Encyclopedia of Latin American Popular Music
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bandola oriental, mandolin or accordion, caja, guitar, or marimba . It also has a 6/8 meter, with a fixed harmonic pattern in a major key. Melodies are improvised
on the main instrument in a rhythmic pattern of two groups of three-quarter notes
in the form of an ostinato. The singing is characterized by cotorriao (a phonetic
corruption of cotorrear, to chatter) and is sometimes performed in competition.
Further Reading
Miró-Cortez, Carlos. “The Nativity in Iquique, Chile. The Christmas Carols of the Fra-
ternities of Las Cuyacas and Pastoras.” Studia Musicologica Academiae Scientiarum Hun-
garicae, T. 18, Fasc. 1/4 (1976): 81–152.
Riedel, Johannes. “The Ecuadorean ‘Pasillo’: ‘Musica Popular,’ ‘Musica Nacional,’ or
‘Musica Folklorica’?” Latin American Music Review / Revista de Música Latinoamericana,
7, no. 1 (1986): 1–25.
Liliana Casanella
Estudiantina. See Rondalla.
F
Filín
Filín is a musical genre that developed in Havana, Cuba, in the 1940s. It is char-
acterized by its melodic and harmonic style, literary content, and use of the Cuban
song. By the 1970s it had gained widespread popularity surpassing the intermediate
period of the Cuban trovadoresco movement. It was preceded by the trova tradicio-
nal movement and was followed by the nueva trova movement. The trovador Luis Yañéz reputedly popularized the use of the term filín within the movement, which
stood for good taste in music, style, depth, and singing with feeling. The word filín
is derived from the English word feeling.
Filín developed in informal musical gatherings in the houses of young people
from the more modest sectors of society. They would meet to listen to and play pop-
ular songs and dance music. They derived their musical styles from genres such as
jazz, blues, swing, tango, trova tradicional, and Cuban dance music. Through their improvisations and fusions of styles, the older forms gave way to new creations,
which went on to become standards. In this way the filín established new groups
or studios and trovadores. The musicians would play “Rosa Mústia” by Angelito
Díaz at the start of the musical gatherings, as it was the filineros ’ anthem, and they
ended the evening with “Hasta Mañana Vida Mía” by Rosendo Ruiz.
The most common meeting places included the Callejón de Hammel (where tro-
vador Angelito Díaz lived) and Jorge Mazón’s house. It is here that several authors
and performers flourished, such as José Antonio Méndez, César Portillo de la Luz,
Ñico Rojas, “ El Niño” Rivera, Rosendo Ruiz, Justo Fuentes, Leonardo Morales,
Aida Diestro, Rolando Gómez, Tania Castellanos, Elena Burke, Omara Portuondo,
and Moraima Secada. Other notable artists included Martha Valdés, Piloto y Vera,
Frank Domínguez, Ela O Farril, and Meme Solís. In their frequent rehearsals, they
relied on “ El Niño” Rivera and occasionally Bebo Valdés and Pedro Justiz for the
instrumental arrangement of the repertoire.
In the 1960s, Pablo Milanes merits mention, as do accompanying guitarists Froi-
lán Amézaga, Elena Burke, Martín Rojas, all of whom made filín a specialty. Other
important musicians in the movement included guitarist-composers César Portillo
and José Antonio Méndez, pianists Adolfo Guzmán, Frank Domínguez, and Frank
Emilio Flyn; vocal quartets included Orlando de la Rosa, las D’Aida, Meme Solís,
and Los Bucaneros y el Rey; and ensembles included Conjunto Casino. Recordings
161
162 | Filín
and performances of the filín repertoire by musicans in other genres helped to
spread the movement to a wide audience.
The nightclubs Sherezada in the Fosca and El Pico Blanco in the Hotel St. John
(the filín corner) were places that, after 1959, offered a professional-commercial
venue for the movement. El Gato Tuerto and Dos Gardenias also contributed to the
success of filín and its repertoire was published by the Asociación Editorial Musi-
cahabana and affiliated with the Partido Socialista Popular (PSP). The radio station
Mil Diez provided programming time to César Portillo de la Luz. Some charac-
teristic songs include “La Gloria eres tu” (José Antonio Méndez), “Contigo en la
distancia” (César Portillo de la Luz), “Fiesta en el cielo” (“ El Niño ” Rivera), “Mi
ayer” (Ñico Rojas), “En nosotros” (Tania Castellanos), “Oh, vida” (Luis Yañez y
Goméz), “Tú me acostumbraste” (Frank Domínguez), “Duele” (Piloto y Vera), and
“Con tus palabras” (Martha Valdés).
The performance style associated with filín is intimate and familiar, reflective,
and hopeful. It does not draw attention to technical or vocal virtuosity. The lyrics
are a kind of poetic discourse full of amorous sentiment that uses a colloquial lan-
guage. It is written fundamentally in the first person with a structured form. The
musical accompaniment is consistent with this style. The stylistic range of inter-
pretations present in versions of the same song can be heard in the various melodic
elaborations and the idiosyncratic accents between the singer and accompaniment.
A constant rubato is prevalent, which leads to a semideclamatory style, with use of
phrase breaks and portamentos and sections of intense chromaticism. Instrumental
sections serve as introductions and interludes and have a certain air of harmonic
sophistication that highlights the performers’ competence. It compensates for the
successive leaps of fifths, sixths, sevenths, and octaves with alternation of conjunct
intervals, many times in a graceful flowing form. The harmonic sequences make
use of ninths, elevenths, and other higher numbered chords.
The filín is popular throughout Latin America. Its prevalence in Mexico is due to
the influence of Vicente Garrido, Mario Ruiz Armegol, Álvaro Carillo, Luis Deme-
trio, and Armando Manzanero; in Costa Rica, Ray Tico has helped to popularize
the style. More recently, the repertoire gained international recognition through
covers done by Grammy-winning Mexican singer Luis Miguel.
Further Reading
Moore, Robin. Music and Revolution: Cultural Change in Socialist Cuba. Music of the
African Diaspora, 9. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006.
Morales, Ed. The Latin Beat: The Rhythms and Roots of Latin Music from Bossa Nova
to Salsa and Beyond. Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2003.
Sublette, Ned. Cuba and Its Music. Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 2004.
Liliana González and Grizel Hernández
Flute | 163
Flauta. See Flute .
Flute
The European transverse flute began as single-piece, six-holed, cylindrical-shaped
wooden instruments made from different varieties of wood. The model for the con-
temporary flute, the Boehm flute, was developed in the 19th century and gradually
standardized in terms of its dimensions and length. It was not until well into the
20th century that metal (primarily silver, but also gold, and platinum), most evi-
dent in the performance of Cuban flute music, became the standard material used
to make the body of the flute.
There are two popular types of flutes, the transverse or side-
blown flute and the
vertical or duct flute. In the transverse or side-blown flute, sound is created when
the flutist presses the mouthpiece just under his or her lower lip and blows across
the embouchure. Depending on style, the tone can be pure, warm, and buzzy, or
high-pitched. The duct flute is played vertically with the mouthpiece in the player’s
mouth. The flute, both vertical and transverse, is prevalent throughout Latin Amer-
ica. Different types of Latin American flutes include the European metal flute, a
five-keyed, wooden Cuban flute, a variety of end-blown Andean flutes and pipes,
the Colombian gaita, a duct flute used in cumbia ensembles, and the Brazilian pife , which is a small, high-pitched, open-holed instrument.
The flute is particularly important in the Brazilian choro . The choro evolved
out of the terno, a trio consisting of a transverse flute, guitar, and cavaquinho.
This ensemble played both European dance music for parties and social occasions
and informally, improvising melodies and accompaniments. This spirit of impro-
visation became an important part of choro. The flute would take an often familiar
melody and improvise with it in counterpoint to the accompaniment. As the choro
evolved other instruments took the melodic line but the flute remained an im-
portant part of the genre. Joaquim Antônio da Silva Callado was one of the first
choro composer-flute players. He was a highly acclaimed classical flutist and his
playing featured chromaticisms and octave leaps and created one of the first ensem-
bles, Choro Carioco, in 1870. Pixinguinha (Alfredo da Rocha Viana, Jr.) was another
popular choro flutist in the first half of the 20th century. Like Callado, Pixinguinha
was also a composer and virtuoso performer. He spread choro to Paris and added
a saxophone and elements of jazz to the genre. Other important choro flutists in-
cluded Benedito Lacerda, Patápio Silva, and Mário Séve (a flutist/saxophonist
who performed progressive choro with the ensemble Nó em Pingo D’Água in the
late 1970s).
164 | Folk, Art, and Popular Music
The flute is also an important part of the Cuban charanga tipica. Charanga en-
sembles feature transverse flutes and violins as primary melodic instruments and
use the piano, acoustic bass, timbals , güiro, congas , and vocals as accompaniment.
The traditional Cuban flute is wooden and derived from the 18th-century French-
style flute, which made its way from Haiti to Cuba and ultimately evolved into
a distinctly Cuban-style, five-keyed flute. In charanga style ensembles the flutist
plays rapid improvised passages on the upper registers of the instrument, an octave
above the violins. This technique requires great skill and stamina, especially when
played with the five-keyed wooden flute. Charanga flute playing features arpeggios, re-
peated riffs and phrases that interact with the rhythm section of the ensemble. Like
choro, the repertoire is derived from European dance forms and the music is com-
posed, arranged, and written down and as a result it has classical elements but with
a strong improvisatory character. Johnny Pacheco (b. 1930) is one well-known Do-
minican charanga flutist. He learned the high-trilling Cuban style of flute playing
from Cuban flutist and bandleader Gilbert Valdés as used in the traditional wooden
instrument throughout his career. He received many honors as a composer,
bandleader, producer, and versatile musician. With his orchestra, Pacheco y Su
Charanga, he introduced a popular new dance known as “Pachanga.” One of his
most notable accomplishments was the creation of Fania Records, which helped to
start the careers of many Latin musicians. Other well-known charanga flutists in-
clude Melquiades Fundora, Jose Fajardo, Nestor Torresm Richard Egües, Orlando
“Maraca” Valle, and Eduardo Rubio.
Further Reading
Leymarie, Isabelle. Cuban Fire: The Story of Salsa and Latin Jazz. New York: Con-
tinuum, 2002.
Livingston-Isenhour, Tamara Elena Garcia, and Thomas George Caracas. Choro: A So-
cial History of a Brazilian Popular Music. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005.
Miller, Susan. “The Charanga Flute Players of Cuba.” PAN 2 (2008): 2.
Rebecca Stuhr
Folk, Art, and Popular Music
Folk, art, and popular are terms that describe three broad categories of music. These
labels are applied for a variety of reasons including style, marketing, and academic
taxonomy. They create areas of reference for understanding some of music’s in-
trinsic processes such as issues of transmission, economics, audience, content, and
musical training. But while these terms can be useful for organization and catego-
rization, they can also be restrictive, and as stylistic identifiers they are at times
misleading and inconsistent. For the labels folk, art, and popular to be applicable to
Folk, Art, and Popular Music | 165
the music of Latin America, the distinctions between them must remain broad and
their boundaries, by necessity, fluid since the blending between them is an inevi-
table part of the hybridization and intercultural contact that has occurred in Latin
America, especially as a result of the urbanization and industrialization character-
istic of the 1900s.
Folk music is preserved through collective and cooperative action in societies
where no one individual has the time or money to spare for the creation of music
as their livelihood. Where self-sufficiency is rarely taken for granted, individuals,
small groups, or whole communities take part in performing a shared repertoire
of songs frequently labeled functional music because of its connection with non-
musical activity. Even though a piece of folk music may be claimed by an entire
community, it is usually composed by a single individual or small group and then
transmitted to a larger population through incidental learning at special occasions or
sociocultural events. Folk music is, as a result, usually vocal and instrumental with
predictable rhythmic patterns, and carried out by nonprofessionals with minimal
or incidental musical training on instruments that are not labor-intensive. While
folk music is often considered the music of the rural, native, or indigenous people,
this is not always the case. In the United States, for example, the songs “Take Me
Out to the Ball Game” or “Happy Birthday” could be considered folk music because
they are approved by the group, learned incidentally after prolonged exposure, and
are usually tied to special occasions or events. In Latin America, the music per-
formed in Haitian Vodou rituals or at Herranza, a Peruvian animal branding cer-
emony, are forms of regional folk music that were created locally, passed down
over generations, and exist independently of any popular or art music traditions.
Within the Latin American context, art music is commonly associated with the
ideals of European classical music and operates through a system of direct patron-
age whereby musicians are supported by a single source (whether it be, for instance,
an individual, university, or governmental body). Art musicians are professionals
who perform their music, usually for elite groups, after years of formal training and
apprent
iceship. Latin American art music first developed during European coloni-
zation from the 1500s to the 1800s. It had its antecedents in the European classical
tradition as Latin American social groups sought to differentiate themselves from
the lower classes and aspire to the tastes and ideals of the Europeans. From the
1920s to the 1950s, following the Latin American wars of independence, there was
a period of strong nationalistic sentiment in art, literature, and music. This nation-
alism was expressed in Latin American art music as composers began to include
creolized European dance forms in their compositions as a way to honor the au-
thenticity of the music of the mestizo, African, and Amerindian groups. Compos-
ers such as Carlos Chavez and Heitor Villa-Lobos sought to incorporate uniquely
Latin American elements of music into their compositions, integrating European
art music with Latin American folk instruments and rhythms. Chavez, for example,
166 | Folk, Art, and Popular Music
based his Sinfonia India on Mexican Amerindian melodies, and Villa-Lobos was
well known for incorporating Brazilian popular genres into his compositions as
seen in his Choros #1 for guitar. Beginning in the 1960s, art music in Latin America
became increasingly more innovative with composers experimenting with serial
music, indeterminacy, and electronic music composition.
Popular music is often seen as the music of the people and, as a result, it is some-
times dismissed by critics as lowbrow or common. As the focus of this encyclope-
dia, the definition of popular music, though potentially debatable, is an important
one to establish. Despite contextual variation, popular music is mass-disseminated
music of the post-industrial age. Beginning in the 19th century, popular music de-
veloped at a time of profound change due to modernization, industrialization, and
urbanization. The musical processes that accompanied these societal developments
shared distinct characteristics different from that of the art and folk music systems
and together these characteristics evolved into what became known as popular
music. One of the most important of these characteristics was the creation of a sys-
tem of indirect patronage whereby popular music became dependant on not only a