three-pandero set of seguidor, segundo, and requinto (as described above), and
applied for them techniques from the conga drum. Other changes included the
elimination of the antiphonal soloist-choir structure in order to give the chorus
the leading role along the entire piece. Less commercial were the recollections
of jíbaro music by Los Pleneros de la 23 abajo, whose 10-line octosyllabic déci-
mas shifted plena from the nostalgic and pleasurable complacency into matters of
harsh social situations. Diverse routes for plena’s validity and adaptability were
taken since 1977 by artists such as Irvin García, Jorge Arce, Tony Croatto, and
Andrés Jiménez; and groups such as Atabal, Paracumbé, and Los Guayacanes de
San Antón. And once more, a period of international exposure began in the mid-
1990s, when Plena Libre entered the American Latino airwaves through their
blends of plena with world music sounds of the time. Around the time of Plena
Libre’s breakthrough, Bumbún’s “Temporal” was the main theme of an album by
Arab-Andalusian group Radio Tarifa, in 1998. More recent trends stretch plena’s
resourcefulness into more elaborate works (as is the case of the Viento de Agua
experimental ensemble, or William Cepeda’s Afro-Rican jazz ), and into rap and
reggaetón styles contained in plenas by New York-based groups Yerbabuena,
Pleneros de la 21, and Bombayó.
Along the evolutionary line from Bumbún to the present, plena has endured
formal and stylistic changes while maintaining a core set of elements, compris-
ing Spanish poetic forms of strong social or historical content that are sung to
varying styles of instrumental accompaniment on simple chords, and with a dis-
tinctive combination of danceable rhythms rooted on pan-Caribbean sources.
Perhaps the principal stream explaining these musical changes is traced along
recurring socioeconomic cycles of local unemployment, community displace-
ment, and disintegration (as it happened with the neighborhood of La Joya del
306 | Polka
Castillo), migration to major economic centers, and the reconstitution of new
communities, as it is ultimately observed in major urban centers since the 1930s.
As to this day, pleneros are known to compensate such vicissitudes with a sense
of solidarity symbolized through their adoption and readaptation of rhythms,
forms, and styles emblematic of peoples with similar issues in other parts of the
Caribbean and the world. Their ability in adjusting to mass media requirements
explains why plena constitutes a vital musical force whenever it is required,
being it in times of economic crisis, or in times of celebration. In the video “Lo
que pasó pasó” by Daddy Yankee, the sounds of plena are hardly felt, but the
visual representation of panderos in a scene attests to the powerful symbolism
this expression still propels.
Further Reading
Echevarria Alvarado, Felix. La Plena: Origen, Sentido y Derarrollo en el Folklore Puer-
torriqueño. Ponce, 1984.
Flores, Juan. “Bumbún and the Beginnings of La Plena.” Centro: Bulletin of the Centro
de Estudios Puerterriqueños 2, no. 3 (1988): 16–25.
López, Ramón. “Breve y ajorada historia de la Plena Enrojecida,” Claridad ( En Rojo
cultural section), May 10–16, 2007, 21–25.
López, Ramón. Los bembeteos de la plena puertorriquena. San Juan: Ediciones Hura-
cán, 2008.
Edgardo Díaz Díaz
Polca. See Polka .
Polka
The polka is a dance of Bohemian origin, popular in much of Latin America since it
was imported by Central European immigrants in the 19th century. It is performed
in a moderately fast tempo in binary 2/4 rhythm, often employing an inverted ana-
pest rhythm of two 16ths followed by an 8th note (short-short-long). Along with
other imported dances such as the waltz, shottische, and mazurka, the polka became a mainstay in the salon repertoire among elite social groups, especially in
those countries with strong German, Polish, and Bohemian immigrant populations.
Those countries include Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay, and Mexico. Despite the
strong European influence, much of the polka appropriation that has occurred in
Latin America has resulted in a mixture of European and national styles resulting
in a creolization of the polka. In Mexico, the polka was brought in through north-
ern Mexico where it became very popular and maintained its popularity as a social
Porro | 307
dance into the 20th century. Perhaps the most famous Latin American polka comes
from the period of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1917) with the 1916 composi-
tion “Jesusita en Chihuahua,” by Quirino Mendoza y Cortés, who also composed
“Cielito Lindo” (1859–1957). It has become a standard in the mariachi repertoire,
as well as experiencing popularity in the United States where it was marketed as
both Jesse polka and cactus polka. In the tex-mex conjunto repertoire, most of the music is based primarily on polka rhythm.
Further Reading
Peña, Manuel H. The Texas-Mexican Conjunto: History of a Working-Class Music. Aus-
tin: University of Texas Press, 1985.
George Torres
Porro
Porro is a Colombian musical genre that was the country’s most popular and impor-
tant musical expression throughout the 1940s and 1950s. The genre originated as
a folkloric rhythm from La Costa, Colombia ’ s northern Caribbean coastal region,
and in its urbanized form became the first non-Andean genre to gain national popu-
larity within Colombia. Porro’s duple meter rhythm, in which both the first and the
slightly anticipated second beats are stressed, is rhythmically similar to, and shares
a common folkloric musical antecedent with cumbia . While Colombian folklorists
posit a Colombian origin, others, mainly writers from outside Colombia, refer to it
as a local variation on either the Spanish fandango or Cuban danzón .
A number of theories regarding the genre’s provenance have emerged, all fol-
lowing similar narratives wherein the folkloric rhythm was adapted by rural mu-
nicipal wind bands, with El Carmen del Bolívar and San Pelayo being the most
widely supported potential birthplaces. These wind bands—consisting of trumpets,
clarinets, bombardinos (similar to a euphonium), bomba (bass drum), redoblante (snare), and cymbals—first became popular throughout the country in the 1840s,
playing European rhythms, including marches, waltzes, polkas, and fandangos, as
well as danzones and Colombian bambucos and pasillos at public and private functions sponsored by local elites. Speculation over the genre’s birthplace notwith-
standing, it is documented that by the beginning of the 20th century wind bands in
La Costa featured porros within their repertoires.
In the 1920s, as the emerging international recording and film industries formed
in Barranquilla and Cartagena, dance orchestras that specialized in North Ameri-
can and Cuban styles disseminated music from Cuba, Argentina, Mexico, and
the United States. These groups played mainly in clubs and hotels for upper- and
middle-class audiences and gradually began incorporating urbanized versions of
308 | Porro
costeño folkloric styles such as porro and fa
ndango alongside sones , boleros , foxtrots, and Charlestons. Orchestra members from rural backgrounds familiar with
wind band repertoires were said to be responsible for this innovation.
A watershed moment for the genre was the 1938 release of the porro “Marbella,”
by Orquesta del Caribe, composed by group director and clarinetist Lucho Ber-
múdez. The record was released on Discos Fuentes, Colombia’s first record label,
founded in Cartagena in 1934, and was a hit. While Bermúdez was neither the first
to adapt porro for dance orchestras nor the first to record porro (recordings by pia-
nist Ángel María Camacho y Cano in New York between 1929 and 1931 included
porros ), he is considered an innovator of the style, its foremost exemplar, and es-
sential to its popularization. He helped bring porro to a wider Colombian audience
through his artistic directorships at Radio Cartagena and Emisora Fuentes, and his
extensive recording. He also introduced porro to a more affluent audience by being
among the first to bring porro and other costeño rhythms into social clubs and ho-
tels in La Costa and Bogotá, Cali, and Medellín.
In Bermúdez’s hands, porro was “ se vistió de frac” (“dressed up in tails”), and
the sophisticated presentation of his orchestra and his modern, jazz -influenced ar-
rangements aided in the genre’s acceptance within elite circles, although its popular-
ity was not limited to these audiences. The orchestras of Bermúdez and others were
modeled on American big bands or Cuban conjuntos, consisting of piano, bass, drum
set, conga , maracas , large horn sections consisting of three to five saxophones (some doubling on clarinet), two or three trumpets, and in some cases one or two trombones
(or a bombardino ), and a variable number of singers. Arrangements were character-
ized by the alternation of melodic lines between the woodwinds—commonly played
in three octaves—and the brass, the prominence of the clarinet, the drum set adapting
(and increasingly standardizing and simplifying) bomba and redoblante patterns, and
a smooth vocal style. Lyrics tended toward romantic themes, rural subjects, extolling
the virtues of specific places, and imagery inspired by La Costa.
Dance orchestras that specialized in porro also played other urbanized costeño
rhythms, including cumbia , gaita, and mapalé (referred to collectively by the umbrella terms música costeña, música tropical, or even simply porro ) as well as bo-
leros , pasodobles, and a variety of Cuban rhythms. Throughout the 1940s and into the 1950s, the porro of Bermúdez and others, including Pacho Galán and Antonio
María Peñaloza, cemented its broad-based popularity through dissemination on
the radio and records, the recording industry being based in La Costa and favoring
the music of the region. In time, the genre would transcend its regional beginnings
to become an emblem of Colombian identity at both the national and international
levels. Bermúdez, and to a much lesser extent Galán, aided this perception through
touring, interacting with prominent musicians, and even recording throughout the
Americas beginning in the mid-1940s.
The 1950s was dubbed la Epoca Dorada (the golden age) of costeño music, and
the genre was such a prominent national symbol that in 1954, the first Colombian
Pregonero
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309
television broadcast was a performance by Bermúdez’s orchestra. The decade also
saw significant changes in the recording industry and consumption patterns. The
center of the recording industry shifted from La Costa to Medellín and began to uti-
lize more musicians from the area. While some, most notably Edmundo Arias, led
large dance orchestras playing porro, many groups moved away from this model.
Smaller bands utilizing a less refined sound, a distinctly simpler rhythmic esthetic
and electric instruments, such as bass, guitar and keyboards, became more com-
mon. This new sound was given the title cumbia, which would became a new um-
brella term for costeño rhythms, the label even increasingly utilized by established
musicians, including Bermúdez.
By the early 1960s, with cumbia being marketed internationally and youth mar-
kets increasingly attracted to rock ‘n’ roll, pachanga , and boogaloo, big band porro had become passé, seen as having elitist connotations. Nevertheless, both Bermú-
dez and Galán would remain active into the 1980s and their orchestras would con-
tinue after their deaths. In the 21st century, porro was still strongly associated with
the Christmas season and continued to be repackaged and resold by record compa-
nies. Additionally, it was among the rhythms that artists in the 2000s explored to
create musical hybrids of North American and Colombian genres, the most notable
example being singer Adriana Lucia’s 2008 album Porro Nuevo.
Further Reading
Abadia Morales, Guillermo. 1983. Compendio General de Folklore Colombiano, cuarta
edición. Bogotá: Biblioteca Banco Popular.
Luis Eduardo “Lucho” Bermúdez (1912–1994). Compositor Colombiano, accessed De-
cember 2, 2010, http://www.colarte.com/colarte/conspintores.asp?idartista=13151
Wade, Peter. 2000. Music, Race, and Nation: Música Tropical in Colombia. Chicago
and London: University of Chicago Press.
Ramón Versage Agudelo
Pregonero
The term pregonero is used in Latin American popular music to refer to a lead
singer or caller in a group. The term is used regularly in the genre of the son jaro-
cho from Veracruz, Mexico, and occasionally in Cuban popular music to refer to
the lead singer in a montuno section of a son cubano . In the son jarocho , the verses are often sung in some form of leader–group alternation, or call and response. It is
believed that the jarocho style of music contains strong African influences, and so
the leader–group alternation supports that idea. The leader–group alternation be-
tween the pregonero and the coro (chorus) allows the lead singer an opportunity to perform improvised versos for the entertainment of the audience while the coro
responds to the versos with a repeated refrain. Often the improvisation will take into
310 | Protest Song in Latin America
account who is in the audience, and the pregonero will craft the improvised texts
to reflect that. The term pregonero is also used in the performance of montunos in Cuban son performances. After performing the main song, the group goes into a
short repeated montuno section where the coro sings a repeated refrain in alterna-
tion with the improvised lead of the pregonero. In instrumental son performances,
the pregonero role will be taken by a lead instrument, such as saxophone, which im-
provises between statements of the coro’s refrain, as in the Charlie Parker/ Machito
performance of “Manguito Mangüe.”
Further Reading
Sheehy, Daniel, “Popular Mexican Musical Traditions,” Music in Latin American Cul-
ture: Regional Traditions, edited by John Schechter, 34–79. New York: Schirmer Books,
1999.
George Torres
Protest Song in Latin America
The protest song in Latin American popular music is a type of musical response or
commentary on a particular event, movement, and/or social or political condition
that is meant to bring awareness to the aud
ience of the event or situation. Unlike
protest songs in the United States, which are few by comparison to other parts of
the world, the protest song in Latin America has played an important part in form-
ing a collective view toward activism. Protest song examples and movements can
be found all over Latin America, but the ways in which the individual movements
are carried out are based on the particular set of social conditions of that culture,
which result in traditions that vary according to circumstances. Through, for ex-
ample, the works of artists such as Victor Jara, Silvio Rodríguez, and Manno Char-
lemagne, it is possible to see how music was used as a form of social activism that
supports, decries, or questions the sociopolitical norms of a culture, in an effort to
bring about a change among the population. In order to see the diversity of Latin
American protest song, the following discussion, which is by no means exhaustive,
examines some of the larger and more far-reaching examples of outcries and com-
mentaries in Latin American popular music.
The Mexican corrido , a narrative balladry tradition that flourished in the 19th
and early 20th centuries, used poetry and song to convey socially relevant sub-
jects to listeners. Among the many themes in corrido singing are the subject of
current events and local political situations. The corrido, like the broadsheets of
artist José Guadalupe Posada (1852–1913), became an important vehicle to publi-
cize a political cause, immortalize a leader, or conversely, to satirize or mock
targeted leaders. For a large part of the population that was unable to read, the
Protest Song in Latin America | 311
oral transmission of the corrido became a vital means of communication for
current events. The period between Mexican independence (1810–1821) and the
Mexican Revolution (1910–1917) marks the period when the genre flourished the
most, with songs from the revolution being among Mexico’s best known songs.
“La Cucaracha” (the cockroach), as a revolutionary era corrido, has many
verses that name persons and events from the revolution in hidden, but clearly
Encyclopedia of Latin American Popular Music Page 53
