Cuban version, in the late 19th century made a wide impact throughout the Ameri-
cas and Europe. Its name derives from contredanse, a French corruption of English
country dance. A popular court genre in France in the 18th century, contredanse
was taken by the Bourbons to Spain, where it acquired the name of contradanza,
and then to the American colonies. In 1798 in Havana there were some 50 daily
public balls, starting with a minuet and featuring several contradanzas. The con-
tradanz a was danced by men and women facing each other in two opposite rows
and led by a dance-leader. Meanwhile contredanse became popular in the French
Caribbean, where it was danced as well by blacks.
The 1791 slave rebellion in St. Domingue ( Haiti ) produced a massive migration
of Europeans, who resettled with black and mulatto servants in New Orleans and
in the Cuban eastern province of Santiago. Such migration reinforced the novelty
of the contradanza and established its mass popularity in Cuba, but was not solely
responsible for its introduction in Cuba.
110 | Contradanza
The early decades of the 19th century in Cuba saw the contradanza lose its stiff,
aristocratic character and acquire new musical and choreographic traits. Musically,
it presented two sections and had its most recognizable feature in the accompani-
ment, with the presence of an ostinato (related to the cinquillo pattern common
in Latin American music) that provided rhythmic drive and a steady syncopated
foundation.
contradanza accompanying ostinato
cinquillo isorhythm
Contradanza accompanying ostinato and a cinquillo isorhythm.
(George Torres)
Originally an instrumental style, the Cuban contradanza ( also known as danza
or contradanza criolla) would later also become a vocal form, under the name
of contradanza habanera or simply habanera . It existed in sophisticated and
popular forms practiced by both the white elite and blacks, with variable instru-
mental formats. In Havana, both bourgeois salons and poorer ballrooms provided
work for pianists and composers of contradanza. In its salon version, the genre
became a quintessential type of piano music incorporating European Romantic
influences.
The first published contradanza appeared in Cuba as a score for piano in 1803.
Popular short contradanzas for piano, together with habaneras and danzones, were written by Manuel Saumell (1817–1870), the initiator of Cuban musical nationalism and a friend of American virtuoso and composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk
(1829–1869), the champion of romantic Creole piano and himself the author of
various contradanza. Contradanza were composed by other important Cuban au-
thors such as Nicolás Ruíz Espadero (1832–1890), Ignacio Cervantes (1847–1905),
and Ernesto Lecuona (1895–1963).
The daring adoption of couple dancing and the fusion of Romantic harmony with
African syncopation in the contradanza provided a symbol of emerging Cuban na-
tionalism, and was attacked by reactionaries because of its scandalous black charac-
ter. It is perhaps ironic that the lascivious African nature detected by contemporaries
in the contradanza, and in related Cuban forms such as danzón today sound rather bland when compared to a genre such as the Cuban son , which eventually became
the national musical symbol. As a dance, the contradanza provided the basic step
subsequently found in other Cuban dances such as son, cha cha chá and salsa .
During the mid-late 19th century, the instrumental contradanza and haba-
nera spread throughout Latin America, playing a role in the genesis of seminal
Coro | 111
forms such as Argentinian milonga and tango , Brazilian maxixe , and Mexican and Puerto Rican danza. The contradanza reached the United States and Europe in the form of habaneras and eventually found its way into operas such
as Georges Bizet’s Carmen and in the work of French and Spanish composers
Camille Saint-Saëns, Emmanuel Chabrier, Claude Debussy, Maurice Ravel,
Isaac Albéniz, and Manuel de Falla. Following the oft-quoted reference about
the Spanish tinge by early jazz pianist Jelly Roll Morton, various writers have
also convincingly argued that the Cuban contradanza, especially via the work
of Gottschalk, has played an important role in the genesis of American ragtime
and then jazz.
Further Reading
Carpentier, Alejo. Music in Cuba. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001
[originally published as La música en Cuba. Habana, 1946].
Fernández, Nohema. “La Contradanza Cubana y Manuel Saumell.” Latin American
Music Review 10, no. 1 (June 1989), 116–34.
Lapique, Zoila. “Aportes Franco-Haitianos a la contradanza cubana: mitos y realidades.”
In Panorama de la música popular cubana, edited by R. Giro, 153–72. Havana: Letras
Cubanas, 1995.
Roberts, John Storm. Latin Jazz. The First of the Fusions, 1880s to Today. New York:
Schirmer, 1999.
Vincenzo Perna
Coro
Coro is both the Spanish and Portuguese word for chorus. Within the sphere of
popular music it refers to two or more singers singing together, often in alternation
with a soloist or another coro. The coro is especially popular in genres that have
their origins in West African traditions of leader–group alternations, sometimes
referred to as call and response. In such a fabric, the leader improvises verses
while the coro sings a recurring response. The coro is a common feature in the
Cuban son montuno and in the Brazilian samba . In the case of the son monutuno, the text sung by the coro provides a refrain that is in contrast to the preceding
son section where the vocalist sings complete or extended verses, often function-
ing as the narrative to the song. In this case, the coro provides a contrast of static
action when compared to the verse’s more kinetic action. A coro was also used
in the montuno sections to Latin jazz numbers, as in the Machito and Charlie
Parker combination, “Mango Mangue.” In this example the coro alternates with
Parker’s instrumental improvisations in the place where the lead singer would
normally be improvising.
112 | Corrido
Further Reading
Robbins, James. “The Cuban ‘Son’ as Form, Genre, and Symbol.” Latin American Music
Review / Revista de Música Latinoamericana 11 (Autumn–Winter) 1990: 182–200.
Rosa, José and Hector Neciosup. The History of Music From Cuba, The Caribbean,
South America and the United States. World Music Survey. Casselberry, FL: Contempo-
rary Latin Music Educators, 2008.
George Torres
Corrido
The corrido is a narrative song or folk ballad accompanied by one or more guitars
or, more recently, accordion -driven norteño groups or bandas (brass bands from Mexico ’ s northern Pacific coast). The corrido is a folk song type not primarily
associated with dance, though people may dance to corridos when performed by
dance bands, in polka, or waltz rhythm. The genre has evolved as a mestizo cul-
tural form associated with the rise of a national consciousness especially during
the early decades of the 20th century and in the context of border conflicts with
the United States. Corridos handed down on leaflets are considered an import
ant
source for the documentation of Mexico’s unofficial history. They comment not
only on political events, national affairs, and natural disasters, but also on crimes,
family feuds, horse races, romantic entanglements, immigration, and more recently
drug trafficking.
Historically, the corrido is a Mexican folk ballad that stems from the Spanish
balada , a ballad tradition that flourished in Renaissance Spain. In its poetic forms
and narrative subjects, the Mexican corrido is essentially true to its roots in Iberian
narrative poetry, although there are some non-narrative examples, such as simple
love songs or political commentaries that are also referred to as corridos. The term
corrido itself is probably a shortening of the term romance corrido, a through-sung
ballad. Its transformation into a distinct Mexican form occurred during Mexico’s
struggle for independence in the early 1800s although the formative period in the
rise of the corrido remains a matter of speculation—mainly because both the Span-
ish ballad and the Mexican corrido were essentially oral traditions that only occa-
sionally manifested themselves in print. Contradicting other corrido scholars who
believe that the corrido emerged and evolved within Mexican territory, the Texan
folklorist Américo Paredes posited the Texas-Mexican border as the birthplace
of the ballad tradition itself. In fact, in the 1850s a number of corridos began to
surface in south Texas. These early ballads depicted the cultural conflict between
the encroaching Americans who took possession of the Mexican territory in 1848
after the Mexican-American war and the Mexican farmers who had been living
there since the early 1700s. The lyrics of these early corridos addressed the deeds
Corrido
|
113
of Texas-Mexican folk heroes. One of the best examples of the border corrido is
“El Corrido de Gregorio Cortéz,” which narrates the bloody encounter between the
Mexican farmer Cortéz and an American sheriff. Cortéz’s heroic actions became
an important element in the emerging group consciousness of Texas-Mexicans.
Because the corrido’s central function is to relate a story or event of local or
national interest, corrido scholars focused mainly on the genre’s evolution and its
importance as a social and literary document. The corrido is a song with a rather
declamatory melody in either duple or triple time (polka or waltz rhythm). The
melodic phrases are repeated for each stanza; occasionally, the corrido has a re-
frain, which may be in a different rhythm. The melodies frequently have a range
of less than an octave. The short range allows the corrido to be sung at the top
of the singer’s voice, which is an essential part of the corrido style. There is a
preference for the major key; the harmony is based on the tonic, dominant, and
subdominant chords. Whereas in earlier times the corridista (balladeer) used to ac-
company himself simply on guitar, singers are nowadays accompanied by norteño
groups or full-size bandas . The corrido usually follows the literary structure of the copla , consisting of eight-syllable quatrains (or less frequently stanzas of six lines).
Rhyme, meter, and strophe structure of the corrido are quite flexible and many
compositions break away from the established patterns. This flexibility contributed
in no small part to the genre’s popularity and survival.
In oral tradition, folk tunes exist in an array of versions or variants. Yet, folk
tunes are essentially combinations of prefabricated elementary forms such as
scheme, motif, theme, and formula. The creation of new tunes is largely based on
permutations of more or less readymade elements. The corridos ’ literary devices
are: an opening statement of date and place; an introductory reference to the singing
of the corrido; a reference to the singer, the audience, or the song; dramatic speech
events; journeys; certain words, exclamations, proverbial expressions, metaphors,
and allegories; a bird messenger; a farewell, and so forth.
Although the corrido text is extremely detailed and abounds in dates and names,
its purpose is not to convey news, as often believed. Rather, the corrido depends on
a prior transmission of news. Its goal is to interpret, celebrate, and ultimately dignify
events already thoroughly familiar to the corrido audience or community. In many
ways, the corridos were the history book of the illiterate, providing an intriguing folk
counterpoint to Mexico’s official history. In contrast to the emotional and bel canto
style of ranchera (Mexican country song) singers, the corridista uses a deadpan language and performance style. Even the most melodramatic incidents are described
in this matter-of-fact style. Although the language employed in corridos is mostly
simple and direct, the meanings of the texts are difficult for outsiders to understand.
Not only do they feature the everyday language of the local rancheros (farmers,
country people) or, in the more recent corridos, the drug traffickers, they are also
full of double entendres and allusions to local events, places, and individuals.
114 | Corrido
Corrido narratives are usually in third-person discourse (with commercial corridos
related to the world of drug traffickers being an exception). Because Mexican ballads
are commonly written by male authors, they display mostly masculine-oriented themes
and a strongly patriarchal ideology. Like the epic romancero of 16th-century Spain,
which depicted bold and reckless young men, the Mexican corrido extols the heroic
deeds of male protagonists. Women usually play secondary roles in the narratives.
Some corrido scholars limit the production of the true corrido to the period from
1880 to 1930. According to the Mexican musicologist Vicente Mendoza, after that
period, the corrido lost its authentic folk character, its freshness, and “spontaneity
that emanated from the pen of mediocre writers,” and it became “cultured, artificial,
and often false.” Thus, he concluded that everything points to the decadence and
the near death of this genuine folk genre. Contemporary corrido scholars disagree
with this view as many newly composed corridos still fit the classic heroic corrid o
style, using the traditional corrido language, the typical speech event dialogues, a
stylized vocabulary of preset formulas, and plenty of references to local men and
places. Moreover, throughout northern Mexico and along the Pacific coast, the
corrido remains a vital component of rural culture with an intimate connection to
people’s daily lives. Here, like in earlier times, the primary medium for disseminat-
ing corridos is live performance.
The alleged demise of the corrido, in fact, has much to do with the changing
process of transmission that began after the revolution and that turned a face-to-
face transmitted folk genre into a product of popular culture. When the emerging
recording industry began to take an interest in the corrido in the late 1920s, the long
story ballads had to fit on the 78-rpm disk ( corridos often started on side A and con-
tinued on side B). The massive commercial exploitation of the corrido reduced the
narratives to the three-minute format of popular songs. However, with the spread
&n
bsp; of industrialization and urbanization, the recorded radio performance has become a
major factor in keeping this musical tradition alive. In northern Mexico and along
the Mexican-American border and the American Southwest, the long-story ballad
tradition still goes strong, although, as some corrido scholars argue, not as much
as a living tradition but as a preservation of the old repertory.
Further Reading
Herrera-Sobek, María. “The Theme of Drug Smuggling in the Mexican Corrido.” Re-
vista Chicano-Riqueña 7, no. 4 (1979): 49–61.
McDowell, John H. Poetry and Violence: The Ballad Tradition of Mexico’s Costa Chica.
Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2000.
Mendoza, Vicente T. El Corrido Mexicano: Antología, Introducción y Notas. Mexico
City: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1954.
Nicolopulos, James. “The Heroic Corrido: A Premature Obituary?” Aztlán 22, no. 1
(1997): 115–38.
Costa
Rica
|
115
Paredes, Américo. “ With His Pistol in His Hand”: A Border Ballad and Its Hero. Aus-
tin: University of Texas Press, 1958.
Helena Simonett
Costa Rica
Costa Rica is a Central American country with a population comprised largely
of the descendants of European immigrants. The largest ethnic minorities in
Costa Rica are African (2% of the four million inhabitants) and American In-
dian (1% of the total population). While the Hispanic influence on Costa Rican
music is demonstrated through parallels, thirds, melodies, and Western harmo-
nies, the rhythmic structures and many of the instruments are derived from Af-
rican traditions.
Costa Rican music has much in common with romances or ballads, and cop-
las , from Spain, generating related styles such as retahila and bomba , popular in the Guanacaste area, as well as the rest of the country. The Guanacaste province is
widely considered to have produced the most influential folk music in the country.
The African population is concentrated in the Limón area, in southeastern Costa
Rica along the Atlantic coast, while in the Valle Central area, containing the capital
of San José, romances remains popular.
Two types of the marimba are commonly found in Costa Rica, the chromatic and
Encyclopedia of Latin American Popular Music Page 22
