chief that each partner carries and uses to enact flirtatious gestures. Unlike many
folkloric dances of the region, the zamba does not have a fixed choreography; in-
stead, dancers are free to improvise, drawing from a number of established move-
ments in a spontaneous fashion.
Musically, the zamba shares with the other zamacueca derivatives a bimetric
rhythmic organization. That is, triple meter (3/4) and compound duple meter (6/8)
are simultaneously present. Modern zambas are generally slower than other mem-
bers of the zamacueca family, with the exception of the zamba carpera, or tent
zamba, a lively dance associated primarily with Carnival festivities.
The earliest references to zamba as a dance distinct from the zamacueca date
to the 1820s in Chile, and suggest that it was popularly known and danced by that
name as early as 1813. Nonetheless, according to Argentine folklorist Carlos Vega,
until the mid-19th century there was no discernible musical or choreographic dif-
ference between the cueca and zamba in the region, and in fact requesting the two
genres one after another as if there was a difference became a popular joke.
By the mid-19th century, however, musicians in the Santiago del Estero and
Tucumán regions of Argentina began to slow the dance down. This trend be-
came even more exaggerated in the 1930s, when guitarist-composer Atahualpa
Yupanqui (1908–1992) recorded a series of zambas that were noticeably slower,
and composed not for dancing. Many of these pieces, such as “Viene clareando,”
“Zamba del grillo,” and “Luna tucumana,” became well-known standards recorded
by succeeding generations of folk and popular musicians in Argentina, including
Zapateo
|
449
notable recordings by Mercedes Sosa (b. 1935). In the mass-mediated folklore
boom that followed, the zamba became, along with the chacarera , one of the most widely performed and recorded folkloric genres at the national level. Besides Yupanqui, important composers who have contributed well-known zambas during the
mid-20th century include Los Hermanos Ábalos, Gustavo “Cuchi” Leguizamón
(1917–2000), Eduardo Falú (b. 1923), and Juan Falú (b. 1948); landmark perform-
ing and recording artists whose recordings led in part to these composers’ popu-
larity have included the vocal groups Los Fronterizos, Los Chalchaleros, Horacio
Guarany (b. 1925), Mercedes Sosa, and in many cases the composers themselves.
Further Reading
Aretz, Isabel. El folklore musical argentino, 183–92. Buenos Aires: Ricordi, 1952.
Pérez Bugallo, Rubén. “Zamacueca;” “Zamba.” Diccionario de la música española e
hispanoamericana . Ed. Emilio Casares Rodicio, 1082–83. Madrid: Sociedad General de
Autores y Editores, 2002.
Vega, Carlos. La zamacueca (cueca, zamba, chilena, marinera). La zamba antigua. Bue-
nos Aires: Editorial Julio Korn. 1952.
Michael O’Brien
Zampoña. See Siku .
Zapateado. See Zapateo .
Zapateo
Zapateo or zapateado literally means footwork, the alternating of rhythmical pat-
terns of feet movement and stampings of the floor. Lively rhythm punctuation is
attained by striking the dancer’s shoes against a hard wooden surface or against
the floor. The zapateado was transplanted to the Americas during colonial times
from the different traditions of flamenco dancing. It is the core in the Mexican
sones ’ dance and it has different styles according to the type of son in which it is used. Dancers use hard shoes to obtain the sound of the tapping, which functions
as another percussion instrument within the ensemble. Generally, zapateado takes
place over a tarima or wooden platform that accentuates the percussive sounds of
the dance.
The zapateado takes place during the instrumental sections in Mexican sones
leaving the sung verses to be danced with a valseado, slower pace steps that allow
the verses to be heard and the dancers to take a break from the intense zapateado. It
incorporates specific steps for each son tradition. In Calentano sones from the state
450 | Zarzuela
of Guerrero, those steps are called pespunteo, banqueado, and redoble or repique-
teo. The zapateo, vigorous in nature, incorporates highly rhythmic ornaments that
can be done with one or both feet.
Further Reading
Stanford, E. Thomas. “The Mexican Son.” Yearbook of the International Folk Music
Council 4 (1972): 66–86.
Raquel Paraíso
Zarzuela
The zarzuela, a category of Spanish play with music and dance, arrived in Latin
America during the conquest where it was immediately embraced and subsequently
adapted. As a signature national genre with a 500-year history, the zarzuela devel-
oped a repertory and practice that straddled the worlds of classical and popular
music. Operatically conceived arias, mostly for solo and duo singers, adorn plays
with spoken dialogue. Most zarzuelas depend on ensemble interaction highlighted
by key musical scenes that feature chorus and popular dances accompanied by a
small orchestra or instrumental ensemble. In Latin America, and elsewhere in the
Iberian diaspora, this semiclassic, and widely popular, genre provided a rich source
of appealing music, and an ideal model for new composition and performance ad-
dressing local circumstances and identities.
American variants date from the 18th century. In 1701 in Lima, the Spanish-born
Peruvian composer Tomás Torrejón y Velasco wrote new music for Calderón de la
Barca’s courtly zarzuela La Purpura de la Rosa. The famous Mexican-born chapel-
master Manuel de Sumaya composed La Parténope, credited as one of the first op-
eras of New Spain, 11 years later. The zarzuela inspired shorter popular Spanish
song dramas such as the tonadilla and sainete in the 1770s which were better suited
for the growing audiences at theaters and salons and which also inspired composers
in the Americas to create musical theater reflecting local customs. Argentine com-
posers, for example, created short music dramas addressing the life of the guacho
cowboys of the pampas (prairies) called sainetes gauchescos.
Parallel with the development of local approaches in the New World, the Span-
ish zarzuela repertory blossomed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, result-
ing in thousands of works, a hundred or so becoming classics. Professional touring
companies from Spain brought zarzuelas that would become favorites with Latin
American performers and with Spanish-speaking audiences throughout the Ameri-
cas. Tunes and spoken lines from these dramas entered the popular vocabulary and
even today Latin Americans born before 1960 might ask in everyday conversation
“ Dónde vás con manton de Manila? ” (“Where are you going with that shawl from
Zarzuela
|
451
Manila?”) quoting a line from La Verbena de la Paloma by Tomás Bretón (1894),
perhaps the most famous of all Spanish zarzuelas, as a means of inquiring, “Where
are you going, looking so fine?”
While the zarzuela was developed widely in the Americas, it found a special
place in the hearts of Cubans. Cuban composers such as Ernesto Lecuona (1896–
1963), Gonzalo Roig (1890–1970), Jorge Anckerman (1877–1941), and Eliseo
Grenet (1863–1950) borrowed the structure of the Spanish zarzuela but created
distinctively Cuban music, adding Afro-Cuban instruments to the orchestra and set-
ting the melodies to the rhythms of the habanera, contradanza, danzón, conga and
rumba . The stories of these zarzuelas cubanas also reflected local concerns. Roig’s Cecilia Valdes, for example, is a musical setting of the famous 1882 novel of the
same name by Cirilo Villaverde. Its tragic tale of a mulatta, mixed race woman, who
bears a child with an aristocratic lover that she does not realize is her half brother,
exemplifies the treatment of race relations, miscegenation, and class divisions that
made the zarzuela so compelling to audiences in the emerging Cuban republic.
Only a few contemporary composers create new zarzuelas. A notable example
is Puerto-Rican-born composer Manuel B. Gonzalez. His Los Jíbaros Progresistas
(1981), based on the story by Ramón Méndea Quiñones, is still performed in New
York City where the composer resides. Although zarzuela is no longer as popular
as it was in previous centuries, the influence of the genre persists in Latin Ameri-
can popular music. Many individual songs, now performed in completely differ-
ent styles, live on in the repertories of contemporary popular performers, although
many people may no longer recall their original titles or provenance. The song “El
Condor Pasa,” popularized in the United States by Simon and Garfunkel and per-
formed as an Andean folksong by singers and instrumentalists around the world, is
the title song from the 1913 zarzuela by Peruvian composer Daniel Alomía Robles.
Similarly the popular mariachi show number colloquially known as “Las Bodas”
comes from the overture of the zarzuela La Boda de Luis Alonso composed in 1897
by Spaniard Gerónimo Giménez.
Further Reading
Stein, Louis. Songs of Mortals, Dialogues of the Gods: Music and Theatre in Seventeenth-
Century Spain. Oxford: Clarendon, 1993.
Sturman, Janet. Zaruzela: Spanish Operetta, American Stage. Urbana and Chicago: Uni-
versity of Illinois Press, 2000.
Thomas, Susan. Cuban Zarzuela: Performing Race and Gender on Havana’s Lyric
Stage. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008.
Webber, Christopher. The Zarzuela Companion. Lanham, MD: Scarecrow Press, 2002.
Webber, Christopher. Zarzuela.net, Online September 2007, www.zarzuela.net.
Janet L. Sturman
452 | Zouk
Zouk
Zouk is a style of popular music that emerged in the French Caribbean in the 1980s.
The term zouk originated in Martinique where it is a generic term for dance
party or festival. However, zouk music is a transnational genre that blends aspects
of popular dance music from throughout the Caribbean and other parts of the African
diaspora. It is the first style of popular music sung in Creole to be successful in-
ternationally. Its popularity is strongest in the islands of Martinique, Guadeloupe,
St. Lucia, and Dominica, but the genres that have influenced zouk musicians extend
beyond these four islands to include other parts of the French- and English-speaking
Caribbean, as well as the African subcontinent. Over the past three decades, zouk
has spread to many parts of the world, particularly Quebec and France, where there
are large communities of Antillean émigrés, as well as various countries in South
America, Africa, and Asia.
The development of zouk as a musical genre is attributed to the brothers Pierre-
Edouard Décimus and Georges Décimus, and Jacob F. Desvarieux, respected
musicians from Guadeloupe who had played in Paris throughout the 1970s. At
the time, foreign musical styles had come to dominate in their home country,
overshadowing local forms such as biguine and mazouk . These foreign styles included Haitian cadence-rampa and compas direct (brought by Haitian refugees
fleeing political unrest in their home country), cadence-lypso from Dominica,
as well as salsa and other popular dance styles from the Spanish Caribbean, and
calypso and soca from Trinidad and Tobago. With the intent of creating a mod-
ernized version of the Carnival music of Guadeloupe, the Décimus brothers and
Desvarieux joined with other Parisian studio musicians to create the band Kas-
sav’ in 1979. Experimenting with various combinations of popular styles, incor-
porating rhythms from Guadeloupean gwo ka drumming, and most importantly,
using Creole lyrics, Kassav’ eventually created a signature sound that could be
understood by an international audience yet still sound specifically Antillean. In
1984, their song “Zouk-La Sé Sèl Médikaman Nou Ni” (“Zouk Is the Only Med-
icine We Have”) became a worldwide hit, stirring audiences in the Caribbean,
Europe, and Africa, and earning Kassav’ the first Disque d’Or to be awarded to
an Antillean group.
Zouk quickly became a dominant form of party music in the French Antilles and
won over non-Antillean audiences in France and Quebec. Established bands were
quick to take advantage of the new sound. Expérience 7 from Guadeloupe hired
Joëlle Ursull, Christiane Obydol, and Dominique Zorobabe to front their band and
record under the name Zouk Machine. Malavoi from Martinique, a string-based
dance band that specialized in a range of styles from Martinican biguine and qua-
drille to rumba , bossa nova, and merengue , quickly added zouk to their repertoire.
Zouk | 453
In her book-length study of zouk music, Jocelyne Guilbault estimates that more than
130 zouk albums were made annually in the Antilles from 1986 to 1989, launching
the careers of new singers such as Joelle Ursuli, Edith Lefel, and Tanya St. Val, as
well as redefining older ones such as Frankie Vincent and Ralph Thamar as zouk
artists.
As Guilbault notes, the original rhythm of zouk was played at a fast tempo,
(between 120 and 145 beats per minute), with a driving percussive line and horn
section playing at full volume. Eventually, a style called zouk -love emerged,
featuring slower tempos (95–100 beats per minute), and a smoother and qui-
eter accompaniment. Zouk lyrics may address a wide range of topics. The joie
de vivre of dancing at Carnival and other holidays is a popular topic, as is ro-
mantic love and related feelings and sensations. Other songs express respect for
ancestors, profess national pride, explore the African roots of Antillean culture,
or address issues of world interest such as HIV/AIDS. In general, songwriters
tend to avoid topics that are controversial or that express concerns that cannot
be understood beyond their local communities, and this has facilitated the ap-
peal of zouk worldwide.
The rhythmic vitality of zouk, and the sensual choreography that it accompanies,
has made it a popular style of dance music in many parts of the world. Zouk was par-
ticularly popular in the Francophone and Lusophone countries of West and Central
Africa, and today it continues to be an important musical influence in Angola and
Cape Verde on the musical genres kizomba and cola-zouk respectively. The zouk-
lambada emerged in the late 1980s, and over time various dance teachers in Brazil<
br />
developed regional styles based on the choreography of zouk, although in practice
dancers may move to any music that has the proper syncopation and tempo. Dance
crews and DJs have taken zouk, or at least the name and the choreography, to nearly
every part of Western and Eastern Europe as well as Israel, Australia, Japan, and
Singapore. Generally, zouk has joined the lexicon of electronic dance music, and
the name zouk seems to have enough currency to generate interest among a very
varied community of clubbers worldwide.
Meanwhile, Antillean musicians have created new innovations on the zouk
sound. Current trends include Zouk R&B or Zouk Nouvelle Génération, a varia-
tion on zouk -love that incorporates aspects of rhythm and blues, and is expressed
by Guadeloupean artists such as Slaï (Patrice Sylvestre), Thierry Cham, and Jane
Fostin (who replaced Joelle Ursull in Zouk Machine in 1988). There are also fu-
sions of dancehall reggae and zouk called ragga-zouk or simply ragga. Lord Kos-sity (Thierry Moutoussamy) from Martinique and Colonel Reyel (Rémy Ranguin)
from Guadeloupe are current purveyors of this style. Although it has gone through
many changes, zouk remains an important influence on French Caribbean music
both at home and abroad.
454 | Zouk
Further Reading
Berrian, Brenda. Awakening Spaces: French Caribbean Popular Songs, Music, and Cul-
ture. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.
Guilbault, Jocelyne with Gage Averill, Édouard Benoit, and Gregory Rabes. Zouk: World
Music in the West Indies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1993.
Manuel, Peter. Caribbean Currents: Caribbean Music from Rumba to Reggae. Revised
and expanded edition. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006.
Hope Smith
Bibliography
Websites
All Music Guide, Latin America, accessed June 9, 2012, http://www.allmusic.com/
explore/genre/latin-d4300
Caribbean Radio Stations, accessed June 9, 2012, http://www.caribbeannews.com/
radio.html
Center for Music of the Americas, Florida State University, accessed June 9, 2012,
http://www.music.fsu.edu/Music-Research-Centers/Center-for-Music-of-the-Americas
Encyclopedia of Latin American Popular Music Page 76
