Americas, with a musical approach that is comparable, in terms of its influence, to
the blues. While its development began in the 1920s, it gained a wide audience in
Trinidad in the mid-1930s and remained unique to the island until 1944 when the
Andrews Sisters covered Lord Invader’s “Rum and Coca Cola.” Calypso’s success
stems from its adaptability, cosmopolitanism, and its international marketability.
Still a popular genre, calypso’s contemporary form is known in Trinidad as soca .
Calypso’s precursor is the West African song-boast, through which opponents
boast of their strength and prowess, juicing up for combat known as kalinda or
stick fighting, a focal point in the Carnival celebration in Trinidad. By 1900, song-
leaders, or chantwells, were singing in English and their songs were called calypsos.
The direct challenges and violence of stick fighting and song-boasts evolved into
a form of improvisational, rhetorical play. Calypsonians often had aggressive per-
sonas. Growling Tiger (Neville Marcano), for instance, began his public career as
a boxer. The suggestive violence lingered as the genre developed.
As calypso evolved, calypsonians targeted public officials and addressed po-
litical issues. In this regard, calypso is comparable to the blues. Its lyrics express
resistance and probe power struggles between men and women or rich and poor
through double-entendre, allegory and exotic, comic images. It provides emotional
purgation through text and form, and catharsis through the subtlety and wit of its
texts and the improvisatory nature of its musical form.
Trinidad’s population comes from throughout the Caribbean and the Amer -
icas and many of calypso’s melodic ideas come from Tobago, the Grenadines,
Barbados, Martinique, and Jamaica. The sense of motion, instrumentation, and
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texture draws on Venezuela ’ s paseos and aguinaldos, Martinique’s bel airs and
biguines, and the jazz of New Orleans. Though most calypso lyrics are in Caribbean English, a calypsonian typically turns to patois drawn from Caribbean French
Creole when he wishes to emphasize a particular idea. But, the most important im-
pact of the French presence is an aristocratic and cosmopolitan self-consciousness
that remains a key element in calypso.
The cosmopolitan air of calypso was crucial to its success. The calypsonian
wanted to demonstrate his familiarity with the urban world and this pleased pro-
ducers anxious to market a product across ethnic and national lines. Unfortunately,
artists and producers operated from unequal positions of power and profited un-
equally in turn. A reciprocal relationship had existed between the United States
and Trinidad since the late 1800s, which gave the United States ready access to
Trinidad’s resources and provided Trinidad with increased revenue, a way to resist
British colonialism and to express a new sense of nationalism. Calypso proved to
be an ideal commodity for both Trinidad and the United States. By the time Decca
Records traveled to Trinidad to record calypsos in 1938, Trinidadian entrepreneurs
had established a profitable relationship with New York City’s recording studios.
By the early 1940s, calypsonians enjoyed popularity among West Indians living in
New York, Trinidad, the Caribbean, and Latin America through radio broadcasts
and recordings. As calypso spread, it influenced other genres and traditions.
Calypso’s wit, political commentary, and topicality have influenced Jamaican
mento, Haitian compas, Dominican bélé, Martinique’s kassav and zouk , and Central American genres. In Panama, it is sung in Spanish, but provides a bridge be-
tween Spanish and English ideas and images. In Guatemala, it enables Garífuna
musicians of Caribbean, Arawak, African descent, to carve a national presence. In
Guyana, it connects those of French, Spanish, East Indian, and African heritage.
In the United States, calypso thrives as an exotic aperitif from the Andrews Sis-
ters’ cover of Lord Invader’s “Rum and Coca Cola” in 1945, to Harry Belafonte’s
“Banana Boat Song” of 1956, to Harry Nilsson’s 1971 hit, “Coconut.” In the 21st
century, contemporary artists such as Zap Mama continue to draw from the sound
and aesthetics of calypso.
The instrumentation heard on early recorded calypsos included guitar, cuatro , violin, bass, flute, and/or clarinet. The violin, often doubled by the flute or clarinet,
lays out the melody in the opening verse and then alternates as foreground with the
calypsonian. The cuatro serves as the engine, lifting the rhythmic feel by means
of syncopated chords, lightly articulated around the patterns that follow. The gui-
tar emphasizes the cuatro’s accents in chords and provides a single-note, inner or
bass voice. During vocal verses, the rhythmic accompaniment becomes simpler and
quieter. Occasionally, the violin or winds fills between vocal phrases. As calypso
spread, guitars and piano replaced the cuatro layer. Leads and fills were played by
clarinet and C-melody saxophone. The inner, lower voice was doubled by piano and
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cello. A successful calypso performance presents a sense of motion that is light and
upbeat, a voice that explores multiple rhythms, inflections, and colors with fluidity
and poise combined with topical and often subversive verses.
Further Reading
Best, Curwen. Culture @ the Cutting Edge Tracking Caribbean Popular Music. Kings-
ton, Jamaica: University of the West Indies Press, 2004.
Guilbault, Jocelyne. Governing Sound: The Cultural Politics of Trinidad’s Carnival
Musics. Chicago studies in ethnomusicology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.
Regis, Louis. The Political Calypso: True Opposition in Trinidad and Tobago, 1962–
1987. Barbados: Press University of the West Indies, 1999.
Michael Farley
Campana. See Cencerro .
Canción. See Canción Romántica .
Canción Ranchera. See Ranchera .
Canción Romántica
There are two basic kinds of canción in Mexico: simple songs of Spanish ori-
gin and romantic songs inspired by Italian opera. Canción romántica is the latter
genre. It is a sentimental song genre found primarily in Mexico and often cited
as a precursor to bolero. Canción romántica is generally not for dancing, but for listening.
Italian opera was enormously popular in Mexico in the 19th century. Mexico
saw its first opera production in 1711 with La Parténope, Paisiello’s Il barbiere di
Siviglia, and Cimarosa’s El filósofo burlado, which were performed at the Coliseo
Nuevo in Mexico City in 1806. Following the triumph of Rossini’s Il barbiere di
Siviglia in Mexico City in 1824, Mexico City, Havana, and other major Latin Amer-
ican cities enjoyed increasingly frequent performances by touring Italian opera
troupes, who visited in 1831, 1835, 1839, 1840, 1841, and 1842. Operas that had
been successful in Italy proved very popular on the Mexican stage, including Il
barbiere, La gazza ladra, Tancredi, and Otello by Rossini, Norma and La Sonnam-bula by Bellini, and Lucia di Lammermoor by Donizetti; their arias (vocal solos)
were often sung in parlors. Furthermore,
the royal order restricting performances
to the Spanish language was lifted with Mexico’s independence, allowing Italian
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Romántica
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opera to be performed in its original language. By the mid-1800s, Italian operas
were so much in vogue that Italian troupes were premiering Verdi’s works in Latin
America as quickly as three years after their European premieres. Italian opera not
only dominated the concert hall but also Mexican conservatories, where curricula
and student recitals were focused on Italian opera.
Opera also transcended elite salons to be heard in the city soundscape; as re-
counted by Madame Calderón de la Barca in her mid-19th-century memoir Life in
Mexico, melodies from operas by Bellini and Donizetti were quoted in liturgical
music, included in the repertory of military bands, and whistled in the streets as
the popular music of the day. Mexico City was not the only city seeing operatic
performances: the troupes also visited regional cities and towns in Jalisco, Puebla,
and Veracruz, sometimes performing in open air for a nominal entrance fee. The
arias from these operas were also taken up by country musicians, particularly in
the Bajío (parts of Michoacán, Guanajuato, and Jalisco), which became a center of
the canción in the 19th century; they imitated the melodic and harmonic patterns
on their guitars and harps.
A second influence on the canción romántica was Mexican literary romanti-
cism, including poets such as Fernando Calderón, Igancio Rodríguez Galván, and
Guillermo Prieto. Literary romanticism featured a variety of meters and rhythms,
containing 8, 10, 11, or 12 syllables. Texts centered on expressing ideas or senti-
ments rather than on narrating a story, as was the case with corridos .
By the 1830s, a style of romantic song had begun to circulate in musical salons
of the middle-to-upper classes in Mexico City that drew from the cantabiles (slow
sections) of arias and cavatinas (arias introducing a character) of Italian opera. This
influence was most easily detected through ornamental aspects of the melody, such
as melismas, trills, mordents, portamentos, appoggiaturas, large leaps, and fermatas
(held notes), which were common in Italian arias and were technically challeng-
ing to the singer. Songs of the early to mid-19th century such as “El susurro del
viento” (1850), “La dormida” (Mexico City, mid-19th century), and “La mirada”
contained the melismas, leaps, cadenzas (improvised flourishes just prior to a final
cadence), and voices in parallel thirds common in such arias, while “A tí te amo,
no más, no más a tí ” (Dolores Guerrero, Durango, 1840) featured many chromatic
appogiaturas.
In addition to this surface ornamentation, these songs resembled Italian opera in the
structure of the melodies. Most melodies by Italian operatic composers, such as Bellini
and Verdi, followed the lyric form. In this form, the first four measures carry a melody A;
the next four feature a variation of melody A (A’), in an antecedent-consequent form,
ending in a perfect authentic cadence (cadence of predominant-dominant-tonic, noted
as PAC); the next four measures provide a contrasting middle B, often based on a frag-
mentation of A; and the last four measures is either a repeat of the consequent (A’)
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or a new cadential phrase (C). Note that the following typical format for a Mexican
canción (e.g., “Marchita el alma,” Zacatecas, 1885, arranged by Manuel Ponce, 1916)
has the same structure as the lyric form:
Melody
A
A’
/ B
A’’’
Melody (detail) a
b
a’
c
/ b
b
a’’
c
Harmony
I-V V-I I-ii V-I /V-I V-I I-ii V-I
PAC PAC
Furthermore, the harmonies of these songs were typically more complex than
Spanish-inspired genres, including applied dominants (e.g., V/V), modulations or
tonicizations of other keys, mixtures of minor and major modes (particularly for
vi), harmonic shifts of a third, deceptive cadence, and other chromatic harmonies
often encountered in Italian opera of the Romantic Era; songs with such features
included “La mirada,” “Ella gime” (Cholula, 1870), “Tu nombre, María” (Guana-
juato, 1900), “Tan dulces son tus ojos” (Morelia, 1898), and “No me mires ni me
escuches” (Tlaxcala, 1896). Finally, direct quotes of operas could be heard in such
songs as “Pálida estoy” (Jalisco, 1885), which referenced Gilda’s aria “Tutte le
feste al tempio” from Act II of Verdi’s Rigoletto.
From the 1890s to about 1940, another style of canciones flourished in Mérida
in the Yucatán. This style also recalled Italian references in its frequent fermatas,
applied dominants, and modal mixture (e.g., Guty Cárdenas’ “Flor”). In addition,
many songs had the 6/8 meter of the Colombian bambuco, while others contained
habanera-type rhythms reminiscent of the Cuban bolero. Of the 447 songs in Juan
Ausucua’s compilation El Ruiseñor yucateco: coleccioñ de canciones de todos los
generos, 147 were Cuban, 119 were from central Mexico, 9 were coplas from Span-
ish zarzuelas, and 132 were Yucatecan. The canción yucateca was also noted for its
literary merit, with poets such as Luis Rosas Vega (“La peregrina”), José Esquivel
Pren, Felipe Ibarra y de Regil, and Ricardo López Méndez noted for song lyrics,
which often contained references to Mayan culture. The most famous composer
was Guty Cárdenas; others included Juan Manuel Vargas and Filiberto Romero
(“Canciones del Mayab”).
According to Garrido, a more Mexican style of canción romántica began with
the song “Perjura” composed by Miguel Lerdo de Tejada in 1901. As with earlier
canciones, it contained tonicizations of other keys, but its second section had a
lively triplet-duplet rhythm. This style continued to be cultivated until about 1950
by Mexico City–based composers, including Alfonso Esparza Oteo (“Te he de
querer,” “Rondalla”), Mario Talavera (“Gracia plena,” “La canción flor de mayo”),
and Ignacio Fernández Esperón (“Tata Nacho”), who continued the practice of modal
mixture. This stage of the canción romántica, along with the Cuban bolero, was
considered the immediate precursor to Mexican bolero.
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73
Perhaps the most noted composer of canciones románticas was Manuel M.
Ponce (1882–1948), whose “Estrellita” (1912) has been recorded in a variety of
styles by Trio Los Panchos, Pérez Prado, Charlie Parker, and many others. While
he was credited as the father of Mexican musical nationalism for his lecture “La
musica y la canción mexicana” (1913), some of his songs still showed the influ-
ence of European Romanticism, with “Estrellita” resembling Schumann’s “Trau-
merei” in its melodic contour and prominent harmonies. Ponce also wrote many
arrangements of Mexican folksongs, such as “Acuérdate de mí,” “Adiós mi bien,�
�
and “Trigueña hermosa.”
Similar songs in the style of Romantic art song were heard in Cuba in the 19th
century, where Italian opera was also popular. Among those cited by Carpentier
include “La Corina” (1820), inspired by Madame de Staël’s novel Corinne; “La
Isabela” by Ramón Montalvo, inspired by Lord Byron’s “To Jenny” and “Dulce
Chactas.” Songs such as “Canción de la rosa” and “Recuerdos de Bellini” were
printed in the music magazine Apolo Habanero (1835).
Further Reading
Carpentier, Alejo. 2001. Music in Cuba. Cultural studies of the Americas, v. 5. Minne-
apolis: University of Minnesota Press. First printed in 1946 as La música en Cuba.
Geijerstam, Claesaf. 1976. Popular Music in Mexico. Albuquerque: University of New
Mexico Press.
Huebner, Steven. “Lyric Form in Ottocento Opera.” Journal of the Royal Music Asso-
ciation 117 (1992): 123–47.
Mendoza, Vicente T. La canción mexicana ensayo de clasificación y antología. Tezon-
tle, México: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1982. First printed 1961.
Olavarría y Ferrari, Enrique de, and Salvador Novo. Reseña histórica del teatro en
México, 1538–1911. México: Editorial Porrúa, 1961.
Noriko Manabe
Carnival
Carnival ( Carnaval in Portuguese) is the pre-Lenten festive celebration that takes
place throughout the Christian world over several days, ending on Ash Wednes-
day. Although it is most strongly associated with the Catholic Church, Eastern
Orthodox churches and some Protestant denominations also practice versions.
It is European in origin, but has been embraced throughout the New World and ex-
ists today in various manifestations. What distinguishes New World Carnival cel-
ebrations is the use of local dances, many of which have African roots, reflecting
the importance of the legacy of slavery in the Americas. The most famous Latin
American Carnival celebration is in Brazil, where it has become an important part
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of national identity. The Brazilian version of Carnival celebrations features many
African-derived music and dance forms, most notably samba, the most important
popular music genre in Brazil.
Encyclopedia of Latin American Popular Music Page 15
