Encyclopedia of Latin American Popular Music

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Encyclopedia of Latin American Popular Music Page 23

by George Torres


  the diatonic marimba. The marimba grande is considered a national symbol asso-

  ciated with the Guanacaste region. The diatonic marimba simple, which has 30–42

  wooden keys, was brought into Costa Rica in the 18th century, while the chromatic

  marimba grande, a national symbol of Costa Rica, has 78 keys. Other important

  instruments include the Spanish guitar and the mandolina in rondalla ensembles.

  In music from Guanacaste, singers frequently insert coplas into a song or dance

  after exclaiming bomba to indicate the need for a musical break for the copla. The

  quatrains themselves became known as bombas, which are interspersed within the

  punto guanacasteco, a couple dance.

  Two of the most well-known traditional music styles include the parrandera and

  the pasillo . Parrandera comes from the word parranda, meaning party music, of a fast and joyful nature, which can be instrumental or dance music and is sometimes

  called punto or son . Different types of ensembles may play parrandera, varying from a marimba, guitars, and bass drum and cymbals, to small brass wind bands

  called cimarronas. The pasillo is a type of waltz comparable to the Colombian form

  of the same name, whose treatment differs significantly by region.

  In the center of Costa Rica, slow vocal and instrumental forms are popular,

  played in 3/4 meter accompanied by guitars, but in the Guanacaste province, in the

  116 | Costa Rica

  northwestern region, fast instrumental versions are more prevalent. The tambito

  rhythm remains popular in the Valle Central area, in 6/8 and sharing the hemiola

  characteristics of parrandera.

  Among the Afro-Caribbean population, calypso and Carnival music remain in-

  fluential traditions. Calypso, originally imported from Trinidad and popular in the

  1950s and 1960s, currently enjoys renewed interest due to the popularity of reggae

  and other Caribbean sounds. The cuadrilla, an English square dance, was brought

  to Limón, but declined in popularity until recently, as folklore revival groups now

  perform the dance. The Carnaval de Limón is based on Panama’s carnaval de Colón

  (Christopher Columbus’s Carnival), and centers on a major parade of comparsas

  (dancing groups and percussion ensembles).

  Costa Rican music has been heavily influenced by European genres such as

  the fandango, jota (Aragon), paso doble, polka, as well as other styles includ-

  ing the tango , bolero , mariachi, and guitar trío . Popular music in the first half of the 20th century was dominated by the bolero and tango, as well as other

  international styles. Local bands began to emulate international styles such as

  rock, rap, and jazz, which are popular among the younger generation. Carib-

  bean and Latin American genres focused on dance such as salsa , merengue ,

  cumbia , reggae , calypso, and soca also remain popular in Costa Rica with a somewhat older audience. Many working-class individuals also enjoy Mexican

  genres like rancheros, corridos , and norteños , as well as Colombian vallenatos

  and cumbias, while the upper and middle class tend to prefer the Spanish

  pasodoble.

  Dance clubs, or salones de baile, in Costa Rica frequently host live bands that

  play bolero pirateado and merengue, in addition to other popular styles, although

  many young people go to discotecas playing rock and techno. Revival groups have

  been gaining support since the 1980s, bringing back criollo and mestizo music, to

  combine it with popular dance rhythms like bolero, cumbia, and salsa.

  Further Reading

  Cervantes Gamboa, Laura. “Información básica acerca de la música tradicional indígena

  de Costa Rica.” Kañina 19, no. 1 (1995): 155–73.

  Garfias, Robert. “The Marimba of Mexico and Central America.” Latin American Music

  Review / Revista de Música Latinoamericana 4, no. 2 (1983): 203–28.

  Zeller, Bernal Flores, and Laura Cervantes Gamboa: “Costa Rica.” In The New Grove

  Dictionary of Music and Musicians, edited by S. Sadie and J. Tyrrell. London: Macmillan,

  2001, volume 6, pp. 528–33.

  Caitlin Lowery

  Cowbell. See Cencerro.

  Cuarteto

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  117

  Cuarteto (Argentina)

  Cuarteto is a popular dance music style from Córdoba, Argentina. Its most

  distinguishing musical feature is a characteristic rhythmic pattern played on

  the piano or electronic keyboard and bass, which is onomatopoetically called

  tunga-tunga.

  Cuarteto lyrics are frequently about romantic love, or about the pleasures of

  cuarteto music and dancing itself. Cuarteto has enjoyed several decades of enor-

  mous popularity in Córdoba and the surrounding provinces, but has yet to achieve

  widespread diffusion or acceptance in the capital or internationally. Cuarteto fans

  are generally in the working class and even in Córdoba the music and its audience

  remain quite stigmatized among the middle and upper classes.

  Cuarteto, which means quartet in Spanish, gets its name from the Cuarteto

  Leo, the group that established the style in 1943. The group was named after its

  pianist, Leonor Marzano, who is credited with inventing the characteristic tunga-

  tunga pattern of accompaniment. He also included double bass, accordion, and

  violin, accompanying a singer. The group rose to prominence in Córdoba during

  a period in which that city experienced a massive internal migration of workers

  drawn by the burgeoning automobile industry. This new population of margin-

  alized, working-class residents began to frequent dance halls on the outskirts of

  the city, and cuarteto music became the musical style most closely associated

  with them.

  Cuarteto musicians have been strongly influenced by foreign dance music styles

  such as cumbia and merengue, starting in the 1960s. This influence is visible in changing instrumentation; since the mid-1980s the violin has been an increasingly

  rare presence in cuarteto ensembles, while percussion sections have expanded to

  include congas, the Dominican tambora , and metal güira , as well as timbals , and drum sets. Some groups have included brass sections or other wind instruments

  such as saxophone, while others have made use of digital samplers to allow key-

  board players to imitate these timbres.

  This increasing diversity of stylistic influences has led some cuarteto artists to

  divide their sets into two different subgenres: tropical, up-tempo tunes showing

  a stronger cumbia and merengue influence, and moderno, which are slower, and

  more influenced by jazz and rock as well as international romantic Latin American

  styles such as pop bolero. Moderno settings typically use drum set rather than the

  battery of Latin percussion instruments. Some artists have resisted these stylistic

  changes, and promote a more traditional style called cuarteto cuarteto.

  Cuarteto groups are frequently contracted to perform for special occasions

  such as patron saint days and political rallies, but most cuarteto groups main-

  tain a very active performing schedule in and around Córdoba at a regular set of

  118 | Cuatro

  large dance halls dedicated exclusively to this activity. Groups must also main-

  tain a rigorous recording schedule if they are to reach and retain popularity; many

  groups record an average of two CDs each year. Groups will borrow from each


  others’ repertoire in live performance but only record their own original mate-

  rial, or original adaptations of tunes drawn from an international repertoire of

  non- cuarteto styles.

  The best-known cuarteto artist is singer, bandleader and composer Carlos “La

  Mona” Jiménez, who has been performing and recording as a solo artist since leav-

  ing the Cuarteto de Oro in 1984. He remains enormously popular with cuarteto

  audiences not only for continuing to innovate musically (he has at times included

  in his act such rarities as the piccolo and African dance) but for writing socially

  conscious lyrics and reaching out to the economically disadvantaged by collecting

  clothing and food and donating cars and houses to his fans. Cuarteto fans in Cór-

  doba see Jiménez as the personification of a quintessentially local popular identity.

  His performances are peppered with references to specific neighborhoods, both

  through lyrics and through an elaborate series of hand signals that are traded back

  and forth with audience members.

  Other important performers have included the band Chébere, also founded in

  1984 and characterized by a particular emphasis on a more elaborate tropical style,

  and the solo singer Rodrigo Bueno, who is most often known only by his first

  name or his nickname, “El Potro” (“The colt”). Rodrigo rose to popularity in the

  late 1990s, attaining a degree of success among middle-class audiences, even in

  the national capital, that remains unique among cuarteto artists. His career was cut

  short when he died in a car crash in June 2000 when he was 27.

  Further Reading

  Florine, Jane. “ Cuarteto: Dance-Hall Entertainment or People’s Music?” Latin Ameri-

  can Music Review 19, no. 1 (Spring/Summer 1998): 31–46.

  Florine, Jane. Cuarteto Music and Dancing from Argentina: In Search of the Tunga-

  Tunga in Córdoba. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2001.

  Michael O’Brien

  Cuatro

  The term cuatro is used for any of the several varieties of Latin American guitar -

  type instruments. The word cuatro means four in Spanish, and while it may refer

  to the number of strings or courses (sets of doubled strings to be stopped by the

  player simultaneously), some cuatros have more than four courses. The two most

  common types are the four-string Venezuelan cuatro and the five-course Puerto

  Rican cuatro.

  Cuatro

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  119

  The Venezuelan cuatro is the national instrument of Venezuela, and played

  throughout the country in both rural and urban areas. It uses a reentrant tuning

  for its four nylon strings; from the fourth to the first string, it is tuned A-D-F#-B,

  with the B sounding an octave lower than usual. It is used mostly as an ac-

  companying instrument in ensemble music, playing simple chords and using a

  sophisticated rasgueado technique for the right hand. Since the 1930s, a con-

  cert tradition, led by Fredy Reyna (1917–2001), has emerged that uses a more

  sophisticated right-hand technique to pluck individual notes as well as strum

  chords. Variants of the Venezuelan cuatro can be found in other parts of the

  Caribbean.

  The Puerto Rican cuatro is the national instrument of Puerto Rico as well. It

  appears to have derived from the 16th century, Renaissance vihuela or four-course

  Spanish guitar, as it originally had four courses, with a fifth course added later.

  The tuning of the instrument’s steel-strung courses, from lowest to highest is B-E-

  A-D-G, with the two lowest courses (B and E) tuned in octaves. The cuatro was

  originally played as an accompanying instrument in jibaro music, playing mostly

  a melodic function. Since the 1920s a virtuoso tradition began to emerge through

  the efforts of players such as Ladislao Martínez (1898–1979), Tomas “Maso” Ri-

  vera, and Yomo Toro (b. 1933). Nowadays, the Puerto Rican cuatro comes in an

  electrified model that one hears in more urban contemporary genres such as salsa.

  Further Reading

  Kuss, Malena. “Puerto Rico.” In Music in Latin America and the Caribbean: An Ency-

  clopedic History, 151–88. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2004.

  George Torres

  Fernandez, Joseito

  José “Joseito” Fernández Diaz (1908–1975) was a Cuban composer, singer, and

  bandleader. He is remembered for his song “Guantanamera,” which became

  internationally famous after its performance by groups such as The Sandpipers

  and Pete Seeger. Fernandez was raised in Havana, Cuba, and, as a teen, per-

  formed as a singer in several groups, including Juventud Habanera and Los Dioses

  de Amor. In 1928 he wrote the song “Guantanamera” based on a preexisting

  melody by tres player Herminio “El Diablo” Wilson. The song was a vehicle

  for Fernandez’s poetic extemporization, although the song today is known

  through the words of Jose Marti, which were added to the song in the 1950s

  120 | Cuba

  by the Spanish composer Julián Orbón. The newly texted version became a

  worldwide success, and in spite of the improvisatory origins of the song, the

  Fernandez-Martí interpretation remains the unoffi cial version of the song in

  recordings as well as the published sheet music. According to Fernandez’s

  daughter, the composer was so proud of his song being an emblem of Cuban

  nationality, that he never wanted to receive compensation for the song.

  Further Reading

  Leymarie, Isabel. Cuban Fire: The Story of Salsa and Latin Jazz. New York: Con-

  tinuum, 2002.

  George Torres

  Cuba

  The Republic of Cuba is the largest country in the Caribbean with an estimated

  population of more than 11 million. The total area of Cuba is 110,860 sq km and it

  is comprised of more than 1,600 keys, islands, and islets. The main island, Cuba,

  is the largest (105,007 sq km) and most westerly in the Antilles. Cuba is situated at

  the entrance to the Gulf of Mexico, which is to the north and northwest; to the north

  and northeast is the Atlantic Ocean; to the south and southeast is the Caribbean Sea.

  Cuba’s immediate neighbors include: Mexico to the west; Jamaica and the Cayman

  Islands (UK) to the south; Haiti to the east; the Florida Keys, the Bahamas, and

  the Turks and Caicos Islands (UK) to the north and northeast. Like many of these

  other nations in the Caribbean, the popular music of Cuba has been influenced by

  African, indigenous, and European musics.

  Cultural Contact

  Prior to the arrival of Columbus (October 28, 1492), the island of Cuba was inhab-

  ited by the Guanahatabey and Arawak Amerindian groups. The Arawak subgroups,

  Siboney and Taino, subsisted in close proximity on the island, having displaced the

  Guanahatabey to the western portion of the island, though colonial accounts indi-

  cate that the Taino were predominant. Little is actually known of these indigenous

  groups in Cuba beyond the accounts of Spanish colonial agents. The island of Cuba

  was claimed for the Spanish crown in 1511 when Diego Velázquez disembarked

  at Baracoa, Cuba (on the northeast coast), with 300 men, and though the invasion

  force met with resistance from the Arawak (first led by Hatuey), the Spanish force

 
Cuba | 121

  soon established itself as a presence on the island. Though the collective demise

  of the indigenous groups was rather swift in the years following the first invasion,

  succumbing to disease, slaughter, and often suicide as an alternative to Spanish op-

  pression, the vestiges of Cuba’s Amerindian people were neither short-lived, nor

  insignificant to the historical record.

  The rapid decline of the indigenous populations did, however, lead to the impor-

  tation of African slaves, beginning in 1526, as the new labor force in the relatively

  unsuccessful mining efforts on the island. Due to its geography, Cuba came to be

  most valued as a port for the Spanish fleet, providing repairs and food. It was the lat-

  ter that led to the earliest developments in Spanish agriculture on the island. Cuba’s

  plantation economy was established relatively late in its colonial period, and farm-

  ing was, up to the economic transformations of the late 18th century, essentially

  a subsistence activity, often with European/ Creole landowners working alongside

  African slave labor. Though a 10-month British occupation (1762–1763) of Havana

  brought with it the introduction of a vigorous international trade culture, it was not

  until the economic reforms of the Bourbon monarchy after 1789 that shipbuilding

  in Havana and the expansion of the sugar industry were permitted, the latter neces-

  sitating the liberalization of earlier restrictions on the trans-Atlantic slave trade. It

  was, however, the slave uprisings in St. Domingue (later named Haiti), beginning

  in 1791 and eventually leading to Haitian independence (1804) that markedly trans-

  formed the island economy.

  The Colony in Transition: Sugar, Labor, and Independence

  The social unrest that ensued from the slave uprisings in St. Domingue, and the at-

  tendant decline of the sugar production, effected a rise in sugar prices worldwide

  and an exodus of sugar-growing expertise into Cuba, particularly the landowning

  and administrative elite. Given that the financial success of the sugar industry in

  St. Domingue had been predicated on an enormous African slave labor force, these

  conditions were replicated in the designs of the newly established sugar industry

 

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