Encyclopedia of Latin American Popular Music

by George Torres

ment construction, technique, and repertoire have left us a legacy of rich and var-

  ied traditions.

  Because of the many varieties of instruments, the following will only discuss

  a few of the most popular in order to give a sense of the variety of types found in

  Latin America. These local instruments may be either single strung or they can

  have sets of strings, or courses, which are intended to be fingered and plucked

  simultaneously.

  The charango comes from the mountainous regions of Ecuador, Bolivia, and

  Peru. It is one of the most characteristically Latin American-looking instruments.

  Traditionally the body (the back and sides of a guitar) is made from the shell of an

  armadillo, and so the size of the instrument will depend on the size of the animal

  shell. The instrument consists of five nylon-string courses tuned reentrantly from

  lowest to highest, g-c-e-a-e. The instrument is used in ensembles, but has also de-

  veloped a solo tradition for the performance of traditional Andean repertoire. The

  charango is played with the fingers of the right hand and has a developed system

  of rasgueado strumming.

  The tiple is the national instrument of Colombia. It is also played in some parts of Venezuela and Argentina. Its design resembles that of a standard Spanish guitar,

  but with a slightly shorter string length. There are four sets of steel, tripled strings

  tuned from lowest to highest d-g-b-d, as in the top four strings of the guitar. Along

  186 | Guitar

  with the bandola , the tiple is often used to accompany the bambuco. The instrument is played with a pick.

  The Mexican mariachi vihuela is a five-stringed guitar used in the mariachi

  ensembles, which originated in the western part of Mexico. Prior to the spread of

  mariachi music as Mexico’s national music, the vihuela did not leave the region.

  From the front view, the instrument resembles a smaller Spanish guitar. From the

  side, the instrument has a slightly rounded back that has a curved spine. The instru-

  ment is tuned from lowest to highest a-d-g-b-e, with a reentrant tuning in the first

  and second strings. It is normally strummed and thus serves a harmonic function in

  the ensemble, utilizing a sophisticated lexicon of rasgueados, or redobles.

  The standard Spanish guitar has remained a common instrument for popular

  music, and it is found all over Latin America in ensembles. It is almost always

  played with the fingers of the right hand in both harmonic and melodic contexts.

  The guitar was very important in the bolero romántico, bossa nova , vieja trova ,

  nueva trova, and nueva canción . The early tango repertoire used the guitar as the primary accompanying instrument. Many Latin American composers who write or

  have written in the classical idiom have employed the performance practice tech-

  niques from the regional variety of guitars to the standard classical repertoire. Com-

  posers and performers such as Agustín Barrios and Raul Garcia Zarate gave the

  music in their performances a regional sound by incorporating regionally derived

  techniques and sounds into their repertoire.

  The examples of guitar construction, technique, and repertoire show the great

  diversity of the use of plucked strings in Latin America. The parallel developments

  of the standard guitar and the regional varieties that were drawn from the Iberian

  prototypes show a kind of musical odyssey that instruments make take when leav-

  ing the hands of one culture and are then left to the local genius of the adopting

  culture. This has happened once again, following the advent of rock ‘n’ roll and

  rhythm and blues in the 1950s, with the electric guitar, which has found a place in

  Latin American popular music. The electric guitar has already had an influence on

  the performance of traditional instruments, as can be seen in the development of

  electric versions of tres , charango, and tiple.

  Further Reading

  Evans, Tom and Mary Anne Evans. “The Guitar in Latin America.” Guitars: Music,

  History, Construction and Players From the Renaissance to Rock, 208–17. New York: Pad-

  dington Press, 1977.

  Sheehy, Daniel, “Popular Mexican Musical Traditions.” Music in Latin American Culture:

  Regional Traditions, edited by John Schechter, 34–79. New York: Schirmer Books, 1999.

  Stover, Rico. Latin American Guitar Guide. Pacific: MO, Mel Bay Publications, 1995.

  George Torres

  Gwo ka | 187

  Guitarra. See Guitar.

  Guitarrón

  The guitarrón is a very large, fretless, six-string acoustic bass played in Mexican

  mariachi music. It has a figure eight-shaped soundbox that has a convex back panel.

  The back and sides of the guitarrón are constructed of a lightweight wood like

  cedar, while the soundboard may be made of spruce, tacote, or granadillo wood.

  Although the guitarrón resembles a guitar, it evolved from the 16th-century Span-

  ish bajo de uña. Versions of the guitarrón in the 19th century usually had four or

  five strings instead of six.

  The guitarrón produces a low, sonorous sound that does not require electronic

  amplification. It is tuned A–D–G–c–e–a, which keeps the pitch of the instrument

  in a lower range. The guitarrón strings are of a heavy gauge and are usually made

  of plastic or metal. To further increase volume and depth of sound, the musician

  uses a technique in which two strings are plucked simultaneously, either in octaves

  or unison.

  Modern Mexican mariachi groups usually consist of at least two violins, one

  or two trumpets, occasionally a diatonic harp, a Spanish guitar, a vihuela , and a guitarrón. The guitar, vihuela, and guitarrón function collaboratively as the ar-monia, meaning rhythm section. Playing together in an interlocking style, these

  three instruments provide the rhythmic and harmonic backbone for the rest of the

  instruments. Although the guitarrón may play parts of the melody, it usually does

  so to support the harmony and rhythmic structure of the piece, rather than to play

  a complete melodic line.

  Further Reading

  Aparicio, Frances R. and Candida Frances Jáquez. Musical Migrations: Transnation-

  alism and Cultural Hybridity in Latin/o America. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003.

  Erin Stapleton-Corcoran

  Gwo ka (Gwoka)

  Gwo ka refers to a kind of folkloric drum music from Guadeloupe, which was

  originally associated with léwòz performance, but later found itself appropriated by

  popular musicians as an emblem of national identity in the 1970s. The léwòz was an

  outdoor social celebration with music and dance that was originally performed after

  workers had received their pay. The music consisted of a leader group alternation

  188 | Gwo ka

  style of singing accompanied by gwo ka drums and other percussion instruments.

  These hand drums normally consist of two different-sized drums: a low-pitched

  boula, and a higher-pitched makyé. In performance, one makyé improvises over a steady holding pattern supplied by any number of boulas. There are seven essential gwo ka rhythms, six of which are in binary rhythm. After having spent most of

  its history as an object of scorn by the dominant social groups (largely because of

  the low social status of the practitioners and the nonliterate tradition from which it

  originated), gwo ka drummi
ng became an emblem for an emerging national iden-

  tity. During the late 1960s, Guy Conquette was one of the first popular musicians to

  use gwo ka as a symbol of national pride. Gérard Locquel, a jazz musician whose

  group Gwo Ka Moden recorded several albums, incorporated a method of using

  gwo ka rhythms for other instruments. The arrival of gwo ka on the international

  level was completed with the work of the super group Kassav, whose first two al-

  bums made use of gwo ka drums and their rhythms, thus bringing this African de-

  rived, indigenous Antillean music to worldwide recognition.

  Further Reading

  Guilbault, Jocelyne. Zouk: World Music in the West Indies. Chicago: University of Chi-

  cago Press, 1993.

  George Torres

  H

  Habanera

  Originally a dance called danza habanera, it later became a style of music simply

  known as habanera that appeared in Cuba at the beginning of the 19th century.

  Written in a 2/4 meter like the contradanza, the habanera has an introduction

  that precedes a couple of sections of 16 measures and 4 phrases (AABB) each.

  The first section is minor and the second one is major. The most characteristic

  musical features of the habanera are these two contrasting sections and the per-

  sistent rhythmic pattern, which the habanera took from the contradanza, the so-

  called tango rhythm (dotted 8 note–16th note–two 8 notes), a rhythmic unit that

  became well-known outside of Cuba as a habanera rhythm. The syncopated rhythm

  of the Cuban habanera was later incorporated into the various American and Eu-

  ropean musical styles that were appearing at the moment such as ragtime, Creole

  songs in Cuba, the Argentinean tango, and the flamenco tango.

  The habanera derived from the European contredance or contradanza, which

  was brought to Cuba by numerous Frenchmen immigrating from Louisiana and

  Haiti. Cubans then adapted the contradanza to match their musical taste and sen-

  sitivity. From the contradanza emerged a variety of danceable musical genres that

  flourished in the American salons including the habanera. By 1868, contradanza

  was already being incorporated into pieces by important composers such as Manuel

  Saumell (1817–1870) and Ignacio Cervantes (1847–1905). Records indicate that

  the first printed habaneras, then called danzas habaneras, appeared in Cuba in 1825.

  “El amor en el baile” is considered one of the first habaneras published in Cuba. Out

  of the contradanza and the habanera, several Cuban proper musical styles were born

  such as danzón, danzonete, danzón mambo, cha-cha-chá, and pachanga. While the habanera as a dance disappeared from Cuba in the second half of the 19th century, it still remains popular as a type of music.

  The habanera was also brought to Argentina by sailors traveling between the

  Río de la Plata and the Caribbean. It took root during the 1860s and it was gradually

  transformed into the musical style called milonga, which is present in the Argentinean

  tango. As the habanera and the milonga were absorbed by the tango the combination was given a range of different names such as habanera tangueada. One of the most

  well-known habaneras, “Tú,” by Sánchez de Fuentes appeared in Paris as a tango-ha-

  banera. It was the Cuban composer Sánchez Fuentes who, through his own habaneras,

  gave the genre an autonomy from the tango and a much more expressive freedom to

  189

  190 | Habanera

  the singing. Other well-known habanera composers include Sebastián Yradier y Sa-

  laverry (1809–1865), who was the author of the famous habaneras “La paloma” and

  “El arreglito” as well as Saint-Saen, Falla, Fauré, Sarasate, and Chabrier.

  Further Reading

  Betancur Álvarez, Fabio. Sin clave y bongo no hay son: música afrocubana y confluen-

  cias musicales de Colombia y Cuba. 2nd ed. Medellín, Colombia: Editorial Universal de

  Antioquia. Colección Interés General, 1999 (1st ed. 1993).

  Gómez García, Zoila and Victoria Eli Rodríguez. Música latinoamericana y caribeña.

  La Habana: Editorial Pueblo y Educación, 1995.

  Rivera, Jorge B. Historia del tango. Sus orígenes. Buenos Aires: Corregidor, 1976.

  Salinas Rodríguez, and José Luis. Jazz, flamenco, tango: las orillas de un ancho río.

  Madrid: Editorial Catriel S.A., 1994.

  Raquel Paraíso

  Boukman Eksperyans

  Boukman Eksperyans is a collective of musicians and dancers who play music

  that combines elements of traditional Haitian music with rock ‘n’ roll. The

  group’s numerous members include six members of the Beaubrun Lakou (ex-

  tended family group living communally). The fi rst name of the group comes from

  a Vodou priest who was a catalyst of the revolution of 1804. The group’s second

  name is the Haitian Creole equivalent of experience. The group emerged in the

  1980s when Vodou Adjae, or mizik rasin, overtook the popular Haitian style com

  pas. The rasin style is a combination of Vodou ceremonial music, folk and rock

  ‘n’ roll elements. The Boukman Eksperyans sound incorporates dance music

  with elements of Vodou, reggae, rock, and Caribbean sounds. They gained

  popularity through the island’s annual Carnival celebration. The group’s mes-

  sage is one of political resistance and, as such, they have suffered censorship on

  their island home. The group’s 1991 debut album, Vodou Adjae, was nominated

  for a Grammy. Throughout the 1990s the group released several more criti-

  cally acclaimed albums and toured the world, producing music that supports

  and uplifts the Haitian people.

  Further Reading

  Largey, Michael D. Vodou Nation: Haitian Art Music and Cultural Nationalism. Chi-

  cago: University of Chicago Press, 2006.

  David Moskowitz

  Haiti | 191

  Haiti

  The popular music from the Republic of Haiti, which forms the western portion

  of the Caribbean Island of Hispaniola, has played a unique and influential role in

  popular music from the Caribbean. Its music, like its culture, comes from a mixture

  of African and European influences. From 1492, it was a Spanish colony, until it

  was ceded to the French in 1697, which governed the country until Haitian indepen-

  dence in 1804. Because of the large sugar industry established by the French, most

  of the island’s inhabitants were slaves imported from Africa, which resulted in a

  social hierarchy of European, mixed race, and black populations. Even after inde-

  pendence, this sort of social stratification guided cultural tastes, which influenced

  the course of popular music in Haiti. Another important factor in Haiti’s musical

  diversity is the creolization that developed among European and indigenous cul-

  tures, resulting in syncretic manifestations within cultural forms of expression such

  as Kreyol (the French Creole language) and Vodou (the syncretic religion of Haiti

  that mixes West Africana and Catholic practices). Musical hybrids that developed

  through the mixing of styles define much of Haiti’s popular music evolution, as

  well as reciprocal transmissions with other countries in the Caribbean.

  After Haitian independence, there began a mixing of social groups and classes,

  for which musically, resulted in a creolization of African and European musical

&nb
sp; styles. The earliest of these was the contradanse, which was originally an English

  dance imported to Haiti via France. The contradanse flourished, in variant forms,

  throughout the Caribbean, eventually establishing strong traditions in Cuba and

  Puerto Rico, as well as Haiti. A five-note musical figure called quintolet ( cinquillo

  in the Spanish-speaking Caribbean) became a chief feature to the contradanse and

  would figure prominently in the méringue. From the mid-19th century to the mid-

  20th century, the méringue became a music and dance symbol of Haiti. The mér-

  ingue was enjoyed equally among the working classes as well as refined social

  groups among Haiti’s elite. Related to the méringue is the Martiniquan biguine,

  which was very popular in Haiti from the 1930s to the 1950s. While several vari-

  ants of biguine were popular, the moderate tempo biguine calssique was most wide-

  spread. The biguine was popular among its supporters for its use of Creole French

  in its sung texts.

  During the 1950s, biguine came under the influence of foreign repertories, in-

  cluding jazz, calypso, Haitian popular music, and Afro-Cuban music, and the bigu-

  ine would eventually become appropriated by other genres that held significant

  influence in Haiti, most notably, konpa. Konpa is a style of Haitian music that de-

  veloped in the 1950s and evolved into the 1980s through different manifestations,

  which include the genres of konpa direk, kadans rampa, and mini djaz. The genre

  would eventually become influential in the creation of zouk music. The genre de-

  rived from a type of Dominican méringue called perico ripiao or Cibaeño-style,

  192 | Haiti

  which had become extremely popular in Haiti. Very important in the development

  of konpa was Nemours Jean-Baptiste. Nemours’s altered merengue beat, which

  also included songs with Creole texts, helped to identify the new sound as utterly

  Haitian. Nemours’s ensemble instrumentation consisted of vocals, accordion, bass,

  guitar, saxophones, trumpets, tanbou (a Haitian barrel drum), and a percussion

  section. Nemours’s konpa was eventually dubbed konpa direk (direct or straight

  ahead rhythm). At roughly the same time, Weber Sicot developed his own variant