Encyclopedia of Latin American Popular Music

by George Torres

  A third, even more virtuosic style of playing the charango developed in the

  mid-20th century in the larger cities of Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile. The cha-

  rango was one of several instruments incorporated into the urban Andean music

  ensemble that developed at this time, which also featured the guitar, zampoña, or

  sikus (panpipes), kena (end-notch flute), and bombo (bass drum). Building on elements of the mestizo style, musicians such as Bolivia’s Mauro Nuñez, Ernesto

  Cavour, and others adopted elements of classical guitar technique and their own

  innovations, including faster strumming patterns, right-hand tremolos, and light-

  ning-fast finger-picking, to transform the charango into a solo concert instrument.

  Renowned Chilean folklorist Violetta Parra also adopted the instrument at this

  time, setting her own compositions to charango accompaniment and influencing

  a later generation of Chilean nueva canción (new song) musicians to take up the

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  Rock

  instrument, who would popularize it around the world during their tours in the

  1970s and 1980s.

  In recent years, the charango has continued to grow in popularity, and is now

  commonly played in urban folk and popular musics throughout Andean South

  America. It has also been featured in a number of high-profile popular music re-

  cordings internationally, including songs by Shakira and by the Argentine producer

  and Oscar-winning film composer Gustavo Santaolalla.

  Further Reading

  Rios, Fernando. “Music in Urban La Paz, Bolivian Nationalism, and the Early History

  of Cosmopolitan Andean Music: 1936–1970.” Ph.D. diss., University of Illinois, Urbana-

  Champaign, 2005.

  Stobart, Henry. Music and the Poetics of Production in the Bolivian Andes. London:

  Ashgate, 2006.

  Turino, Thomas. “The Charango and the ‘Sirena’: Music, Magic, and the Power of

  Love.” Latin American Music Review 4, no. 1 (1983): 81–119.

  Turino, Thomas. “The Urban-Mestizo Charango Tradition in Southern Peru: A State-

  ment of Shifting Identity.” Ethnomusicology 28, no. 2 (1984): 253–70.

  Jonathan Ritter

  Chicano Rock

  Chicano rock refers to rock music played by Mexican Americans. The term does

  not imply a specific unifying style because Chicano artists have approached rock

  music in diverse ways, reflecting their regional experiences with Anglo and African

  American communities. Its roots began around 1950 when Chicano artists in south

  Texas and southern California modeled themselves after African American rhythm

  and blues artists. In the 1970s, Chicano artists openly celebrated their ethnic iden-

  tity, which produced a unique hybrid style of rock music. By the 1990s, Chicano

  rock continued to diversify into many styles.

  While conjunto and orquesta ensembles were popular in the 1950s in Texas, many Chicanos also liked jazz and rhythm and blues. In 1954 members of San

  Antonio’s Conjunto Mexico formed the band Mando & the Chili Peppers. The

  band had its own show on local television and in 1957 released the album On

  the Road with Rock ‘n’ Roll. From San Benito, Freddy Fender recorded his first

  rock ‘n’ roll songs in 1957, including a cover of Elvis Presley’s “Don’t be Cruel”

  sung in Spanish. In 1959 Fender’s song “Holy One” became a regional hit. By

  the mid-1960s, a unique style known as the “West Side Sound” emerged in San

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  Rock

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  Antonio, which combined elements of rhythm and blues, rock ‘n’ roll, doo-wop,

  soul, and tejano music. Two popular bands were The Royal Jesters and Sunny &

  the Sunliners. From Dallas, Sam the Sham & the Pharaohs hit the charts in 1965

  with “Wooly Bully,” a song that introduced Tex-Mex flavored rock ‘n’ roll to

  mainstream audiences.

  In the 1950s in Los Angeles a number of Chicano musicians honed their skills

  playing jazz and rhythm & blues before switching to rock ‘n’ roll. Artists include

  The Armenta Brothers, Bobby Rey, Gil Bernal, The Rhythm Rockers, and the

  beloved Ritchie Valens. In the early 1960s a scene known as the Eastside Sound

  emerged in Los Angeles. Many of these bands such as The Romancers, The

  Blendells, and The Premiers recorded under Eddie Davis and Billy Cardenas. The

  two most popular bands were Cannibal & the Headhunters, well-known for their

  version of “Land of a Thousand Dances,” and Thee Midniters, whose 1965 release

  “Whittier Boulevard” unified soul, gospel, surf rock, jazz, and Latin elements into

  a new sound that future bands followed.

  Mexican Americans’ efforts to improve their position in American society,

  termed the “Chicano Movement,” marked a new consciousness in the 1960s that

  later emerged in Chicano rock in Los Angeles and the San Francisco Bay Area.

  Unlike previous artists, bands of the 1970s drew attention to their Mexican heritage

  by using imagery from Mexican culture, singing in Spanish, and celebrating Chi-

  cano life through their lyrics. The music drew heavily from jazz, rhythm and blues,

  Mexican music, and Latin dance music, all mixed with a rock approach. In Los

  Angeles, two of the most popular bands, El Chicano and Tierra, grew out of earlier

  Eastside Sound bands. El Chicano achieved national recognition in 1970 with their

  song “Viva Tirado.” The same year, Rudy and Steve Salas founded Tierra, a band

  that achieved commercial success in 1980 with their cover song “Together.” Other

  important bands include Macondo, Tango, Yaqui, Redbone, and Ruben & the Jets.

  In the San Francisco Bay Area, Carlos Santana help create Latin rock when the

  band named after him combined Latin, blues, rock, African drumming, and psyche-

  delic jams at their monumental 1969 performance at Woodstock. Other multieth-

  nic bands followed Santana’s lead while adding more Chicano references to their

  music. Malo, whose song “Suavecito” was a hit in 1972, included Carlos Santana’s

  brother Jorge and Willie G. of Thee Midniters. Former member Coke Escovedo

  later formed Azteca and Richard Bean formed Sapo.

  As younger Chicano artists wanted to be more directly political, they turned to

  punk rock. By the 1980s, Club Vex in Los Angeles was a hub for Chicano bands

  like The Zeros, The Brat, The Bags, Los Illegals, and The Plugz. Other Chicano

  punk scenes emerged in the 1990s in Chicago and Texas. Presently, Chicano rock

  bands like Los Lobos, Quetzal, Girl in a Coma, and Los Lonely Boys represent a

  wide range of styles and innovative mixtures.

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  Further Reading

  Molina, Ruben. Chicano Soul: Recordings and History of an American Culture. La Pu-

  ente, CA: Mictlan, 2007.

  Reyes, David, and Tom Waldman. Land of a Thousand Dances: Chicano Rock‘n’Roll

  from Southern California. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1998.

  Francisco Orozco

  Chicha

  Chicha, also known as cumbia andina, is a Peruvian popular music genre that fuses

  influences from the Colombian cumbia , the Andean huayno , and transnational pop/rock instrumentation. Chicha emerged as a distinctive genre in Peru in the late

  1960s, and reached the heig
ht of its popularity in the 1980s. Associated primar-

  ily with the poorer marginal neighborhoods founded by highland migrants to the

  capital city, Lima, chicha nonetheless had a significant following in most of the

  country’s major cities. Though its popularity waned in the 1990s, chicha groups

  continue to attract large audiences today, within Peru as well as beyond the coun-

  try’s borders in neighboring South American countries.

  Cumbia first established a following in Peru in the 1960s, appealing to an unusu-

  ally broad cross-section of the population in terms of both class and ethnic identity

  and geographic dispersion. Covers of Colombian cumbias were performed by di-

  verse ensembles, from vocal soloists in the country’s capital to brass bands in rural

  parts of the Andean highlands, and eventually gave birth to Peruvian variations on

  the genre. Los Destellos, founded in Lima by guitarist Enrique Delgado in 1968,

  is widely regarded as one of the most influential early bands. Their instrumental

  line-up—including two electric guitars, electric bass, and timbals, later expanded

  to incorporate congas, bongos, and keyboard—as well as Delgado’s melodic, riff-

  based style of guitar playing established an instrumental model and characteristic

  sound that continues to define the genre to this date.

  Rapid urbanization in Peru during the mid-20th century led to tremendous eco-

  nomic and cultural changes in cities such as Lima and Arequipa, where the particu-

  lar form of Peruvian cumbia known as chicha developed. First-generation migrants

  in the 1950s and 1960s had established a thriving recording industry and perfor-

  mance circuit for commercial versions of the highland huayno, a double-meter

  music and dance genre widespread throughout the Andean highlands of Peru and

  Bolivia. By the early 1980s, children of those migrants began incorporating me-

  lodic influences—and at times, entire songs—from the huayno repertoire into the

  rhythms and tropical instrumentation of the Peruvian cumbia. Though coastal and

  jungle versions of the cumbia persisted in different parts (and demographics) of

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  the country, chicha, or cumbia andina (Andean cumbia), dominated the listening habits of urban provincianos (provincial migrants). Chicha, referring to a type of

  homemade corn beer drunk throughout the Andes, also cemented the highland as-

  sociations of the subgenre; the word’s association with this music reportedly began

  with one of its early hits, “La Chichera” (“The Chicha Seller”), by the group Los

  Demonios del Mantaro, from Peru’s central Mantaro Valley. Today, the word’s as-

  sociation with this music has also made it synonymous, in a derogatory way, with

  anything deemed cheap or low class in Peru.

  Shunned by more traditional media outlets such as television and radio in the

  1980s, chicha musicians carved out an alternate media space among working-class

  migrant audiences through live performances in outdoor venues in poorer neighbor-

  hoods, sometimes called chichodromos, as well as through widespread distribution

  of their music via pirated cassettes. The genre’s biggest and most enduring success

  in these realms was the band Los Shapis, founded by guitarist Jayme Moreyra and

  singer Julio Edmundo “Chapulín” Simeon in Lima in 1981. They had their first hit

  with “El Aguajal,” an adaptation of a popular huayno, which was followed by a

  long string of hits in the following decade that reflected the lives and concerns of

  their predominantly urban, provinciano audience. Indeed, one characteristic feature

  of the genre, and of Los Shapis in particular, was an emphasis on simple and di-

  rect lyric messages, in contrast with the poetic flourishes of other Peruvian genres

  such as the huayno and the Creole vals. The singer “Chacalón” (Lorenzo Palacios) was also a major star of the decade. His unexpected death in 1992 drew more than

  20,000 people into the streets to follow his casket through the working-class mi-

  grant neighborhoods where he had made his name.

  Chicha’s popularity faded to some extent in the 1990s, as its novelty waned and

  the genre faced heightened competition for urban audiences’ attention in the coun-

  try’s increasingly diverse media market. By the end of the decade, chicha was over-

  shadowed by techno-cumbia, another local variation on the cumbia which dropped

  chicha’s Andean influences, updated its sound, and featured primarily female sing-

  ers and dancers. Nonetheless, chicha has endured into the new millennium. Many

  of the popular bands of the 1980s continue to perform and record regularly, and

  their earlier hits remain widely available. Television miniseries based on the lives

  of iconic singers Chacalón and Chapulín were major hits in recent years, appeal-

  ing to audiences far beyond their prior core fan base, and point to the genre’s con-

  tinued longevity.

  Further Reading

  Bullen, Margaret. “Chicha in the Shanty Towns of Arequipa, Peru.” Popular Music 12,

  no. 3 (1993): 229–44.

  Hurtado Suárez, Wilfredo. Chicha Peruana: Música de los Nuevos Migrantes. Lima:

  Grupo de Investigaciones Económicas, 1995.

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  Montoya, Rodrigo. “Música Chicha: Cambios de la Canción Andina Quechua en el

  Perú.” In Cosmología y Música en los Andes, edited by Max Peter Baumann, 483–95. Ver-

  vuert: Iberoamericana, 1996.

  Romero, Raul. 2002. “Popular Music and the Global City: Huayno, Chicha, and Techno-

  Cumbia in Lima.” In From Tejano to Tango, edited by Walter Aaron Clark, 217–39. New

  York: Routledge, 2002.

  Turino, Thomas. “Somos el Perú [We are Peru]: Cumbia Andina and the Children of

  Andean Migrants in Lima.” Studies in Latin American Popular Culture 9 (1990): 15–38.

  Jonathan Ritter

  Chile

  Chile is situated on the Pacific coast of South America, bordered by Argentina,

  Bolivia, and Peru. The population of Chile is over 95 percent white and mes-

  tizo, while 4 percent of the people are Mapuche Indians. As a result, Chilean

  popular music has been largely influenced by traditional and as well as foreign

  styles.

  In the 19th century, the most popular genres were associated with Creole dances

  or bailes de tierra, of which there are three types: bailes serios such as rin, contradanza, churré, vals , gavota, and cuadrillas, which were mainly performed in aristocratic gatherings; bailes de chicoteo such as zamba , fandango, and cachu-cha; and finally a third type including the genres cielito, pericón, sajuriana, perdiz,

  and campana, which mixes the characters of the two former categories. Bailes se-

  rios and bailes de chicoteo were introduced in Chile in approximately 1817 by the

  Army of the Andes.

  In the 20th century, traditional genres such as cueca , tonada, and vals were widely distributed in the 1920s and 1930s through música típica ensembles such as

  Los Cuatro Huasos, Los Huasos Quincheros, and Los Provincianos. These groups

  evoked the folklore of central Chile by dressing such as huasos (Chilean cowboys).

  Cueca, tonada, vals, and other traditional Chilean genres like canción, mapuchina,

  pericona, sirilla, refalosa, cachimbo, and trote circulated in the 1960s and 1970s,

  and develope
d in various movements such as neofolklore, nueva canción, and canto nuevo. Music from other Latin American countries, especially Argentina,

  Mexico, and Cuba, was widely circulated in Chile during the 1930s. Urban and

  rural styles such as tango , Peruvian vals, maxixe , samba , rumba , conga , guara-

  cha , balada , corrido , boleros , cumbia , marcha, and ranchera were broadcasted via radio, films and recordings. Styles originated in the United States, particularly

  foxtrot, jazz, rock, pop and fusion, exerted a strong influence in Chilean popular

  music beginning in the 1950s.

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  Parra, Violeta

  Violeta Parra (1917–1967) was a Chilean songwriter, performer, folk music

  compiler, and graphic artist. She played a key role in the resurgence of folk

  music in Latin America in the 1950s and in the subsequent development of the

  nueva canción movement. Her work was inspired by diverse folk music tra-

  ditions, achieving a great popularity through mass distribution.

  Parra became popular in the 1950s, particularly with her songs “Casamiento

  de negros” and “Qué pena siente el alma.” In 1954, she traveled to the Soviet

  Union, Germany, and Italy before moving to France, where she lived for two

  years. In 1957 she worked for the University of Concepción in Chile, where-

  upon she founded and managed the Museo de Arte Popular. Back in Paris in 1961,

  Parra continued recording and preparing art exhibitions. She performed at the

  United Nations and at UNESCO. Her paintings, arpilleras (tapestries), and wire

  sculptures were displayed at the Louvre’s Musée des Arts Decoratifs. Upon her

  return to Chile in 1965, she set up a circus tent in La Reina (a neighborhood

  in Santiago) to promote Chilean popular culture. Parra committed suicide at

  the age of 49.

  Further Reading

  Morales T., Leonidas. Violeta Parra: la última canción. Santiago de Chile: Editorial

  Cuarto Propio, 2003.

  Katia Chornik

  Nueva canción Chilena (Chilean New Song) came to light in the 1960s during

  a period of political struggle across Latin America, becoming associated with left-

  wing political activism (see Protest Song in Latin America ). The roots of nueva

  canción are found in the work of artists such as Violeta Parra and Atahualpa