1988). An alteration of perception is a widespread feature of musical performance, often facilitated by ingesting specific substances, or alternatively by fasting.
The most important and widespread category of Amerindian music is song. Although musical instruments are employed by many communities, they are most often used to accompany song and far less often are played alone, although a variety of wind instrument enembles is found in parts of the Amazon (Bastos, 1978; Beaudet, 1997), the Andes (Turino, 1993) and North America (Nettl, 1954). The emphasis on song is paralleled by widespread, highly formalized speech forms. Such forms are characteristic of many Amerindian communities, and value is often ascribed to speaking and listening (Sherzer and Urban, 1986). There is frequently not a binary distinction between speech and song. Instead there may be a gradation between informal speech and various genres of more formally structured speech forms, among them oratory, keening, formal greeting, myth-telling and actual song (Graham, 1995). The language used in songs varies considerably among Amerindian communities. In some communities songs use everyday language; in other communities only special ‘song syllables’ (without referential meaning) are used, and in yet others, communities sing in languages they do not understand, but which are meaningful to other communities.
Musical knowledge is highly valued among Amerindian communities. Musical instruments are played mostly by men, but both women and men sing and dance. Musical pieces may belong to, or be associated with, an individual or a social group such as a clan, moiety or age group.
A few families of musical instruments are widespread in the Americas (Izikowitz, 1935). Idiophones, especially rattles, are found almost everywhere. Gourd rattles and leg rattles are widespread and made from many raw materials, each with its own timbre. Membranophones, especially single-headed drums, are widespread but not ubiquitous; they are rarely encountered in the Amazon. There is ample archaeological and contemporary evidence for a wide variety of wind instruments made of wood, bamboo, animal bone, human bone, ceramics and other materials. Wind instruments are highly elaborate in South America, where some contemporary South American communities are reported to have as many as 60 distinct varieties. Some communities, however, use very few, if any, instruments.
Music and dance are intimately associated in many Amerindian communities. In some native languages, the words for music and dance are the same. Performances of certain sounds often require associated movements of the body in a fixed space, or of a group of dancers moving through significant spaces (e.g. from forest to village or from one area to another). Although local styles differ, there is a characteristic Amerindian dance posture found in both North and South America: a semi-erect, forward-leaning posture, with foot stamping for percussion and an accentuated vertical leg motion with a fairly rigid upper body and little pelvic movement.
Certain temporal features of Amerindian music are widespread. Specific song genres are frequently seasonal, and musical performances are often associated with agricultural and hunting cycles. The seasons might be temporal, agricultural (planting and harvesting) or religiously delineated. The solstice, for example, was carefully calculated in some communities, and more recently the Catholic calendar of saints’ days structures many performances.
Another feature common to many Amerindian communities is the gradual addition of simultaneous performances during a long ceremonial period. Many Amerindian communities perform (or performed at one time) collective religious or secular ceremonies that last for days, weeks or even months, within which many musical events occur. The increasing intensity of a performance is often marked by simultaneous parallel performances. Simultaneous performances of multiple sounds are found in isolated Amazonian villages where cries, whistles and individual songs accompany group songs, in crowded Peruvian plazas where competing bands perform at the same time, and in parts of North America and Canada as well.
Most Amerindian musical structures are heavily melodic with relatively few phrases that are repeated many times. The structure is often marked by a strong pulse provided by drumming and/or stomping. Metrical combinations are not static, however, especially in the western Plains of the United States and Canada where metrical shifts are common. Harmony of any kind is rare, except in cases where European influence is evident. Singing styles vary considerably among Amerindian groups, and several distinct styles are often used by a single community for different genres.
Repetition is highly prized among Amerindian communities, yet negatively evaluated by European travellers. Sometimes there are subtle differences in repeated sections, such as slight alterations in text, pitch or tempo, that are not obvious to an outsider. In other cases a melody might be repeated until a ritual action or dance pattern is completed. Sometimes the number of repetitions or sections is itself related to significant cosmological ideas, but more frequently it is the passage of time (e.g. from night to dawn), that is the overriding consideration in determining the length of a performance.
So far we have described the pre-Columbian characteristics of Amerindian music. Amerindian musicians also learnt music from other groups and innovated. This was true of the Ghost Dance and Native American Church in North America, and of the Tor’e in north-east Brazil, and the intertribal powwow in Canada and the USA (see United States of America, §II, 1(ii)). Some communities consciously perform songs of more than ten other Amerindian groups. There has also been considerable musical interaction between Amerindians and European and African genres, instruments and performance styles.
One of the most important outside influences on Amerindian music has been the music of Christian churches. Both Catholic and Protestant missionaries discouraged or prohibited Amerindian communities from performing traditional music and provided instruction in European musical forms. In addition, many Amerindians converted to Christianity, and Amerindian hymn-singing is now found in many communities in North and South America, in a variety of styles that reflect the denomination and the period of their conversion. In some cases, such as the Waiwai of Brazil, hymn-singing is the only musical genre still performed. In other cases, hymn-singing survives alongside traditional social music. The result is often syncretic, but the process was sometimes violent, sometimes voluntary and sometimes a combination of the two.
Similarities between pre-Columbian and European functions of music may have stimulated musical syncretism. Both Amerindians and Europeans used music as part of religious performances. Amerindian hymn-singing and the elaborate celebrations at large festivals on Catholic saints’ days in the Andean highlands and among the Mayan communities of Central America represent both a departure from pre-Christian traditions and a continuation of the tradition of celebrating important days with music.
Amerindians learnt many styles from their European and African neighbours. Amerindians throughout the Americas were quick to adopt European instruments, such as the violin, guitar and harp (Schechter, 1992), all of which were popular among colonists. Many groups later took up the accordion, brass instruments, electric guitar and synthesizer and can often play two or more distinct repertories, maintaining a distinction rather than fusing traditional Amerindian style with contemporary rock or country music styles.
A good example of the complexity of enduring musical traditions in a community is found in the upper Midwest of the USA and Canada. The Plains Chippewa and métis musical genres reflect their complex history; some elders sing songs in French passed down from when French settlers controlled their territory, others perform Scottish and Irish fiddle tunes in a unique local style, others sing in a Plains Indian vocal style accompanied by a drum; and yet others have formed country music and rock and roll bands that play for local events (Plains Chippewa/Métis Music, 1992). Such diversity is quite common among large Amerindian communities that have diverse contacts with non-Indians. ‘Indian music’ in the early 21st century is whatever Amerindian communities perform, and the range is very large. The significance of the genres differs, but many different types of music are often performed during a given year.
Pre-Columbian Amerindian musical styles have had relatively little impact on local European- and African-derived genres. This lack of influence is probably due to the relative isolation of many Amerindian groups from national population centres, as well as profound sonic and structural differences between Amerindian and European or African styles. Some musical instruments, however, were adopted by non-Indians. Maracas, gourd rattles found in many local traditions in the Americas, take their name from the language of the Tupi Indians of Brazil, where maraká can mean ‘rattle’ or ‘music’ (Bastos, 1978). With the exception of Peru, where national popular music styles like the huyano can be clearly identified with Andean Indian origins, there has been little obvious borrowing of Amerindian styles in popular music in the Americas, although some Amerindian performers in Canada have become popular in their own right. Some regional dance forms in South America may have been influenced by Amerindian communities, but the evidence is not conclusive. Unlike the genres that emerged from encounters with African and European musics, most of the uniquely Amerindian musical features have not been adapted in other traditions (Seeger, 1997).
Americas, §II: Encountering and mixing communities and traditions
Immigrants from different parts of Europe brought their own genres and styles to the Americas. Several broad types of music continued in the Americas: domestic forms such as children’s songs and ballads, social dance genres that were elaborated upon by both local performers and professional composers, and music of religious contexts. Different social classes often participated in distinct musical traditions. European music can be characterized as music comprised of fairly regular metres, a fixed set of modes, compositions based on harmonic structures, the creation of intricately interrelated melodic parts with complex harmonic relationships performed by instrumental or vocal ensembles, plucked, struck and bowed string instruments, and an increasing tendency to use written scores and a concept of fixed melodies. While there is obviously much more to European music, these are among the principal features that distinguish it from the other contributors to American music today.
Wealth and patronage were stimulants of European art music, and both were found in the Americas. Secular and sacred administrative structures in Spanish-ruled America required secular and sacred performance. Composers, choruses and musicians were mobilized in the administrative centres. The wealth of the colonies encouraged the creation of administrative and urban centres that supported a small élite and a group of musicians whose activities had a considerable influence on the rest of the population through music education and emulation. In Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, large cathedrals provided chant and other church-related musical forms both to the expatriate communities and new converts.
Catholic priests introduced the institution of cofradrías or confraternities (brotherhoods) to the Americas. Cofradrías were officially sanctioned organizations whose activities centred on a particular patron saint. Of all the festive rites the Catholic Church introduced into the Americas, the celebrations of saints' days were the most pervasive (Moreno Cha, 1992). Cofradrías were also self-help and social organizations. Most social classes had their own cofradrías (Europeans, creoles, enslaved Africans, mestizos and Amerindians), and some descendants continue to perform today. One writer estimates that 300 cofradrías are active in Chile alone (Moreno Cha, 1992).
Although they often used their music to impose their government and religion on Amerindians and enslaved workers, there is early evidence that some Europeans took interest in the non-religious musical traditions of their subjects. Hernando Cortés took a troupe of Aztec musicians and dancers, whose precision he greatly admired, to Europe in 1527 to perform for royalty and the Pope. The musical skills of Africans were also recognized early and employed in ceremonial events; African drummers were used to welcome the arriving viceroy to Lima in 1551, in addition to Amerindian performances. The music of the large African population in Mexico was quite popular among both Spanish and Amerindians. Many of the music schools established by Catholic priests trained both Amerindians and Africans in the elements of European music. Musicians and members of different communities became acquainted with one another's styles, if only limitedly.
The social and musical processes begun in the 16th century continued in Latin America through the 17th century and into the 18th. Missionaries taught Indians in Argentina and Paraguay not only to read and write music, but to manufacture musical instruments.
In the 18th century there was tremendous growth of colonial cities in South America. In wealthy mining areas, money was allocated to religious institutions and the arts. Thus European artists began to travel to some of the earliest theatres constructed in the mining cities of Potosí and La Plata in what is today Bolivia. In the mid-18th century Brazil provided nearly half of the world's gold from the Minas Gerais province. This regional wealth stimulated an impressive flowering of creative arts: sculpture, architecture and music. During this period, too, Buenos Aires became a regional capital, and spectacles combining music and theatre were performed for the new viceroys. Some wealthy plantation owners also became music patrons. In Brazil, enslaved Africans and their descendants were taught to play European music as early as 1660, and the owners of large plantations trained them to perform in orchestras for their entertainment and social functions. The musical activities of both groups were no doubt influenced by this process.
Colonization of the English colonies intensified during the 17th century, and the pilgrims and other immigrants brought hymnbooks with them (Chase, 1967). Secular dance music was discouraged, but church music was encouraged for its association with appropriate comportment and beliefs. As a result, debates about appropriate ways to sing hymns occupied many written discussions of music in the British colonies. Emphases on participation in church services through music and the correct singing of hymns led to the formation of ‘singing schools’ that taught large segments of the population to read musical notation and set the stage for the growth of the music publishing industry with its diffusion of hymnbooks and later distribution of popular sheet music.
When English and French colonists settled in the Americas, there was less of a stigma attached to being born in the colonies than there was in the Spanish colonies. French, English, Scottish and Irish emigrants moved into what is today eastern Canada (see Canada, §II, 3), bringing with them music and dance styles that had an enduring impact on the regional musical traditions in the USA and Canada.
The French, particularly from Normandy and Brittany, began to colonize New France in 1604 by moving inland to the region now known as Quebec, and they soon controlled the waterways leading to the interior of the continent. Stimulated by the fur trade and conflicts with the English, they forged alliances with many Amerindian communities in the interior. The intermarriage of French and Amerindians created the métis, and the French cultural influence on interior Amerindian communities was strong. The French and English competed for control over the coastal regions of what is now eastern Canada; the area known as Acadia changed hands more than ten times before being permanently ceded to the British in 1713. New France fell in 1759 after repeated attacks. Mass deportation of French-culture Acadians (1755–63) did not eradicate French culture in eastern Canada, however. But a strong impact was made on the culture of Louisiana with many Acadians moving to French Louisiana to escape British domination. In Acadia, the removal of the clerics and the élite created a rural French culture that was not renewed by contacts with France. Its musical culture consisted largely of vocal and instrumental dance music that has been maintained despite considerable cultural persecution (see United States of America, §II, 4(i)). Additional genres learnt from Scottish and Irish emigrants were also embraced. Similar cultural upheavals occurred in the Caribbean, where islands changed hands among colonial powers, sometimes several times within a decade.
The firm hold of European colonial powers was weakened in the 19th century by independence movements in many colonies, as well as by the purchase or appropriation of lands by the USA. Enslaved workers were emancipated (at different times in different places), and emigrants replaced them as manual workers in some countries. The establishment of national capitals in Latin America further stimulated secular musical performances. With the growth of civil society, secular musical institutions such as music conservatories and military music institutes were increasingly founded in newly independent countries. Emigrant musicians trained in Europe were extremely important in the establishment of secular musical institutions, such as opera houses and music societies throughout the Americas. Music education was increasingly available to women as music became part of secular domestic life.
Another international musical phenomenon that swept through the Americas was the brass band, partly as a result of the new responsibilities of independent countries. Military bands were an important part of musical life in most capital cities and became part of the musical experience of members of all ethnic groups that served in armies or local militias. Schools for military bands preceded the establishment of symphony orchestras and national conservatories in a number of countries, and financial support for armed forces bands sometimes represented a considerable portion of a nation's musical arts support. Civilian brass bands were soon associated with communities, schools and commercial organizations, straddling the distinction between art, popular and folk music. They could perform many genres, and played in many civic and feast day celebrations, sporting events and band competition. In addition, brass bands contributed to the development of such urban genres as jazz.
Opera and parlour music were increasingly popular among members of the élites and the growing class of traders and manufacturers. Opera and other forms of urban popular stage shows were composed and/or performed in a number of countries, and opera houses were established in most capital cities. An impetus for operatic composition was certainly the emergence of musical nationalism.
Nationalism spread in 19th-century Europe, along with interest in national composers and local folk traditions as integral parts of a ‘national character’. These issues also became a central concern of the arts in the Americas. Visual arts, literature, theatre and music were consciously fashioned to express national aspirations in nearly every nation. From 1880 to 1950 composers of many backgrounds expressed what they took to be the unique history of their countries through musical and dramatic forms (Béhague, 1979). Composers increasingly looked to local vernacular music forms in their countries for inspiration. They refashioned early musical interactions with Amerindians into operas, spectacles and heroic stories, from Il Guarany to Pocahontas, and often found inspiration in Amerindian-influenced and African-influenced musical genres. During the nationalistic period many countries also closely identified with particular dance forms: Argentina with the tango, Brazil with the samba, Venezuela with the joropo and the USA with square dancing.
The same nationalist inspiration that stimulated art music composers also led to the collection, documentation and publication of rural musical and narrative forms labelled ‘folklore’, resulting in the establishment of library collections and archives in many countries, among them Argentina, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, Mexico, the USA and Venezuela. Interest in ‘authentic’ national cultures and concerns about possible threats to them contributed to the establishment of state-run ‘folklore weeks’, folklore museums, folk festivals and government-sponsored audio and video recordings that document regional traditions.
Americas, §II: Encountering and mixing communities and traditions
Although free Africans were among the first explorers of the Americas, the largest influence of African music in the Americas came from the approximately 11 million enslaved Africans brought to the Americas between the 16th century and the late 19th. As early as 1530, enslaved Africans worked in the Spanish and Portuguese colonies in response to a desire for additional labour to replace Amerindian slaves. At times there were more enslaved Africans in some colonies than resident Europeans.
The settlement of enslaved Africans in the Americas had both regional specificities and general features. One general feature was that members of different cultures were frequently mixed together in the Americas, either purposefully in an attempt to eradicate their original languages and cultures, or by happenstance. Out of this forced cultural encounter the descendants of enslaved Africans developed new cultures in the Americas, which were unlike any ancestral cultures in Africa. This occurred not only on plantations but also in the free communities of escaped slaves, or maroons, established in Jamaica, Guyana, Brazil, Colombia and elsewhere (Price, 1979).
Although there were considerable cultural differences among the original peoples brought from Africa, there were some shared cultural and musical values as well. Among West African retentions were frequent use of layered, interlocking rhythmic patterns, an aesthetic based on the blending of a variety of timbres, active interaction between audiences and performers, the integration of sounds and dance, and the use of music to express emotional states (Hampton and Sykes, 1995). Performances emphasized active participation through movement, rhythmic clapping and dancing, and the frequent use of antiphony. Improvisation was probably widespread. In West Africa some music was associated with religions in which worshippers directly experienced divinities through spirit possession, which took place in rituals involving percussion (often a drum ensemble) and singing; this music continued to be performed in parts of the Americas. When drums were banned, complex patterns of foot stamping, body slapping and the use of other percussion instruments created enduring opportunities for musical transmission. Percussion ensembles are found in many communities of African descent in the Americas. A three-drum ensemble with one large, one small and one medium drum is common to a number of religious rituals. Instruments with jingles, such as tambourines, are also widespread. All of these musical features were maintained to some degree in the traditional genres that continued, or the African-influenced musical genres that emerged in the Americas.
West African dance can be called polycentric, where the total motion is created by moving different parts of the body to different rhythms. The feet, often remaining close to the ground, may move to one of the rhythms, the hips to a second and the shoulders to a third. This is different from both Amerindian and European dancing, where the entire body usually moves to a single rhythm and accentuated hip movements are rare. These African influences are found in a widespread rural dance called juba or patting juba in North America where the participants sing and clap in a ring, while solo dancers take turns in the centre of the ring, often demonstrating polycentric virtuosity. A similar dance called samba de roda is performed in Brazil, and variants are found in the Caribbean and southern USA.
Improvisation is an important part of many West African traditions. West African drum ensembles often create new patterns of rhythm as the drummers interact with the audiences and dancers (Nketia, 1975). In the Americas, rhythmic, melodic, verbal and dance improvisation are found in many genres, from children's games to blues, jazz and hip-hop. The most familiar genre is probably jazz, where the structure is usually a harmonic progression, but the realization of that progression involves both group and solo improvisation.
Africans also introduced a number of musical instruments to the Americas. Among them were the ancestor of the modern banjo, a string instrument with a skin head, and the marimba, a large wooden xylophone, which was popular in Mexico, Central America and northern South America. Several drums were clearly African in origin, among them pressure drums with variable pitch. The musical bow used in Brazilian capoeira is much more likely to have its origins in Africa where they are widely used, than in the Americas where Amerindian use was rare. In some countries, there are historical documents that record African instruments no longer played in contemporary traditions.
Enslaved Africans were brought to the Americas over a period of centuries, with earlier and later arrivals certainly influencing one another. In countries that abolished slavery quite late, such as Brazil and Cuba, or in early established free states, such as Haiti, the most conservative religious music shows the clearest relationship to existing West African spirit possession religions: candomblé (Brazil), santería (Cuba) and Vodou (Haiti). Interlocking rhythms and texts in African languages clearly demonstrate the continuities of African music in the Americas. Spirit possession religions, which often involve dance and trance, were forbidden at various times and usually condemned by Christian churches. In the late 20th century, however, candomblé spread from north-east Brazil to the rest of the country and to Uruguay, Paraguay and Argentina. Santería and Vodou have also spread from Cuba and Haiti to many parts of the USA, where they are fast-growing religions.
Countries that either ended the use of slaves earlier than Brazil and Cuba or had a smaller percentage of enslaved Africans in the total population tended to create musical genres in which African-influenced styles and percussion have been combined to a greater degree with European-influenced harmonic structures and instruments. Yet even in countries with relatively small communities of African descent, such as Venezuela, there are strong influences of African-derived traditions in the instruments and musics played on them.
Religious institutions played important roles in the preservation and evolution of African musical genres and styles in the Americas. The cofradrías in Spanish and Portuguese colonies served as both social and religious organizations for enslaved Africans. Associations that were comprised entirely of enslaved Africans were often grouped according to ‘nations’. In the USA, African Americans organized themselves into communities of worship in Protestant churches.
The earliest African confraternities were established in the Americas during the 16th century. For example, there are references to a fraternity of negros in Pernambuco, Brazil, that date back to 1552. Religious confraternities were used by enslaved Africans to protect and preserve African beliefs and identities from the ruling establishment. This was achieved partly by the identification of Catholic symbols with African deities, and partly by the maintenance of distinct musical styles within the confraternities.
In the late 20th century, confraternities of peoples of African descent or secular organizations that descended from confraternities were still found in many parts of Latin America and the Caribbean, where they were responsible for organizing and performing music and dance associated with Carnival (Mardi Gras in New Orleans), the Reis Magos, many saints' days (among them celebrations of black saints) and other religious holidays. Some confraternities also presented song-dance-theatre productions that dramatized the conflicts between Christians and Moors or between two kings of the Congo (an African representation of the Christians and Moors) or stories about the Three Kings (the Magi) and other subjects. These dramatizations were often filled with elaborate oratory, dramatic dancing and complex rhythms. Other confraternities organized parades or processions with music, song and often dance. The music of these groups often retained African-influenced features, such as drums, rattles, tambourines, and other local instruments, rhythmic features and vocal styles (Lins, 1992). The confraternities provided enduring voluntary organizations within which music which was produced for hundreds of years (Moreno Cha, 1992).
In the English colonies, it was the participation of enslaved Africans in the Baptist Great Awakening, which peaked around 1720, and the subsequent establishment of black Baptist churches and independent black churches that provided the church-based institutional framework for the development of a unique musical style in North America. The emotional appeal of the Great Awakening perhaps resonated with many West African religions, and the independent churches soon published their own hymnbooks and interpreted existing hymns in new ways (Sobel, 1979). Spirituals, and later composed gospel music, developed into internationally known styles through the work of noted African American composers and educators (Reagon, 1992). African American churches were also important community institutions whose influence was dramatized in the 20th-century civil rights movement in the USA, in which churches and the music of churches played an important role in mobilizing large numbers of participants (Voices of the Civil Rights Movement, 1997).
Enslaved Africans were rarely permitted to practise their favoured musical traditions without impediment. Colonial decrees indicate attempts to curb public celebrations and the repression of drumming and religious activities. Enslaved Africans were also instructed in the use of European instruments by both churches and large plantation owners.
Free Africans found that musical creativity was a profession in which they could succeed even during the colonial periods. With the end of slave labour in the Americas, peoples of African descent were freer to migrate from plantations, and their musical influence on non-African populations increased in many countries, among them the USA, Caribbean islands, Guyana and Brazil.
Americas, §II: Encountering and mixing communities and traditions
In the early years of the colonies, most emigrants came from different parts of the colonizing country. In addition to the administrators and clerics came less wealthy people who brought with them musical instruments and traditions from Spain and Portugal. Musical cultures of the Iberian peninsula varied greatly, and peoples of different parts of the country often emigrated to distinct regions of the Americas, as emigrants from Andalusia settled in what would become Venezuela or immigrants from Normandy and Brittany settled in New France.
There was also internal migration within the Americas; European powers conquered and traded colonial areas, royalists moved out of newly independent countries and enslaved workers escaped or were transferred. French-speaking emigrants from Canada and Haiti moved to the southern USA and Cuba. Escaped slaves created their own settlements in the interior of Guyana, Brazil and Jamaica. Cultural expressions of these population movements survive in many regions today, such as in the Cajun traditions of Louisiana (see United States of America, §II, 1(i)(b)), the tumba francesa of Cuba (Alén Roderíguez, 1993) (see Cuba, §II, 1(iii)), and Maroon music of Jamaica (Drums of Defiance, 1992) (see Jamaica, §II). In some cases, emigrant traditions not only survived, but spread widely to other communities.
The 19th century was a period of large-scale emigration to the Americas from Europe and Asia. Heavy periods of migrations began after individual nations abolished the slave trade or slavery itself. Favourable policies and incentives encouraged large numbers of emigrants during these periods. The English brought large numbers of South Asians and Indonesians to Guyana and Trinidad as contract workers. Many stayed and form important segments of the populations and regional cultures, with distinct musical genres and traditions that maintain South and South-east Asian roots.
In Argentina and Uruguay, national populations grew tremendously due to heavy emigration towards the end of the 19th century, especially from Italy and Spain. These new emigrants had a profound impact on the development of national musical forms. In Brazil the largest influx occurred after emancipation in 1888; Italians and Portuguese were the largest groups. German and later eastern European and Mediterranean settlers moved to many of the countries, from Canada in the north to Argentina and Chile in the south. German and eastern European dances and bands, such as polka bands, exerted a tremendous influence on local musical styles in North and South America. The USA, Peru and Cuba encouraged sizeable Chinese migrations in the 19th century. Large groups of Japanese emigrants came in the early 20th century, settling in Brazil, Peru and the USA. In the late 20th century, refugees from wars in Asia, Africa and the Middle East also moved to the USA, Canada and other countries. War, oppression and unequal economic development within the Americas led to considerable internal migration in the late 20th century. Emigrant communities had varying degrees of impact on local musical traditions in each country, but virtually all of them influenced local musics.
In addition to emigration to the Americas, there were groups that returned to their original countries and subsequently exerted influences on cultural traditions in their former homelands, thus increasing the spread of the new musical traditions that had developed in the Americas. Some of the freed slaves who left the Americas and returned to various parts of Africa established an enduring legacy in architecture and music. Brazilians of Portuguese descent had a dramatic impact on the music and television of Portugal in the late 20th century. People of Italian descent returned to Europe from a number of countries as economic opportunities there improved, and Peruvians and Brazilians of Japanese descent returned to work in Japan. In the aftermath of the restrictions on travel imposed by the former Soviet Union and the USA, people with eastern European backgrounds also travelled back and forth.
Communities that moved to the new world and settled in industrial urban areas often lived in distinct neighbourhoods, either by choice or force. These neighbourhoods offered opportunities for local musicians and local, ethnically specific, entertainment industries. Chicago, New York, Toronto and later São Paulo were famous for such distinct immigrant neighbourhoods. Many cities such as Havana and San Francisco also had distinct neighbourhoods of Chinese residents, known as ‘Chinatowns’. Freed Africans also moved to the cities and often resided in distinct neighbourhoods in the USA. The large-scale emigration of Jewish intellectuals and musicians from Europe to the Americas in the first half of the 20th century had a strong impact on art music performance in a number of countries, as well as preserving musical styles they had practised in Europe, such as klezmer (see Jewish music, §IV, 3(ii)).
In the cities, community traditions were often supplemented by popular urban traditions and nationalist genres as a result of public education and mass communications. The musical result of this varied emigration was that most countries became profoundly multi-ethnic, with a proliferation of emigrant groups and a variety of local styles that were performed largely for members of the same ethnic groups. In the late 20th century these traditions were often lumped together under the term ‘folklore’, but within emigrant communities there were often different genres that were distinctly ‘classical’, ‘religious’, ‘traditional secular’ or ‘popular’ to members of the community (Slobin, 1993; Levin, 1996).
One of the most important influences on musical performances in the past 200 years has been the transformation of music into commodity. This change occurred gradually and unevenly. By the end of the 20th century, entertainment software was one of the USA's largest exports; several other countries in the Americas, including Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Peru and others, had established large internationally recognized entertainment industries, and some musical genres from the Americas had spread around the world.
Commodification and market capitalism powerfully shaped musical creativity, production and experience. Commodification necessitated that music be made commercially available to a large body of people and considered ‘a kind of thing produced for use or sale’ and that it be objectified in the process of trade. It also required a large and motivated group of people to purchase musical products. Although some European composers created exclusively for patrons, it was the protection of music publishers and instrument manufacturers through copyright and patent laws that created newly favourable conditions for large-scale commodification of music and its sale to increasingly large and affluent groups (Channan, 1995).
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R.J. de M. Bastos: A musicológica kamayurá: para una antropologia de comunicação no Alto-Xingu (Brasília, 1978)
M.E. Grebe: ‘Relationships between Music Practice and Cultural Context: the Kultrun and its Symbolism’, World of Music, xx/3 (1978), 84–106
G. Béhague: Music in Latin America: an Introduction (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 1979)
R. Price, ed.: Maroon Societies: Rebel Slave Communities in the Americas (Baltimore, 2/1979)
M. Sobel: Trabelin’ on: the Slave Journey to an Afro-Baptist Faith, Contributions in Afro-American and African Studies, xxxvi (Westport, CT, 1979)
E.R. Wolf: Europe and the People without History (Berkeley, 1982, 2/1997)
C. Hamm: Music in the New World (New York, 1983)
J. Sherzer and G. Urban: Native South American Discourse (Berlin, 1986)
A. Seeger: Why Sayá Sing: A Musical Anthology of an Amazonian People (Cambridge, 1987) [with audio cassette of speech and song]
V. Fuks: ‘Music, Dance, and Beer in an Amazonian Indian Community’, LAMR, ix/2 (1988), 150–86
O. Lewin and A.L. Kaeppler, eds.: Come mek me hol’ yu han’ (Kingston, Jamaica, 1988)
R. Sanjek: American Popular Music and its Business: the First Four Hundred Years (Oxford, 1988)
B. Nettl: Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents (Englewood Cliffs, NJ, 3/1990)
R. Spottswood: Ethnic Music on Records: a Discography of Ethnic Recordings Produced in the United States 1893–1942 (Urbana, IL, 1990)
I. Aretz: Historia de la etnomusicología en América Latina: desde la época precolombina hasta nuestros días (Caracas, 1991)
E.T. Lins: ‘Dramatization and Antagonism in the Brazilian Congadas’, Musical Repercussions of 1492: Encounters in Text and Performance, ed. C.E. Robertson (Washington DC, 1992), 219–37
K. Malm and R. Wallis: Media Policy and Music Activity (London, 1992)
E. Moreno Chá: ‘Encounters and Identities in Andean Brotherhoods’, Musical Repercussions of 1492: Encounters in Text and Performance, ed. C.E. Robertson (Washington DC, 1992), 413–28
B.J. Reagon, ed.: We’ll Understand it Better by and by: Pioneering African American Gospel Composers (Washington DC, 1992)
J.M. Schechter: The Indispensable Harp: Historical Development, Modern Roles, Configurations and Performance Practices in Ecuador and Latin America (Kent, OH, 1992)
R. Crawford: The American Musical Landscape (Berkeley, 1993)
S. Frith, ed.: Music and Copyright (Edinburgh, 1993)
M. Slobin: Subcultural Sounds: Micromusics of the West (Hanover, NH, 1993)
T. Turino: Moving Away from Silence: Music of the Peruvian Altiplano and the Experience of Urban Migration (Chicago, 1993)
G.H. Béhague: Music and Black Ethnicity: the Caribbean and South America (New Brunswick, NJ, 1994)
A. Alén Rodríguez: ‘Afro-French Settlement and the Legacy of its Music to the Cuban People’, ibid., 91–109
M. Channan: Musica practica: the Social Practice of Western Music from Gregorian Chant to Postmodernism (London, 1995)
L.R. Graham: Performing Dreams: Discourses of Immortality among the Xavante of Central Brazil (Austin, 1995)
B. Hampton and C. Sykes: ‘African American Secular and Sacred Music’, The JVC and Smithsonian/Folkways Video Anthology of Music and Dance of the Americas, i, ed. T. Fuji’i (Washington DC, 1995), 47–50 [video notes]
P. Manuel: Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music from Rumba to Reggae (Baltimore, 1995)
T. Levin: Ten Thousand Fools of God: Music Travels in Central Asia (and Queens, New York) (Bloomington, IN, 1996)
D.A. Olsen: Music of the Warao of Venezuela: Song People of the Rain Forest (Gainesville, FL, 1996)
N.A. Olumba and D.B. N’Diaye: ‘Local Radio and Local Populations: African Immigrants in Washington D.C.’, Cultural Survival Quarterly, xx/4 (Cambridge, 1996), 51–4
A. Seeger, ed.: ‘Traditional Music in Community Life: Aspects of Performance, Recordings and Preservation’, Cultural Survival Quarterly, xx/4 (1996)
J.-M. Beaudet: Souffles d'Amazonie: les orchestres tule des Wayăpi (Nanterre, 1997)
A. Seeger: ‘Singing the Strangers’ Songs: Brazilian Indians and Music of Portuguese Derivation in the 20th Century’, Portugal and the World: the Encounter of Cultures in Music, ed. S.E.-S. Castelo-Branco (Lisbon, 1997), 475–95
The JVC Video Anthology of World Music and Dance, viii: The Americas, ed. T. Fuji’i (Cambridge, MA, 1990)
Drums of Defiance: Maroon Music from the Earliest Free Black Communities of Jamaica, Smithsonian/Folkways SF40412 (1992) [incl. notes by K. Bilby]
Plains Chippewa/Métis Music from Turtle Mountain: Native Drums, Fiddles, Chansons and Rock and Roll, Smithsonian/Folkways SF40411 (1992) [incl. notes by N.C.P. Vrooman]
The JVC and Smithsonian/Folkways Video Anthology of Music and Dance of the Americas ed. T. Fuji’i (Washington, DC, 1995)
Voices of the Civil Rights Movement: Black American Freedom Songs 1960–1966, Smithsonian Folkways SF40084 (1997) [incl. notes by B.J. Reagon]