The Garland Handbook of Latin American Music

Dale Olsen, Daniel Sheehy, Dale Olsen, Daniel Sheehy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2007
• ISBN:
  9781135900076
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Ethnomusicology

The Garland Handbook of Latin American Music is comprised of essays from The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music: Volume 2, South America, Mexico, Central America, and the Carribean, (1998). Revised and updated, the essays offer detailed, regional studies of the different musical cultures of Latin America and examine the ways in which music helps to define the identity of this particular area.

Part One provides an in-depth introduction to the area of Latin America and describes the history, geography, demography, and cultural settings of the regions that comprise Latin America. It also explores the many ways to research Latin American music, including archaeology, iconography, mythology, history, ethnography, and practice. PartTwo focuses on issues and processes, such as history, politics, geography, and immigration, which are responsible for the similarities and the differences of each region's uniqueness and individuality. PartThree focuses on the different regions, countries, and cultures of Caribbean Latin America, Middle Latin America, and South America with selected regional case studies.

The second edition has been expanded to cover Haiti, Panama, several more Amerindian musical cultures, and Afro-Peru. Questions for Critical Thinking at the end of each major section guide focus attention on whatmusical and cultural issues arise when one studies the music of Latin America -- issues that might not occur in the study of other musics of the world. Two audio compact discs offer musical examples of some of the music of Latin America.

Part 1 Introduction to the Music Cultures of the Region

Señor Antonio Sulca, a blind Quechua Indian musician from Ayacucho, Peru, wears a European-designed suit as he plays a Spanish-derived harp. His music tells of his people from southern Peru, and his harp is adorned with a lute-playing siren, believed to be an indigenous protective and amorous symbol. Photo by Dale A. Olsen, 1979.

Cumbia, salsa, tango; Carnival, fiesta, shamanic curing; mariachi, samba school, steelband; Rubén Blades, Celia Cruz, Víctor Jara, Antonio Carlos Jobim, Astor Piazzolla—these genres, contexts, bands, and musicians conjure up sinuous rhythms, lyrical melodies, pensive moods, ideological power, and above all, unforgettable musical art. Music, dance, and music-related behavior are of great importance to the people of the countries and cultures south of the Río Grande (the river that separates the United States from Mexico), the island countries and cultures south of Florida, and many Amerindian cultures that thrive within those politically determined regions.

A Profile of the Lands and People of Latin America

Dale A. Olsen

DOI: 10.4324/9780203934548-1

Historical Snapshot

Geography

Demography

Native America in Latin America

Cultural Settings

The essays in this book explore the music of and in the lives of people from a vast region of the Western Hemisphere. They include descriptions of the music of many nations and cultures south and southeast of the continental United States of America. Most of these nations and cultures speak Spanish, Portuguese, English, French, Dutch, Creole, Papamiento, and/or a wide assortment of indigenous languages including (but not limited to) Aymara, Kechua, Kuna, Maya, Nahuatl, Warao, and many more. Many of the native American cultures (Amerindians) studied in this book continue to thrive as autochthonous and somewhat homogeneous entities within many Latin American countries. To call these cultures “Latin American” is admittedly wrong, because that colonialistic term does not represent the area’s indigenous heritage or its African heritage. Latin America theoretically refers to people with southern European heritage (i.e., with descendants from Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, although in practice it seems to emphasize only those people of Spanish and Portuguese heritage), and while the majority of the inhabitants of the Hispanic Caribbean, Middle America (i.e., Mexico and Central America), and South America speak either Spanish or Portuguese, many Amerindians and people of African ancestry do not want to be called “latinos.” It is with that understanding that we will use the term Latin America only as a term of convenience.

History, geography, ecology, demography, economics, and politics have all played an important role in the development, migration, and social categorization of music. For instance, geography influences ecology, ecology influences economics, and economics determines musical events, musical instruments, types of dances, and other aspects of expressive behavior. Geography has also influenced terms for places. For example, while there is no question what comprises South America, Mexico is not usually included within the term Central America because tectonically it is a part of North America. In this book we will use the term Middle America to include Mexico and the countries of Central America. We will retain the term Caribbean, but will include within the term Caribbean Latin America the following political entities: Cuba, Puerto Rico, Dominican Republic, and, in deference to its historical and cultural importance to the region, Haiti. These regions basically include the Greater Antilles (Anglophone Jamaica, however, is excluded).

Historical Snapshot

History helps us to understand settlement patterns that have generated socio-cultural patterns of behavior, including music, dance, and other human expressions. As we consider history, we must look at events both in time and space. Here are some important historical considerations.

After political developments in Europe that primarily involved Portugal and Spain in the late 1400s (the age of exploration, the expulsion of the Moors, the Inquisition, the marriage of King Ferdinand of Aragon to Isabella of Castile), three Spanish ships under the leadership of Cristóbal Colón, known to us as Christopher Columbus, sailed across the Atlantic and made landfall on a small island somewhere in the Caribbean Sea in 1492, perhaps Samana Cay (San Salvador) or Watling’s Island, now in the Bahamas. While scholars still argue over the exact spot of the Spaniard’s discovery of—or Encounter with—their new world, it is a history known to almost everyone.

On his first voyage, when land was at last sighted, Columbus wrote that his sailors fell to their knees and sang a musical setting of the Salve Regina, a Marian antiphon antedating the eleventh century (from Davis, the dominican republic, this volume):

Dios te salve, Reina y Madre de Misericordia;

Vida, dulzura y esperanza nuestra, Dios te salve.

A ti llamamos los desterrados hijos de Eva;

A ti suspiramos, gimiendo y llorando en este valle de lágrimas.

Ea, pues, Señora, abogada nuestra; vuelve a nosotros esos tus ojos misericordiosos;

Y después de este destierro, muéstranos a Jesús, Fruto Bendito de tu vientre.

¡Oh clemente! ¡Oh piadosa! ¡Oh dulce Virgen María!

Ruega por nosotros, Santa Madre de Dios,

Para que seamos dignos de alcanzar las promesas de Nuestro Señor Jesucristo.

Amen.

Hail, Queen, mother of pity:

Life, sweetness, and our hope, hail.

To you we cry, Eve’s exiled children.

To you we sigh, groaning and weeping in this vale of tears.

So ah! our Advocate, turn toward us your pitying eyes.

And after this exile, show us Jesus, blessed fruit of your womb.

O gentle, O devout, O sweet Virgin Mary.

Pray for us, holy Mother of God,

That we may be made worthy of Christ’s promises.

Amen.

The musical activity that occurred in Latin America during the ensuing colonial period included much vocal music. Spanish and Portuguese Catholic musical compositions, such as masses, salves, and villancicos (nonliturgical songs), were performed by hundreds of singers and instrumentalists of native American and/or African heritage both at rural Jesuit missions in Bolivia, Brazil, and Paraguay and in elaborate urban cathedrals in Mexico City, Puebla, Guatemala City, Lima, Sucre, Córdoba, and elsewhere. Mutual aid societies and/or religious brotherhoods known by such names as cabildos, cofradías, hermandades, and irmandades were formed on plantations and in cities in Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Peru, Brazil, and other places where people of native American, African, and Afro-Latin American heritage performed their music and dances, developing syncretic religious expressions that were mixtures of native American, African, and European beliefs. Spanish and Portuguese renaissance songs and musical instruments were sung and played, and their traditions were preserved in rural Cuba, Brazil, and other countries where there was once an active plantation life.

We also have some idea about what happened during the next several hundred years throughout much of Latin America: after lands were claimed for Spain or Portugal; indigenous people were “converted” to Christianity and forced to work in gold and silver mines or at other hard labor; many native Americans died of disease or committed suicide; African slaves were brought across the Atlantic by the hundreds of thousands to replace the native Americans as slaves to work on plantations; after the abolition of slavery, people of Asian backgrounds (from China, India, Japan, and Java) worked at hard labor in sugar, tobacco, cacao, and coffee fields—and our history books continue with more details that are sometimes hard to accept. These and many more activities led to the musical expressions of today’s Latin America.

Independence movements in Latin America ushered in great changes that affected the musical expressions of many countries. Composers wrote songs with topical, nationalistic, and nostalgic content, which were transmitted and remembered in the oral tradition. Military bands influenced regional musical expressions in both rural and urban settings. The emancipation of slaves encouraged European immigration that introduced new musical expressions, such as the accordion and Italian opera. Mestizo, mulatto, and criollo composers and musicians established national folklore and artistic expressions throughout Latin America. (In South America, criollo [creole] generally means born in the New World of European origin, and in the Caribbean it means having some African heritage.)

The twentieth century saw numerous political movements in Latin America that continued to affect the music of particular countries. Partially because of the Mexican Revolution, for example, the corrido continued to develop as a song of national expression, and nationalistic composers such as Manuel Ponce, Silvestre Revueltas, and Carlos Chávez immersed themselves in Mexican folklore to find inspiration. The Argentine tango was largely an art form inspired by the political climate in Buenos Aires around World War I, and protest music in Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, and Chile (nueva canción chilena) developed as a response to politics in those countries during the 1960s. Musical expressions in Caribbean Latin America, too, have been affected by the politics and social influences of Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and the United States. Music in Latin America is a result of these and many more times and places in history.

In the beginning of the twenty-first century, Latin American music continues to play a key role in world music, especially with the growing population of Latin Americans in the United States. Latin American artists like Enrique Iglesias, Marc Anthony, and Gloria Estefan have crossed over from world music to popular music charts. Radio stations, television programs, magazines, and Internet Web sites devoted to Latin American music and culture have proliferated. With such an explosion of interest in all things Latin American, the time is ripe for an overview of not only the popular styles, but, in some ways more importantly, the traditional and folk styles and customs that have influenced Latin American music. While this volume emphasizes the traditional, folk, and native sounds, popular and rock music are also addressed in topical articles and discussed within the articles on individual countries and regions.

Geography

Middle and South America include topographies of extreme contrast. In South America are the world’s largest tropical forest (Amazon) and one of its driest deserts (Atacama). There are many lowland basins (Orinoco, La Plata, Amazon) and frigid highlands and glacial peaks (the Andes, including Aconcagua, the highest mountain in the Western H...