The Garland Handbook of Latin American Music

Dale A Olsen, Daniel A Sheehy, Dale A Olsen, Daniel A Sheehy

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2021
• eBook ISBN: 9781000525533
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Media & Performing Arts
• Subtopic: Music

First Published in 2000. 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. Part Two 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. Part Three 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 what musical 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

Cumbia, salsa, tango; carnival, fiesta, shamanic curing; mariachi, samba school, steelband; Victor Jara, Tom 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 south of the Rio Grande (the river that separates the United States from Mexico), the island countries south and east of Florida, and many native American cultures that thrive within those politically determined regions.

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

A Profile of the Lands and People of Latin America

Dale A. Olsen

Geography

Demography

Cultural Settings

The articles in this volume cover the music of people from a vast region of the Western Hemisphere. Here you will find descriptions of the music of many nations south of the Rio Grande (the river that separates the United States from Mexico); of several native American cultures that continue to thrive as autochthonous and somewhat homogeneous entities within these nations; and of the Spanish-speaking island states south and southeast of Florida.

GEOGRAPHY

Because of political and cultural history, it can be difficult to make easy geographic classifications in this region. In fact, several problems of classification arise. First is the area known as the Falkland Islands (a British term) or Islas Malvinas (the Argentine term for the same place). These islands are problematic because of their political affiliation (should they be discussed as British or Argentine?) and because no scholarly musical research has been conducted there. Second is the phenomenon of Maroon culture, such as the several societies established by runaway African slaves in the interiors of French Guiana, Guyana, Surinam, and Jamaica, and formerly in Brazil. Like many native American groups, Maroon cultures may not be politically determined by non-Maroon people; like many native American groups, they have their own political systems. Maroon cultures have been studied, however, and much is known about their musics. A third problem concerns Isla de Pascua (Chilean term), Easter Island (English term), or Rapa Nui (Polynesian term), an island several thousand kilometers west of Chile. It is administered by Chile, though its aboriginal people were Polynesians. This region has also been studied; however, when the island is seen as a Polynesian culture, does the implied musical understanding have a Polynesian, non-Chilean tinge? and when studied from a Chileans point of view, is the opposite true?

Central 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 Hemisphere). The country of Chile itself is, in reverse, a compressed version of the span from coastal Alaska to Baja California: its land goes from a northern dry desert, fertile central valleys, and lush southern pine forests, to extreme southern, rugged, canyonlike estuaries studded with glaciers, terminating in frigid mountains and waters of the area of the world that is the closest to Antarctica. Within the small country of Ecuador are tropical forests and perpetually snowcapped mountains—both at zero degrees latitude, the equator. Because of such topographies, most of the urban centers of South America are on or near the coasts of the Atlantic, Caribbean, or Pacific. All of these considerations have affected the music of Central and South America.

MAP 1 Latin America: South America, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean

When music is made by a group of people or for a group of people, rarely does the musical event exist without dancing and the participation of members of the family. Music is an affair, an experience, an event to be shared.

DEMOGRAPHY

Demography, the description of human populations, is more than a statistical science. When joined with cultural studies, demography becomes more complex than mere calculation of numbers and migration of people. There is probably no place on earth as racially and culturally diverse and complex as the Americas, especially the Americas covered in this volume.

As a way of explaining the complexity of a particular area, George List (1983) has tried to fit certain regions of South America within the framework of a tricultural heritage—native American, African, and Spanish. But within each of these areas there could be dozens of subareas of influence: which native American culture? which African culture? and even which Spanish culture? These are questions that must be asked (Bermudez 1994).

Likewise, terms such as mestizaje miscegenation (a mixing of race and culture, usually assumed between native American and Spanish or Portuguese) and criolismo ‘creolism’ (usually a mixing of African and European, or referring to European descendants born in the New World; usage depends on the country; in Haiti, Creole refers to the language) have been used to categorize people and cultures in Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean. The terms mestizo and creole (criollo) are used throughout these areas by the people themselves; however, they are perhaps less useful today, with the amounts of urban migration taking place, the increasing possibilities of upward mobility, and the great influx of immigrants and their descendants from China, England, Germany, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Korea, and elsewhere. Each country has its own ways of using the terms mestizo and criollo or uses other terms to accommodate its unique demographic mixture.

CULTURAL SETTINGS

Ethnomusicology is the study of music made by people for themselves, their gods, and/or other people. The people of South America, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean are diverse and the countries pluralistic, and their musical styles and other cultural attributes are equally so. When a person is making music for himself or herself, rarely is he or she completely alone: someone—a family member, a friend, a community—is listening, enjoying, crying, singing along. When music is made for God or the gods, rarely is it done in isolation: people are listening, learning the songs, perhaps praying or thinking spiritual thoughts. When music is made by a group of people or for a group of people, rarely does the musical event exist without dancing and the participation of members of the family. Music is an affair, an experience, an event to be shared.

REFERENCES

1. Bermudez, Egberto. 1994. “Syncretism, Identity, and Creativity in Afro-Colombian Musical Traditions.” In Music and Black Ethnicity: The Caribbean and South America, ed. Gerard H. Behague, 225–238. Miami: North-South Center, University of Miami.
2. List, George. 1983. Music and Poetry in a Colombian Village: A Tri-Cultural Heritage. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
3. Loukotka, Cestmir. 1968. Classification of South American Indian Languages. Los Angeles: Latin American Center, University of California.
4. Handbook of Middle American Indians. 1971. Edited by Robert Wauchope. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Approaches to Musical Scholarship

Dale A. Olsen

The Archaeological Record

The Iconographie Record

The Mythological Record

The Historiographic Record

Ethnology and Practice

Almost everything known about music and musical performance in the Americas comes from archaeology, iconology, mythology, history, ethnology, or current practice. Since antiquity, culture bearers, conquerors, missionaries, Peace Corps volunteers, politicians, grave robbers, scholars, students, travelers, visitors, and many others have contributed to musical knowledge in the Western Hemisphere.

THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL RECORD

Probably all ancient cultures in South America, Mexico, Central America, and the Caribbean—as, indeed, throughout the world—have used music for religious and social reasons. Many have used musical instruments for rhythmic or melodic purposes, or as some type of reinforcement of vocal sounds or dancing. Through archaeology it is possible to see (and even hear) some of the musical instruments of ancient people, because many extant musical instruments have been unearthed. Many of these, found in tombs, temples, and other ruins, are available for study in private and public collections. It is possible to see how musical instruments may have been held, which ones may have been played together, and what activities—such as dancing, sacrificing, healing, parading, hunting, and so on—they may have been used for. When musical instruments and performances are depicted in pottery, wood, and any other medium, their study is called music iconology. When such artifacts have been recovered from tombs, temples, and other sites lost in time, music iconology is a branch of archaeomusicology.

Nearly everything said about ancient musical instruments and events has to be qualified with the words possibly, and may have, and other modifiers indicating speculation; people living today can never be certain about artifacts from prehistoric times. The materials of ancient musical instruments can usually be ascertained, and the age of the instruments can be roughly determined—by carbon-14 dating for wood and bone, thermoluminescence (TL) for pottery, and other methods of dating. Instruments can be measured and physically described. Beyond these limits, however, archaeomusicologists must speculate.

The primary drawbacks in the study of ancient musics are the absence of emic points of view (what the bearers of the culture might say about it), observable cultural contexts, and actual sounds. Even if sounds are obtained from ancient musical instruments, it is still the researcher, rather than the bearers of the extinct culture, who causes the sounds to be made. For economic and other reasons, counterfeit artifacts—fakes!—are constructed and circulated, and determining the validity of supposed artifacts can be problematic. Furthermore, carbon-14 dating is not always possible because the procedure destroys part of the artifact, and it may not always be reliable because a buried instrument may receive contamination from seepage, garbage, vegetable matter, the chemical composition of the soil, and other sources, becoming nearly impossible to date by that method. TL dating is rare because few laboratories can do it, and its margin of accuracy is often too wide for it to be useful.

Sometimes, researchers designate as musical instruments ancient objects that may actually have been constructed and used for other purposes: a ceramic water vessel or beaker may be called a drum with its skin missing, a pipe for smoking may be said to be a flute, and so on. At other times, what may be termed an artifact may actually be an ecofact, as when a so-called bone flute is just a bone, or a geofact, as when a so-called polished stone is a naturally polished stone, rather than a human-crafted lithophone or stone chime.

Archaeomusicology is t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Audio Examples
• List of Maps
• List of Contributors
• Preface
• Part 1 Introduction to the Music Cultures of the Region
• Part 2 Issues and Processes in the Music of Latin America
• Part 3 Nations and Musical Traditions
• Glossary
• A Guide to Publications
• A Guide to Recordings
• A Guide to Films and Videos
• Notes on the Audio Examples
• Index