Encyclopedia of Latin American Popular Music
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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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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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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