is not particular to any one country;
rather, it developed simultaneously in
several countries as a mix of European
and Latin American styles.
Balada is a type of slow romantic
song, a pop ballad, usually about love.
It is typically performed by one male
singer, usually accompanied by an or-
chestra. Balada singers may also be
accompanied by electric guitars, bass
guitar, and drums. Like the bolero, a
common theme of a balada song is un-
requited love. It reached the height of
its popularity in the 1970s. Balada is
played in a slow to moderate tempo and
is smooth, typically lacking any kind of
Latin American rhythm. In spite of the
incorporation of rock elements like the Well-known Mexican balada singer
José José performs during the Latin
electric guitar and drums, the emphasis Billboard Awards. (AP/Wide
is on the singer and the vocal melody. World Photos)
26
|
Balada
Balada emerged in the 1960s, as rock ‘n’ roll was beginning to become in-
ternationally known, due to the influence of British groups like the Beatles and
the Rolling Stones. Bolero composers and musicians like Armando Manzanero
from Mexico modernized the bolero by combining soft rock elements with its
sound, which eventually resulted in the creation of balada. Some musicologists
have suggested that balada developed in particular from the Mexican bolero and
the Cuban fílín . Filín developed in the 1940s in Havana during the trovadoresco movement (see trova ). Balada is in many ways the opposite of the nueva can-
ción and other types of protest music (see Protest Song in Latin America ) that
arose in the 1960s and 1970s. Although it is often ignored by ethnomusicologists
because of its commercialized and corny or cursi nature, balada is popular all
over the world.
Nowadays, Latin pop has absorbed the bolero and become the prominent inter-
national style of music in the Spanish language. Latin pop began to be considered
its own genre in the 1980s, after the widespread success of artists such as Julio Igle-
sias, Camilo Sesto, and Gloria Estefan. Balada may be considered a subcategory
of pop latino. More recently, popular singers include Thalía from Mexico, Enrique
Iglesias (Julio Iglesias’s son), Ricky Martin from Puerto Rico, and Shakira from
Colombia.
Balada is popular throughout the South American continent and in the Carib-
bean. In spite of its commercialism and elements of fantasy, balada remains a sig-
nificant part of the Latin pop that is prevalent around the world today. In Colombia,
for example, balada was promoted by record companies from the beginning of its
formation as a genre. Julio Iglesias and Leo Dan, as well as other internationally
known artists, remain popular in Colombia today.
In Chile, a balada revival occurred in the 1990s. Balada is considered by many listeners a guilty pleasure, as it is a sentimental, commercial genre. It is known for
its romantic message and typically shies away from political or social commentary.
In the Dominican Republic, balada and the native Dominican genre meren-
gue share much of the same audience, causing some to view balada as competi-
tion with national music. Balada, like bolero and canción, are sentimental love songs.
In Mexico, most of the Spanish-language music brought in from other countries
may be categorized as balada. Traditional Mexican music consists of many roman-
tic genres, which explains in part the success of balada in the country. Mexico has
produced a number of popular balada singers. Popular balada singers from Mexico
include José José, Luis Miguel, and Emmanuel. Artists from Spain such as Julio
Iglesias and Camilo Sesto have also attained international commercial success. Ro-
berto Carlos, from Brazil, is also an extremely popular balada singer, who records
music in both Spanish and Portuguese. Well-known Spanish baladas include
Bambuco
|
27
“Lo mejor de tu vida” by Julio Iglesias, “Algo de mi” by Camilo Sesto, “Como te
extraño mi amor” by the Argentine Leo Dan, “El triste” and “Lo Dudo” by José
José, and “Este Terco Corazón” by Emmanuel.
Further Reading
Party, Daniel. “ Placer Culpable : Shame and Nostalgia in the Chilean 1990s Balada Re-
vival.” Latin American Music Review 30, no.1 (2009): 69–98. Project MUSE.
Party, Daniel. “The Miamization of Latin-American Pop Music.” In Postnational Mu-
sical Identities: Cultural Production, Distribution, and Consumption in a Globalized Sce-
nario, edited by Ignacio Corona and Alejandro L. Madrid-González, 65–80. Lanham, MD:
Lexington Books, 2008.
Stigberg, David. “Foreign Currents during the 60s and 70s in Mexican Popular Music:
Rock and Roll, the Romantic Ballad and the Cumbia.” Studies in Latin American Popular
Culture 4 (1985): 170–84.
Caitlin Lowery
Bambuco
Bambuco is a musical and dance genre from Colombia that was distributed across
Venezuela, Cuba, the Yucatán Peninsula, and other Caribbean regions. It is usu-
ally written in 3/4 or 6/8 meter or in an alternation of both. Bambuco, which is
performed as a couple dance, can be either vocal or instrumental. A characteristic
rhythmic feature is the persistent presence of eighth notes and a strong syncopation
into the first beat of the next measure. Romantic and melancholic in character, its
roots combined indigenous influences, especially from the Chibcha culture, Span-
ish influences, mostly from the Basque country, and African influences. Etiologi-
cally, its name could derive from Bambuck, a region in West Africa inhabited by
the Carabalí people, or derive from the Bamba Indians, whose songs were called
bambucos. Thus, Colombian bambucos are the most representative expression of
Andean Colombian music.
Modern bambuco is often sung as a duet and its lyrics are often sentimental.
Texts use octosyllabic décimas and other poetic forms. The singing is accompa-
nied by tiple, bandola, guitar, or by estudiantina ensembles, composed of bandolas, tiples, guitars and percussion. The bambuco característico is the name given
to the instrumental bambucos generally interpreted by an estudiantina. Currently a
renaissance of Andean Colombian music has brought up numerous ensembles such
as string and woodwind quartets, piano trios, duets, etc., that interpret bambucos,
pasillos, guabinas, and other Andean Colombian musical styles with both tradi-
tional and contemporary approaches.
28
|
Banda
Further Reading
Varney, John. “An Introduction to the Colombian Bambuco. ” Latin American Music
Review , 22, no. 2 (Fall/Winter 2001): 123–56.
Raquel Paraíso
Banda
Although banda is a generic term for a variety of ensembles consisting of brass,
woodwind, and percussion instruments found throughout Spain’s former colonies in
Latin America, it has come to designate a specific regional band style from the state
of Sinaloa on Mexico ’ s northwest coast. The banda sinaloense (Sinaloan banda ), or simply
banda, which gained a reputation in the international popular music market at the close of the 20th century, typically consists of clarinets, trumpets, valve
trombones, alto horns, tuba, and a drum set. It is now customary to integrate one or
two vocalists into the band. Transnational bandas expanded the traditional ranch-
era repertory to include more internationally appealing cumbias and baladas .
The format of this ensemble dates back to the military bands of European colo-
nists and to the brass music of German immigrants to Mexico’s northern Pacific
coast in the mid-19th century. The so-called bandas populares (popular bands or
village bands) or bandas de viento (wind bands) were ubiquitous features of Mexi-
co’s musical life in the late 19th century and thrived in both rural and urban areas.
The instrumentation of early village bands, however, was variable. The revolution-
ary movement of the 1910s was crucial in the development of the bands’ regional
characteristics because it promoted patriotism and regionalism. After the Mexican
Revolution the lineup in regional bands became more and more standardized. Band
membership in Sinaloa averaged from 9 to 12 musicians playing clarinets, cornets
or trumpets, trombones with valves, saxhorns (commonly called armonía or char-
cheta ), tuba, snare drum ( tarola ), and tambora, a double-headed bass drum with attached cymbals. Though the brass and reed instruments were imported from Europe, the drums were manufactured locally.
Bandas performed at various outdoor celebrations—bullfights, cockfights, horse
races, parades, saints’ days, weddings, funerals, and fandangos (popular dances).
Like the military bands of the time, bandas populares played an eclectic repertory
of marches, operatic selections, and popular pieces. Since their beginnings in the
late 19th century, bandas populares have been shunned by the upper classes, la-
beled as vulgar and backward. Although brass band music had long served as one of
the favorite pastimes of the educated classes, banda eventually became associated
with lower-class music and was rejected by the elite as a crude imitation of their
venerable military bands. Urbanization, capitalism, and eventually the culture in-
dustry altered Sinaloa society, its lifestyles, habits, and popular musical tastes, but
Banda | 29
bandas remained popular among the rural population and the lower-class urbanites
throughout the 20th century.
In the 1920s, orquestas (orchestras with predominantly stringed instruments)
throughout Mexico began to adjust to music from the United States by replacing
the traditional double bass with the tuba, integrating a percussion set, and adding
such instruments as saxophone and banjo. This new formation became known as
the jazz band. Inspired by these new trends in popular music, Sinaloan bandas too
began to play the new upper-class ballroom dances of the time, the fox-trot, the
Charleston, and the tango .
The main appeal of the banda was and continues to be its danceable music,
which includes a variety of rhythms, ranging from the local (Mexican) son, (Cuban)
guaracha , polka, waltz, and schottische to fox-trot, Cuban danzón , bolero , cha-
cha-chá , mambo , and cumbia . Unaffected by the developing radio, film, and recording industries of the early 1930s that revolutionized Mexico’s musical world,
banda musicians continued to play in their traditional surroundings; they also
found ample work in the cantinas (bars and brothels) of the lower-class urban
neighborhoods.
In the 1950s and 1960s, some of those who had moved to the cities of Mazatlán
and Culiacán eventually became involved with the newer technological media—
radio and recordings. To broaden their appeal, a few bandleaders began to modify
the makeup of the traditional banda by incorporating such new elements as Cuban
percussion instruments ( bongó drums, maracas, and cencerros ), slide trombones, and saxophones. These commercially oriented bandas, known as banda-orquestas,
performed a more cosmopolitan repertory of mainstream dance music and popular
international pieces, such as big-band mambo . Note-reading skills became more
important for professional musicians and they aspired to achieve a more polished
and precise playing style. Although the big band jazz and mambo era left its imprint,
banda kept a distinct character usually referred to as sabor sinaloense (Sinaloan
flavor). This character results from the contrast of clarinet and brass timbres, the
juxtaposition of tutti-soli (an alternation between the whole band and the individual
instrument groups of the front line: trumpets, trombones, and clarinets), and the
improvisation of countermelodies on one of the frontline instruments, a technique
often used while accompanying vocalists. There is a strong emphasis on volume
and pulse. Dynamics are mainly generated by alternating tutti and soli sections, the
latter executed on the frontline instruments.
In the mid-1980s, a grupo version of the acoustic banda sinaloense emerged in
Guadalajara (the grupo ensemble, including synthesized instruments and a lead
vocalist, plays easy-listening Mexican and international pop ballads and is one of
Mexico’s commercially most successful forms of popular music). This fusion be-
came known as tecnobanda (also technobanda ) or simply banda, although technobanda retained the trumpets, trombones, and percussion instruments. Saxophones
30
|
Bandola
were added and the characteristic tambora (double-headed bass drum with attached
cymbals) and the clarinets were eliminated. The traditional tubas and charchetas
(horns) were replaced with electric basses and keyboard synthesizers. Because
of these changes in the instrumentation, a typical technobanda consists of 7 to
11 musicians only (compared to 14 to 17 musicians of a traditional, acoustic
Sinaloan banda ). Despite the profound influence of regional Mexican music, tech-
nobanda has been highly innovative. The integration of a vocalist allowed techno-
banda to develop a new and independent repertory. Technobanda and its associated
quebradita dance style spread in the late 1980s from Guadalajara, Jalisco, to Los
Angeles, California, where it gained great popularity among immigrants as well as
American youths of Mexican heritage.
Accelerating processes of globalization, including mass mediaization and trans-
migration, helped the growing acceptance and popularity of technobanda and
banda in the United States. The early 21st century’s transnational, commercially
oriented Sinaloan bandas, such as Banda El Recodo and Banda La Costeña, have
included many of technobanda ’s innovations, in particular a lead vocalist. With
an emphasis on the visual and the verbal and a shift in their musical repertory
toward the more universally appealing and danceable cumbia and the romantic
balada, high-profile Sinaloan bandas entered the circuit of commercial popular
mass music. The driving force of Sinaloan banda music and its strength to cope
with changing fashions and cultural trends can be ascribed to its versatility and
adaptability. Although banda music became less community centered and more
universally appealing when bandas began to record for a mass market and perform
stage shows for a trans
national mass audience in the late 1990s, it has not lost its
regional flavor.
Further Reading
Simonett, Helena. Banda: Mexican Musical Life across Borders. Middletown, CT: Wes-
leyan University Press, 2001.
Simonett, Helena. En Sinaloa nací: Historia de la música de banda [Born in Sinaloa:
History of Banda Music]. Mazatlán, Mexico: Asociación de Gestores del Patrimonio
Histórico y Cultural de Mazatlán, 2004.
Helena Simonett
Bandola
The bandola is a small flat-backed chordophone found mostly in Colombia and
Venezuela. Related to the Spanish bandurria —a 12-string chordophone—this in-
strument has a pear shape and a short neck. Modern Colombian or Andean bando-
las have different numbers of strings, although the most common bandolas have 14
Bandolím
|
31
strings arranged in six triple (first and second courses) and double courses, or 12
strings arranged in six double courses. There are bandolas with 16 strings where
the first two courses are triple and the rest are double, and some that have 18 strings
and all the courses are triple. The six courses are tuned f-b-e’-a’-d’’-g’’ (lower to
higher string) and it is played with a plectrum. As the soprano voice of the tradi-
tional ensemble called estudiantina —composed of bandolas, tiples , guitar, and percussion— bandolas carry most of the melodies in instrumental bambucos, pasil-
los , guabinas, danzas, and other Andean Colombian musical styles. Bandola also plays a chordal role when those musical genres are sung.
Bandola llanera and bandola oriental are the two main types of Venezuelan
bandolas, each referring to a different geographical location where they are found
within the country. Like the Colombian bandola, both have a pear-shaped body.
The bandola llanera, found in the western planes, has four single strings com-
monly tuned b-e’-b’-f’’. The bandola oriental from the eastern part of the country
has a deeper body and eight nylon strings arranged in four double courses tuned
a/a-e/e’-b’-f’’.
Further Reading
Artez, Isabel. “Guitarras, bandolas y arpas españolas en América Latina.” In España en
la Música de Occidente: actas del Congreso Internacional celebrado en Salamanca, 29 de
Encyclopedia of Latin American Popular Music Page 8
