popular music - bowling green state university

2Popular Music

In an increasingly globalized world where popular culture transcends na-tional and continental boundaries with relative ease, the catchall term“Latino music” is often used to classify a heterogeneous group of stylesand artists that have become household names in the United States andEurope. The transnational popularity of such contemporary performersas Ricky Martin and Shakira has prompted renewed interest in the socio-cultural origins of their music, not least so that die-hard fans can learnmore about the early careers of their idols.

Of all the musical forms associated with Latin America today, salsa isperhaps the most familiar to international listeners. In both the UnitedStates and Europe, salsa is often seen as quintessentially Latino music,but the term “salsa” is in fact generic and describes a range of dancerhythms found in Spanish America. Currently, salsa crosses continentalas well as Latin American boundaries. It is used in a variety of commer-cials and television soundtracks in the United States and the UnitedKingdom, and it has become a big hit in the unlikely form of the Orchestade la Luz, a Japanese salsa band whose members do not speak Spanish,who sing the lyrics phonetically, and who have played to great acclaimboth nationally and internationally.

The penetration of the international market by Latin American artistsand musical genres is not, however, solely the consequence of globaliza-tion. Nor is it a recent phenomenon. Throughout the twentieth century avariety of styles made the journey from Latin America to the UnitedStates and Europe. From Brazil, for example, Carmen Miranda tooksamba to the New York World’s Fair in 1939, then on to Broadway andsubsequently to Hollywood. During the era of the Good Neighbor Policy,and particularly during World War II, President Franklin D. Roosevelt’sadministration courted Latin American nations by encouraging the dis-semination of their music north of the border. Miranda and other LatinAmerican musicians performed stylized versions of the music of theirhomelands for a cosmopolitan audience. In that era of ostensibly recip-rocal cultural exchange between the two continents, even Walt Disney’scartoon feature films featured samba in their soundtracks. Likewise, in

the 1930s and 1940s, bolero traveled fromCuba and Mexico to the United States,where it was recorded by the likes of BingCrosby, Nat King Cole, and Frank Sinatra.Later, the 1960s saw the success of theLeonard Bernstein musical West Side

Story, which raised the U.S. public’s aware-ness of Latino culture and so paved theway for such diverse artists as Herb Alpert,Trini López, and Ritchie Valens.

Since then the ever-increasing domi-nance of transnational corporations withinthe record industry has intensified theglobal reach of Latin American rhythms.Within the United States the prodigiouslate twentieth-century growth of the Latinopopulation, with its demand for culturalself-representation, has provided a vastmarket for music and musicians of LatinAmerican origin. Within Latin America,musical styles move relatively unhinderedacross geographical borders, increasinglyforming creative unions with new trendsfrom abroad such as hip-hop and rap music.On a continent where song has often repre-sented the primary vehicle for self-expres-sion and even political dissent, popular mu-sic continues to innovate and stimulate.

—Lisa Shaw

See also: Cultural Icons: Latin Americans in

Hollywood (Carmen Miranda)

Salsa

Salsa arose from music played by Latin im-migrants in New York, beginning in the lasthalf of the twentieth century. Whatever theprecise origins of the term “salsa,” the mu-sic itself has its roots in the music playedby Puerto Ricans in 1950s New York, spear-headed principally by Tito Puente and

Tito Rodríguez. Salsa drew from a varietyof other musical styles, principally fromjazz and Cuban son. The style spread rap-idly and became popular across the wholeof Latin America, especially in Venezuela,Panama, and Colombia.

There has been much written about theorigins of the term “salsa,” but it is princi-pally a commercial rather than a musicologi-cal creation. Although the term had oc-curred in isolated instances in songs—forinstance, in Ignacio Piñeiro’s 1928 song“Échale salsita” (“Put Sauce on It”) and inthe name of the 1940s Cuban group LosSalseros, led by Cheo Marquetti—the wide-spread use of the term to denote a mar-ketable musical style is generally attributedto the New York record company Fania, amajor introducer of Latino sounds. Faniaused the term as a catchall expression forthe various Latino singers and groups on itsbooks. Jerry Masucci, director of FaniaRecords, stated that “before the word salsawas coined, people who knew music used tosay: son, guaracha, danzón, chachacha; butthose who weren’t musical experts foundthis hard to follow. In Fania we thought weneeded a word as simple as ‘yes,’ ‘rock androll’ or ‘country music,’ so we hit on ‘salsa’”(quoted in Calvo Ospina 1995, p. 75).

Following the early innovations byPuentes and Rodríguez, the U.S.-based Fa-nia All-Stars, a group of Puerto Rican, U.S.,Dominican, and Cuban musicians, was alsoinstrumental in increasing the popularity ofsalsa. Nuestra Cosa Latina (Our Latin

Thing, 1971), a documentary film of a Fa-nia All-Stars concert, boosted salsa’sprominence. Among the figures in thisgroup who have since gone on to becomesolo artists in their own right are WillieColón and José Feliciano.

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Reasons for the rise in salsa are varied,but the shape of the music itself is a signifi-cant factor. As José Matosantos argued, thedevelopments in jazz from the 1950s on-ward were becoming increasingly techni-cal and were therefore very difficult todance to. Salsa emerged as a counterpartto jazz. It is an eclectic blend, in which thetumbadora, timbal, and bongo give the per-cussion section a Cuban flavor, and thebrass section, heavy on the trumpets andtrombones, shows clear influences of U.S.big-band musical styles. Thus, althoughsome Cubans argue that salsa is merely amodern version of son, it in fact drew froma whole series of rhythms and is more anamalgam of styles than one particularstyle. Juan Carlos Quintero Herencia notesthat salsa composers draw upon a varietyof different types of music, including thecumbia, samba, bolero, and cha-cha-cha.

In Venezuela, some of the leadingsalseros (salsa composers and performers)include the group Federico y su Comboand José Luis Rodríguez, known as ElPuma, a singer who came to the fore in the1970s and is also famous for his boleros.One of the undisputed kings of contempo-rary Venezuelan salsa is Oscar D’Leon,whose 1999 album El verdadero león (The

Real Lion) includes some of his best andmost danceable salsa music.

Undeniably, however, it is Colombia thatin recent years has become one of thehotbeds of salsa, with the city Cali declar-ing itself the unofficial “capital of salsa.”Leading figures of Colombia’s salsa boominclude Joe Arroyo and Fruko. Fruko, whohad originally made his name with cumbia,performed in the 1970s with his group LosTesos, described by some as the first realColombian salsa group. Fruko and Los

Tesos developed some of the salsa soundsthat were to make his name in this style;Fruko’s salsa tends to give precedence tothe voice of the lead singer, who is fre-quently backed by piano and a minimal in-strumental setup. The album Tesura (thetitle is a play on the group’s name, LosTesos) launched his career in Colombia,and a concert at Madison Square Garden in1976 spread Fruko’s name internationally.Particularly outstanding of Fruko’s recentwork is ¡Esto sí es salsa de verdad! (This

Really Is Salsa! 1999), which provides anexample of the clean, crisp sound that hasmade Fruko so popular.

At the same time, another key figure wasemerging in Colombian salsa. Joe Arroyo,who began his career with the DiscosFuentes record label, started to develop hisown original style of salsa. Arroyo startedout with Fruko but formed his own band in1981, La Verdad, and then went on torecord under his own name. Although sty-listically similar to Fruko in some respects,Arroyo’s salsa has a more tropical soundand is often based around bass lines drawnfrom such traditional Colombian sounds ascumbia and vallenato. Arroyo is still verymuch a force today, and his prominence isfurther confirmed by his high profile in themedia, illustrated by the use of one of hissongs as the theme song of the popular2002–2003 Colombian telenovela, Siete ve-

ces amada (Seven Times Beloved).Another strand of salsa in Colombia is

the big-band-style salsa, epitomized bybands such as Grupo Niche, founded in1979, and Orchesta Guayacán. GrupoNiche’s song “Cali, pachanguero” (“LivelyCali”) has come to serve as an anthem forthe city and for its status as one of the cap-itals—if not the capital—of contemporary

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salsa. Orchesta Guayacán came onto thescene later than Grupo Niche but contin-ues the big-band sound and has reworked avariety of musical rhythms, some Colom-bian, some transnational, into a salsa style.This reworking is best illustrated by their1996 CD Como en un baile (Like at a

Dance), in which musical forms such ascumbia, vallenato, currulao, and paso doble,among others, are given a salsa-esquereworking.

—Claire Taylor

See also: Popular Music: Bolero; Cumbia;Samba; Vallenato; Mass Media: Telenovela

Bibliography

Aparicio, Frances R. 1998. Listening to Salsa:

Gender, Latin Popular Music, and Puerto

Rican Cultures. Hanover, NH: WesleyanUniversity Press.

Boggs, Vernon. 1992. Salsiology: Afro-Cuban

Music and the Evolution of Salsa in New

York. New York: Excelsior MusicPublishing.

Calvo Ospina, Hernando. 1995. ¡Salsa! Havana

Heat: Bronx Beat. London: Latin AmericaBureau.

Duany, J. 1984. “Popular Music in Puerto Rico.”Latin American Music Review 5: 186–216.

Lemarie, Isabelle. 2002. Cuban Fire: The Story

of Salsa and Latin Jazz. London:Continuum.

Matosantos, José. 1996. “Between theTrumpet and the Bongo: A Puerto RicanHybrid.” Massachusetts Review 37, no. 3:428–437.

Quintero Herencia, Juan Carlos. 1997. “Notestoward a Reading of Salsa.” Pp. 189–222 inEverynight Life: Culture and Dance in

Latin/o America, edited by Celeste FraserDelgado and José Esteban Muñoz. Durham,NC: Duke University Press.

Waxer, Lise. 2001. “Las caleñas son como las

flores: The Rise of All-Women Salsa Bands inCali, Colombia.” Ethnomusicology 45, no. 2:228–259.

Tango

The musical style tango and its accompa-nying dance emerged among the urbanpoor of Buenos Aires in the 1890s and en-joyed their heyday between 1917 and 1935,when they captured the imaginations ofEuropeans and North Americans and sub-sequently gained respectability and accep-tance among the Argentine elite. The mostrenowned singer of tango from this goldenage was Carlos Gardel (1890–1935), whotook the tango to Paris and New York andwho still enjoys mythical status inside andoutside Argentina. With Gardel’s death in aplane crash in 1935, tango entered a periodof decline, but its fortunes were revivedduring the populist regime of Juan Perón(1946–1955). Since then, tango nuevo (newtango) has been closely associated with thename of Astor Piazzolla (1921–1992), whoincorporated elements of jazz and classicalmusic into the genre.

The population of Buenos Aires bal-looned from 100,000 in 1880 to a million in1910 because of internal migration fromrural areas and large-scale immigrationfrom Europe, particularly Italy. The under-class included Italian-speaking, Spanish-speaking, and Afro-American populations,who inhabited the city’s slums. They cre-ated a hybrid way of speaking called lun-fardo in defiance of the elite, who in re-sponse dismissed this “slang language” asthat of the criminal fraternity. Among theselunfardo speakers was born a musicaldance style that brought together an eclec-tic mix of traditions of music and move-ment. Musically, it took influences from theSpanish-Cuban habanera, the Spanish con-tradanza, the African music played by ex-slaves in Buenos Aires, and the vulgardance and music of the city’s sprawling


fringes, which were inhabited by rural mi-grants who brought with them their gauchoverse. The resulting folk dance style andthe music associated with it were referredto using a variety of terms, including “mi-longa” and “tango.” In the late 1800s andearly 1900s this style became increasinglypopular, not least as a consequence of theincome generated locally by prostitution,with which this music and dance wasclosely linked by way of its shared socialcontexts.

Tango was originally played on a guitar,but between 1900 and 1917 musicians be-gan to perform it on the bandoneon, atype of accordion, which was more suitedto the larger venues that by now were alsopresenting tango performances. The lyricsof these songs were initially a vehicle fordenouncing the living conditions of the ur-ban poor, but as the music and its creatorsmigrated toward the city center these so-cial themes were replaced by a more per-sonal, emotional content. Thus, from 1917to 1935 the lyrics of tango became moreimportant, not least since they began to berecorded on gramophone records. Theyfocused on loneliness, betrayal, and unre-quited love as experienced by the maleprotagonist, who is always the victimwithin a failed love affair. Female singersrarely performed tangos, and when theydid sing professionally they rarely madetheir reputations in cabaret clubs, unliketheir male counterparts. Instead, femaleperformers appeared in theatrical per-formances or on the radio, which becamean important medium for the genre’s dis-semination in the 1920s. Permeated withnostalgia for a disappearing way of life,this melancholy tango-canción (tango-song), as it was known, expressed theprotagonist’s anxieties and apprehen-

sions. The macho, aggressive compadrito

character, the peasant newly arrived inthe city, who has much in common withthe mythical malandro of Brazilian samba(the Brazilian equivalent of the zoot-suiter), disappeared from tango lyrics inthis era, as did the references to prosti-tutes and violence. The tango-canción

was forever associated with Gardel, wholeft Argentina in 1933 and popularized thetango among international audiences bystarring in film musicals. However, afterGardel’s death, the tango-canción gaveway to the tango-danza (tango-dance),which placed more emphasis on the musicand the dance steps than on the lyrics. Inthe United States a sanitized tango dancewas promoted, whereas in Europe theavant-garde intelligentsia were captivatedby the music’s transgressive potency, andit was incorporated into the soundtrack ofLuis Buñuel’s and Salvador Dalí’s surreal-ist film Un chien andalou (An Andalu-

sian Dog, 1929).With the untimely death of Carlos

Gardel, tango entered a brief period of de-cline, largely due to the influx of foreignrhythms, such as the rumba and bolero.However, during the populist regime ofJuan and Evita Perón this music experi-enced a surge in popularity and was trans-formed into a symbol of national identity.As was the case with samba in Brazil, thenew media, chiefly the radio and the talk-ing cinema in Argentina, brought tangointo mass culture. Tango became caught upin the process of popular mobilization in-stigated by Perón, who sought to co-optsupport for a capitalist path of develop-ment among the poor, and under his rulethe cultural production of the lowerclasses, such as tango, was given increasedexposure on a national stage. Since then


tango has moved in and out of favor. It wasmarginalized by the military junta between1976 and 1983 but subsequently reemergedwith renewed vigor both within Argentinaand abroad. Tango’s renaissance is largelyattributable to Piazzolla, who began hismusical career in the 1930s playing intango bands in Argentina and went on tostudy classical music. He drew on his var-ied musical background to revolutionizetango, bringing symphony orchestras andthe traditional bandoneon together in ahighly controversial move. His interna-tional fame and popularity peaked in the1980s, when he performed his avant-gardetango all over the world. Today tangoclubs, or milongas, are thriving in bothBuenos Aires and the Uruguayan capital,Montevideo, and the music continues to in-spire contemporary artists, such as thetransnational pop icon Shakira.

—Lisa Shaw

See also: Popular Music: Bolero; Samba;Transnational Pop Icons; Cultural Icons:

Political Icons (Evita); Legends of PopularMusic and Flim (Carlos Gardel); Regionaland Ethnic Types (The Gaucho in Argentinaand Uruguay); Language: Lunfardo

Bibliography

Castro, Donald S. 1991. The Argentine Tango

as Social History, 1880–1955: The Soul of

the People. Lewiston Idaho/QueenstonOntario (Canada)/Lampeter UK: EdwinMellen.

Collier, Simon. 1986. The Life, Music, and

Times of Carlos Gardel. Pittsburgh, PA:University of Pittsburgh Press.

Guy, Donna J. 1991. Sex and Danger in Buenos

Aires: Prostitution, Family, and Nation in

Argentina. Lincoln and London: Universityof Nebraska Press.

Washabaugh, William, ed. 1998. The Passion of

Music and Dance: Body, Gender, and

Sexuality. Oxford and New York: Berg.

Samba

The samba, a Brazilian musical style andassociated dance form, emerged in the firstdecades of the twentieth century in Rio deJaneiro and has become well knownthroughout the world because of its closeassociation with the city’s annual Carnivalcelebrations. The samba rhythm is Afro-Brazilian in origin and was the music of theCarnival celebrations of the poor blacksand mixed-race community of Brazil’s thencapital. Subsequently, thanks to the devel-opment of the radio and record industry inthe 1920s and 1930s, samba was popular-ized among the white middle classes. Thegenre developed various offshoots, such asthe slower, less rhythmic samba-canção

(samba-song) with its melancholy lyrics(sometimes likened to U.S. blues), whichpredominated in the late 1940s and early1950s. Samba went on to influence thebossa nova movement and the work ofsinger-songwriters such as Chico Buarquede Holanda in the late 1950s and beyond.Since then, many different varieties ofsamba have emerged, such as samba-de-

enredo (theme-samba), which is played bythe escolas de samba (samba schools, thelarge neighborhood organizations that per-form in the Rio Carnival) and whose lyricsare based on the theme chosen for the cele-brations in a given year. Samba has a 2/4meter, an emphasis on the second beat,and a stanza-and-refrain structure.

The samba rhythm is widely believed tohave descended from the batuque, a per-cussive accompaniment to the circle danceof the same name, performed by Africanslaves on Brazil’s colonial plantations. Theterm “samba” is thought to have originatedin present-day Angola, where the Kim-bundu word semba referred to a batuque


dance step. By the beginning of the nine-teenth century, although slaves continuedto participate in the batuque, free blacksdeveloped a musical accompaniment to thedance played on the viola, a type of Por-tuguese guitar. Some experts argue that thetrue musical forefather of samba was thelundu, a music and dance form performedby slaves in the eighteenth century that hada religious significance and that was per-formed to bring good luck. With the aboli-tion of slavery in 1888, many former slavesand their offspring settled in Rio deJaneiro, then the capital, and by the seconddecade of the twentieth century an Afro-Brazilian community existed near the portand the city center. Samba emerged withinthis community in the home of an Afro-Brazilian woman, Hilária Batista deAlmeida, better known as Tia (Aunt) Ciata,a priestess of the Afro-Brazilian religionCandomblé. She hosted gatherings at herhome, near the central Praça Onze square,where clandestine religious ceremonieswere held and music was performed. Herhome was a meeting place for a heteroge-neous group of popular musicians and en-thusiasts, both black and white, somesemiliterate, others well educated, whobrought together a wide range of musicalstyles, both homegrown and imported. Itwas from one such gathering that the firstofficially designated samba, “Pelo Tele-fone” (“On the Telephone”), emerged in1916. The song was credited to the Afro-Brazilian Ernesto dos Santos, betterknown by his nickname, Donga, but in alllikelihood it was a collective creation.

In the 1920s samba was associated withRio’s black and mixed-race inhabitants, whohad been driven out of the center of the cityas part of a savage urbanization programand who now inhabited the hillside shanty-

towns or morros (hills). The lyrics of thepercussion-based samba-de-morro (shanty-town samba) that they created centered ontheir marginal lifestyle and celebrated thelocal antihero, or malandro, who turned hisback on manual labor—still closely linkedto the exploitation of slavery—in favor of alifestyle of womanizing, gambling, andcarousing. This brand of samba, which in itsalmost purely percussive form was also re-ferred to as samba-de-batucada (percus-sion-samba), and those who created it weremarginalized by the authorities, unlike themore respectable type of samba thatevolved directly from “Pelo Telefone” andits more eclectic mix of creators. UnderPresident Getúlio Vargas (1930–1945) sam-

bistas (samba composers and performers)were forced to abandon the figure of the malandro hustler and to espouse thework ethic of the political regime, which im-posed censorship restrictions and activelyco-opted popular musicians. As a conse-quence, a new variety of samba, known as the samba-exaltação (samba-exaltation),emerged in the late 1930s; its lyrics werehighly patriotic, praising the beauty andriches of Brazil. A classic example is thesamba “Aquarela do Brasil” (“Watercolor ofBrazil”), written in 1939 by the white, mid-dle-class songwriter Ari Barroso (1903–1964). Barroso was one of a group of whitesambistas who emerged in the late 1920sand 1930s, together with the acclaimed lyri-cist Noel Rosa (1910–1937), whose careerswere fueled by the development of thegramophone record, the radio, and the talk-ing cinema.

Affairs of the heart had provided the ex-clusively male sambistas with an enduringsource of inspiration for their lyrics sincethe 1920s, and this new generation of tal-ented middle-class composers developed


the sentimental, plaintive samba-canção bycombining this theme with an emphasis onmelody rather than rhythm, adding morecomplex harmonies to the increasingly so-phisticated lyrics. This variety of sambapopularized the genre among the middleclass and dominated Brazilian music untilthe advent of bossa nova in the late 1950s.

Samba, specifically samba-de-enredo, isthe music that accompanies the Rio Carni-val processions today. The parades by theescolas de samba dance along to the bate-

ria, that is, the drum-and-percussion sec-tion, which consists of surdos (bassdrums), caixas (rattles), tamborins (smalldrums hit with sticks), cuícas (frictiondrums), reco-recos (scrapers), and agogôs

(double bells). High-register plaintive har-monies are added by the cavaquinho (akind of ukulele), and the puxador (leadsinger) provides the melody.

Today musicians like Paulinho da Violadefend samba in its traditional form, follow-ing in the footsteps of the sambistas of theEstácio de Sá district of Rio, such as IsmaelSilva, who created the first escola de samba,called Deixa Falar (Let Them Speak), in1928. Although Paulinho da Viola does notaccept samba mixed with other types ofpopular music, recent years have witnessedthe emergence of various hybrids, such assambalanço, heavily influenced by Braziliansoul music, and samba-reggae.

—Lisa Shaw

See also: Popular Music: Bossa Nova; Popular

Religion and Festivals: Candomblé; PopularFestivals (Carnival in Brazil)

Bibliography

McGowan, Chris, and Ricardo Pessanha. 1998.The Brazilian Sound: Samba, Bossa Nova,

and the Popular Music of Brazil.

Philadelphia: Temple University Press.

Shaw, Lisa. 1999. The Social History of the

Brazilian Samba. Aldershot, UK, andBrookfield, VT: Ashgate.

Vianna, Hermano. 1999. The Mystery of Samba:

Popular Music and National Identity in

Brazil. Chapel Hill: University of NorthCarolina Press.

Bossa Nova

Bossa nova, an internationally acclaimedBrazilian musical style, emerged in themid-1950s in the upscale district of Co-pacabana in Rio de Janeiro. It was epito-mized by Antônio Carlos (Tom) Jobim’sand Vinícius de Moraes’s hit song “Garotade Ipanema” (“The Girl from Ipanema”).Bossa nova took much of its inspirationfrom samba, but some examples of thegenre also show influences from NorthAmerican jazz. This new sound was takenfar beyond the boundaries of the city ofRio thanks to multinational record compa-nies and television, and it was particularlypopular in the United States as a conse-quence of collaborations between Brazilianmusicians and such musicians as the NorthAmerican saxophonist Stan Getz, the jazzmusician Charlie Byrd, and singer FrankSinatra.

Bossa nova (literally, “new style/fash-ion”) essentially slowed down and simpli-fied the samba rhythm while incorporatingunusual, rich harmonies and syncopations.It grew out of the improvised jam sessionsheld at small nightclubs in Copacabana andin the homes of young musicians and intel-lectuals in Rio de Janeiro’s sophisticated,beachfront Southern Zone in the middle tolate 1950s. Because of its creators’ socialorigins, bossa nova is often referred to asthe samba of the middle classes. Criticshave also attributed the intimate, soft, con-


trolled nature of this musical style to theenclosed physical spaces in which itemerged, namely, the bijou apartments ofthe modern high-rise blocks that lined Rio’smost famous beaches. The singer NaraLeão, who played hostess at her apartmentin Copacabana to gatherings that centeredon musical improvisation, is often referredto as the muse of the movement, and shewent on to record many of her friends’songs. Another key player in the creationand popularization of bossa nova was theguitarist João Gilberto, who hailed fromBrazil’s northeastern state of Bahia andwhose wife, Astrud, recorded the originalversion of “The Girl from Ipanema.” It waswith the release of Gilberto’s album Chega

de saudade (No More Longing) in 1959that bossa nova fever began in Brazil. The

release in the same year of Marcel Camus’saward-winning film Orfeu Negro (Black

Orpheus), whose soundtrack includedcompositions in this “new style” by Jobimand Moraes, popularized bossa novaamong an international audience. This wasthe first large-scale global exposure forBrazilian music. First performed in 1962,the archetypal bossa nova “The Girl fromIpanema” is the most internationally wellknown of Brazilian songs, and it has beenrerecorded many times in Portuguese andin English.

Bossa nova emerged during a period ofeconomic development and optimism inBrazil, during the presidency of JuscelinoKubitschek (1956–1961), who promised“fifty years’ progress in five.” The vitalityand confidence of this era were symbolized


Tom Jobim sits at his piano and plays the flute in his home studio in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, February

1985. (Stephanie Maze/Corbis)

by the building of a new, futuristic capitalcity, Brasília, inaugurated in 1960, largelyas a result of Kubitschek’s personal cru-sade. The lyrics of bossa nova clearly re-flect the spirit of these times. Key exam-ples of the style, such as Jobim’s andMoraes’s “Chega de saudade” (“No MoreLonging,” 1958) and Jobim’s “Corcovado”(1960), are love songs that evoke the care-

free mood of middle-class youth in urbanBrazil. “Corcovado,” which celebrates mu-sic making itself, and “The Girl fromIpanema” both explicitly allude to thebeauty of Rio de Janeiro, creating a roman-ticized vision of life. For this reason, bossanova’s lyrics have often been dismissed asbland and superficial, lacking in meaningand emotional depth. Nonetheless, other


João Gilberto on guitar and Stan Getz on saxophone, playing at the Rockefeller Center, 1972.

(Bettmann/Corbis)

examples of the style display a self-con-scious and even ironic dimension. JoãoGilberto’s “Bim Bom” (1958), for example,with its seemingly nonsensical lyrics, canbe interpreted as a parody of the meaning-less, trite lyrics of the samba-canção of theearly to middle 1950s. Similarly, two otherwell-known examples of bossa nova centeron clever interplays of lyrics and melody.The lyrics of Tom Jobim’s and NewtonMendonça’s “Desafinado” (“Off-Key,” 1958)refer to a romantic relationship that hasgone “off key” or “out of tune,” a themethat is mirrored in the musical accompani-ment. Recorded by Gilberto in his charac-teristic whispering style, “Desafinado” wasan ironic riposte to critics who disparag-ingly wrote that bossa nova was “music foroff-key singers.” The song became a playfulyet defiant anthem for this nascent musicalstyle. In the same vein, Jobim’s and Men-donça’s “Samba de uma nota só” (“OneNote Samba”) is entirely self-referential,and as the lyrics explain, the melody delib-erately repeats a single note, ironically tak-ing to extremes bossa nova’s tendency torepeat a single melodic motif in differentregisters. Some critics have also arguedthat bossa nova cannot be simply dis-missed as apolitical, since as the badge ofthe new, white, affluent, city-dwelling gen-eration it represented a determination tobreak with an atmosphere of populist sen-timentality that had been deliberately en-gendered by Brazil’s political leaders overthe previous two decades.

Many of the most famous songs of bossanova have been overcommercialized out-side Brazil, and in the form of recordingsthat emphasize the repetitive, almost mo-notonous nature of their melodies, they areused widely in Europe and North Americato provide “easy listening,” “Muzak,” or

“light music” for settings such as airportlounges and shopping centers. However, inBrazil bossa nova has not suffered thesame fate, and it continues to be closely as-sociated with a minimalist vocal delivery,usually by a solo voice, delicately accom-panied by a simple guitar or piano and lightpercussion. Bossa nova enjoyed its heydaybetween 1958 and 1964, but this musicalstyle had a profound impact on jazz and in-ternational music, and it also influencedthe subsequent generation of Braziliansongwriters.

—Lisa Shaw

See also: Popular Music: Samba

Bibliography

Castro, Ruy. 2000. Bossa Nova: The Story of the

Brazilian Music That Seduced the World.

Chicago: A Cappella.McGowan, Chris, and Ricardo Pessanha. 1998.

The Brazilian Sound: Samba, Bossa Nova,


Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Treece, David. 1992. “Between Bossa Nova and

the Mambo Kings: The Internationalization ofLatin American Popular Music.” Travesía:

Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies

1, no. 2: 54–85.

Mariachi, Ranchera, Norteña, Tex-Mex

These four closely related styles of musiclie at the heart of popular music from Mex-ico and the border region with the UnitedStates. Although they do not represent thetotality of Mexican popular music, they areof great importance to the contemporaryMexican popular music scene, and the firstthree styles have come to signify essential“Mexicanness” both to Mexicans and Chi-canos themselves and to the rest of theworld.


Mariachi music had its heyday in the firsthalf of the twentieth century. Its popularitywas due to its prominent use in the moviesof the golden age of Mexican filmmaking. Itachieved worldwide fame at this point, butit has since been replaced in the public’s fa-vor by Tex-Mex and remains popular inMexico and around the United States–Mex-ico border only. Scholars do not agree onthe exact origins of mariachi music or of itsname. Some trace it to the original contactbetween the indigenous peoples ofMesoamerica and the Spanish conquista-dors (claiming that “mariachi” is an indige-nous word for musician or possibly for thetree from which mariachi guitars are made);others trace it to mid-nineteenth-centuryFranco-Mexican contact (claiming that“mariachi” is a corruption of the Frenchword mariage and refers to the music typi-

cally played at weddings); still others sug-gest that the name stems from a popular fes-tival in honor of a virgin known as María H.(pronounced mah-ree-ah-chay) at whichmusicians played this type of music. Noneof the theories is completely convincing.

Mariachi music is based on the Mexicanson, a musical form born of the fusion ofSpanish, indigenous Mesoamerican, and(to a lesser extent) African cultures in theeighteenth century. (Note that the Mexicanson is not the same as the Cuban son, al-though they have similar origins.) Mariachimusic originated in the state of Jalisco, butit became popular throughout Mexico inthe first half of the nineteenth century be-cause its hybrid origins helped give differ-ent social groups a sense of belonging to afledgling national community. Since theend of the nineteenth century it has


The Mariachi Del Rio performs at the Fiesta Nopalitos in Carrizo Springs, Texas, c. 1990. (David

Seawell/Corbis)

branched out from its repertoire of sones

to include waltzes and polkas as well asboleros (romantic ballads). The themes ofthe songs are extremely varied, rangingfrom love and betrayal to politics, revolu-tionary heroes, and even nonsense verse.There is a standard repertoire of mariachisongs—including such numbers as “Cielitolindo” (“Little Angel”) and “Jalisco”—thatall Mexicans recognize, but many mariachimusicians know up to 1,500 different songsand are able to improvise others for theirclients (for a fee).

What makes mariachi music identifiableas such despite such a broad repertoire ispartly the musical instruments used, partlythe form of delivery of the songs, andpartly the musicians’ style of dress. Thetraditional instruments were the harp, vio-lins, and several types of Mexican guitar,including the vihuela (a small guitar similarto a lute) and the guitarrón (a small doublebass). These guitars gave the music its tra-ditional sound. In more recent years, owingto the popularity of jazz and Cuban music,the harp has been abandoned and trumpetshave been added. The style of delivery isalso important: the songs are sung with anasal voice and in a dispassionate manner.Finally, all mariachi band members wearcharro clothing (the dress of the Mexicancowboy): ankle boots, a wide-brimmedsombrero, tight pants with lots of shinybuttons down the sides, and a fitted, deco-rated jacket.

In general, mariachi bands were exclu-sively male. Nevertheless, there have beenexceptional all-women bands, such asMariachi Las Coronelas (Mariachi Band theColonels’ Wives) of the 1940s. All-womenbands have been more prevalent in thesouthwestern United States, where therehave been several since the 1970s. Further-

more, in the 1980s Linda Ronstadt pro-moted new international interest in mari-achi music with her album Canciones de

mi padre (My Father’s Songs). Mexicansuperstar, heartthrob, and transnationalpop icon Juan Gabriel has also helped revi-talize the tradition, both in Mexico andabroad, by blending mariachi music withsoft rock and symphony orchestras.

Ranchera, from la canción ranchera

(music from the ranches), is a derivative ofmariachi music, and its singers are stillidentifiable by their charro costumes. In-creasing urbanization in Mexico in the firstdecades of the twentieth century provokeda strong sense of nostalgia for rural idylls,hence the reference in the music’s name tothe countryside. The style of delivery tendsto be much more melodramatic than thatof traditional mariachi music, and therepertoire is almost exclusively made up ofboleros. Although many film stars, such asPedro Infante and Jorge Negrete, are re-membered for their renditions of this kindof music, the most famous exponent ofranchera songs was singer-songwriter JoséAlfredo Jiménez. The style has also beenadopted by a pantheon of female divas, in-cluding Lucha Reyes, Eugenia León, andLola Beltrán. In recent years, in the songsof Alejandro Fernández, it has accommo-dated the influence of rock music. Further-more, Lebanese-Mexican singer AstridHadad has given it a subversive review inher reworking of Lucha Reyes’s repertoire,and Chicana singer Lila Downs has in-creased its inherent hybridity, blending itwith indigenous music from the state ofOaxaca and also with norteña.

Whereas mariachi and ranchera musicoriginate from the Mexican son, norteña,from música norteña (music from theNorth), has its roots in nineteenth-century


corridos. These were epic ballads fromnorthern Mexico that usually recounted sto-ries of conflict between Mexicans and An-glos and that were hence important in thecreation of a sense of popular Mexican na-tional identity through resistance to Angloimperialism. The corridos had their heydayin the 1920s, when they were reinvestedwith meaning by the events of the MexicanRevolution (1910–1920). The button accor-dion and such dances as the waltz and thepolka, all introduced to Mexico from east-ern Europe in the late nineteenth century,give norteña its typical sound and rhythm.Like mariachi, norteña music often has adeadpan style of delivery and a nasal styleof singing. Despite the reference to regional-ism in the music’s name, norteña is popularthroughout Mexico; there are whole TVchannels and radio stations dedicated to it.Its popularity is still due to the theme of re-sistance of el pueblo (the common people)in the lyrics. The group Los Tigres del Norte(Tigers of the North) has become superstarsin both Mexico and the United States, mod-ernizing norteña with the introduction ofsaxophones and cumbia rhythms. Their suc-cess provoked a music boom in the 1990sknown as banda, which combines norteñamusic with the brass band music typical ofvillage fiestas all over Mexico.

Tex-Mex conjunto is the name given tonorteña music north of the U.S.-Mexicanborder. It is indigenous to the region, sincethe southwestern United States formedpart of Mexico until 1848, and it is also con-tinually refreshed by contact with contem-porary forms of Mexican popular music.Although it has distinctive characteristicsthat distinguish it from norteña and mari-achi, it is primarily dance music that com-bines the repertoire of ranchera with thewider one of boleros and sets them to a

polka tempo. The dance itself is oftencalled the quebradita (break a leg). Thedominant instrument is the accordion, andthe style of delivery is generally less nasalthan that of mariachi or norteña. In theearly twentieth century, Tex-Mex was a dis-reputable, working-class form of entertain-ment; today the songs of people such as Ly-dia Mendoza and Chelo Silva are popularwith all classes and with both Chicano andAnglo sectors of society. It has become theconsummate expression of Texan identity.Furthermore, Tex-Mex has recently gainedworldwide popularity through such figuresas Flaco Jiménez and his work with majorAnglo artists, and it has even started to ex-ert its influence over Mexican popularmusic itself. Since the late 1950s, Tejano, a pop-oriented urban form of Tex-Mex, has evolved. The singer Selena is mostrenowned for her contribution to this style.The group Los Lobos has also gained an in-ternational following for their blend of Tex-Mex and rock music.

—Thea Pitman

See also: Popular Music: Bolero; Cumbia;Transnational Pop Icons; Popular Theater

and Performance: Circus and Cabaret(Astrid Hadad); Cultural Icons: Legends ofPopular Music and Film (Pedro Infante);Popular Cinema: Melodrama

Bibliography

Bensusan, Guy. 1985. “A Consideration ofNorteña and Chicano Music.” Studies in

Latin American Popular Culture 4: 158–169.Burr, Ramiro. 1999. The Billboard Guide to

Tejano and Regional Mexican Music. NewYork: Watson-Guptill.

Farquharson, Mary. 2000. “Mexico: Much MoreThan Mariachi.” Pp. 463–476 in The Rough

Guide to World Music, vol. 2, Latin and

North America, Caribbean, India, Asia,

and Pacific, edited by Simon Broughton andMark Ellingham. London: Rough Guides.


Gradante, William. 1983. “Mexican PopularMusic at Mid-Century: The Role of JoséAlfredo Jiménez and the Canción Ranchera.”Studies in Latin American Popular Culture

2: 99–114.Peña, Manuel. 1999. The Mexican-American

Orquesta: Music, Culture, and the Dialectic

of Conflict. Austin: University of Texas Press.Sobrina, Laura, and Leonor Xóchitl Pérez. 2002.

“Unique Women in Mariachi Music.”Mariachi Publishing Company.http://www.mariachipublishing.com(consulted 7 January 2003).

Cumbia

Panama was the original birthplace of whatwas to become cumbia music, but by thetime Colombia and Panama separated atPanama’s independence in 1903, cumbiahad already become a Colombian nationalmusic. Cumbia is traditionally led by theaccordion (and as such has certain linkswith vallenato) and was originally a type offolk music. It started as a slow dance thatwas practiced by the slaves and the indige-nous Indians of Colombia’s northerncoastal region.

The cumbia still being played todaystems from songs that appeared during theindependence struggles in Colombia in thefirst two decades of the nineteenth century,when the group Los Gaiteros de San Ja-cinto played an early version of cumbia. Re-lying mostly on drums and traditional in-digenous flutes made from bamboo orsugarcane, these cumbia songs frequentlyexpressed the distress of the African slaves.Modern-day cumbia is characterized by itsearthy lyrics, which use a rich colloquiallanguage and frequent double entendres.The themes are often culturally specific, re-ferring to Colombian customs and the con-cerns of everyday life in Colombia.

Some of the earlier versions of what canbe termed “modern” cumbia arose in the1950s. One song from that period, “Lapollera colorá” (“The Colored Skirt”), sungat the time by Los Trovadores de Baru, agroup from Cartagena, has become the un-official national anthem of Colombia andhas spawned a long list of adaptations sinceits first recording. Other groups and singersfrom this period include Los Cumbiamberosde Pacheco, who rely mostly on the accor-dion, and Los Guacharacas, who derivetheir name from the key instrument theyplay, the guacharaca (see the section on val-lenato for more information on this instru-ment). Key players, whose influence is stillfelt in cumbia music today, were the groupLos Corraleros de Majagual, originallyformed in 1961. A number of its membershave gone on to have solo careers. One suchis Julio Estrada, better known as Fruko,who is generally considered to be one ofColombia’s leading talents in the modernblend of cumbia with salsa rhythms.

In 1977 Fruko took the lead of the groupLa Sonora Dinamita. The Discos Fuentesrecord company had originally created acumbia band called La Sonora Dinamita toperform música tropical, a combination ofsalsa and cumbia. The original group hadsplit up in 1963, but their re-forming underFruko led to a string of hits, including “Delmontón” (“An Ordinary Girl”), one of theirmost popular songs. La Sonora Dinamita’sskill lay in fusing the traditional cumbiamusic with a more popular sound. Theygained popularity first throughout Colom-bia, then in Mexico, and finally across LatinAmerica as a whole. A major innovation in1981 was the introduction of a female vo-calist, Mélida Yará Yanguma, better knownas La India Meliyará, whose strong voicegave a new edge to La Sonora’s sound.


La Sonora Dinamita still performs someof the most popular cumbias, includingclassics such as “Mi cucu” (a Colombianversion of the song “My Toot Toot”), “Amorde mis amores” (“Love of My Loves”), “Es-cándalo” (“Scandal”), and “A mover la co-lita” (“Move Your Bum”), as well as newsongs, with a notably contemporary and attimes sarcastic twist, such as “La cumbiadel Viagra” (“Viagra Cumbia”). The albumÉxitos tropicosos (Tropical Hits, 1998)provides a good roundup of some of thesehits, including “Mi cucu,” “Mete y saca” (“Inand Out”), and “Que te la pongo” (“I’ll PutIt on You”), and the compilation 32 Caño-

nazos (32 Greatest Hits, 2002) combinesboth classic cumbias such as “Del mon-tón,” “Mi cucu,” and “Amor de mis amores”with new ones such as “Cumbia del sida”(“AIDS Cumbia”). Nevertheless, althoughLa Sonora Dinamita still performs and pro-duces records today, the actual makeup ofthe group is unclear, and what was once aclearly defined ensemble has now frag-mented into a variety of groups performingat different locations.

Even though the cumbia scene is domi-nated by La Sonora Dinamita in its variousformations and offshoots, there are hun-dreds of cumbia bands in Colombia today.Many of these gain an audience at the an-nual Fiesta de Nuestra Señora de La Cande-laria, held at the end of January and the be-ginning of February in Cartagena. A keyfeature of the celebration is the perfor-mance of cumbia. In addition to these per-formances, which may include smaller en-sembles, cumbia has been incorporatedinto the big-band style of Colombian music,a leading exponent being the Orquesta LosTupamaros, whose compilation 20 años

(20 Years, 1996) includes “Los amores dePetrona” (“Petrona’s Loves”), and the

Orquesta Guayacán. Moreover, cumbia hasbeen given a further boost in recent yearsby its reworking into new and eclecticforms, most notably tecnocumbia andcumbia villera.

—Claire Taylor

See also: Popular Music: Salsa; Tecnocumbia;Vallenato

Bibliography

Burton, Kim. 2000. “Colombia: El sonidodorado.” Pp. 372–385 in The Rough Guide to

World Music, vol. 2, Latin America and

North America, Caribbean, India, Asia,

and the Pacific, edited by Simon Broughtonand Mark Ellingham. London: RoughGuides.

Dorier-Apprill, Elisabeth. 2000. Danses

“latines” et identités, d’une rive a l’autre:

Tango, cumbia, fado, samba, rumba,

capoiera. Paris: L’Harmattan.Steward, Sue. 1999. “Colombia: Continental

Connections.” Pp. 128–137 in Salsa: Musical

Heartbeat of Latin America. London:Thames and Hudson.

Bolero

Bolero is a balladic style of music, roman-tic in theme and slow in tempo, usually in2/4 time. Whereas salsa and merengue arethe current preferences for dance music inmuch of Latin America, the bolero remainsthe favorite romantic music for listening.The bolero’s official golden age was the1930s, 1940s, and 1950s, but it is still aflourishing musical genre today.

The bolero has its roots in an old Span-ish dance, and it first emerged as a LatinAmerican musical form in the nineteenthcentury. However, although its originalsources were Hispanic, the bolero that hasdeveloped in Latin America is a cultural hy-brid, with influences from African rhythms


and inspiration from twentieth-centuryjazz. Most experts date the appearance ofbolero to the late nineteenth century, mostoften to between 1885 and 1898. Geograph-ically, the bolero song originated in Cubaand then spread rapidly around theCaribbean area, taking root in the sur-rounding islands and Mexico.

The heyday of Mexican bolero began inthe 1930s with such key bolerista groupsas Los Hermanos Martínez Gil and TríoTarácuri, but soloists were increasinglycoming to the fore. Perhaps the personwho had the greatest impact on the devel-opment of the bolero was the now leg-endary Agustín Lara (1901–1970), whosesentimental boleros became popular in thedance halls of Mexico. The popularity ofboleros from the 1930s onward led to thespread of this genre outside Latin America,with boleros being taken up by a variety ofU.S. singers, including Bing Crosby, NatKing Cole, and Frank Sinatra. Perhaps themost famous of all boleros is “Bésame mu-cho” (“Kiss Me a Lot,” 1941), composed bythe Mexican Consuelo Velásquez, who wasonly sixteen at the time. This song hassince been recorded by a wide range ofsingers (not all of them Latin American),including leading female exponents ofbolero such as Mexico’s Toña la Negra andPuerto Rico’s Ruth Fernández and more re-cently Luis Miguel on his Vivo (Live, 2000)album. However, “Bésame mucho” ar-guably enjoyed its greatest worldwiderecognition in the version by the Beatles,recorded in 1962, which appeared on theiralbum Beatles Live at the Star Club in

Hamburg (1962).Although the bolero has altered over

time in terms of its rhythms and influ-ences—to encompass, among others, vari-eties such as the bolero son, bolero

moruno, bolero mambo, bolero beguine,bolero feeling, and bolero ranchera—oneconstant is the theme of its lyrics: love andits associated seductions, secret meetings,forbidden passions, and lovers’ quarrels.

The bolero has enjoyed a renaissance inrecent years. The most striking of its cur-rent performers is the young Luis Miguel,who has gained popularity throughoutLatin America and Spain and who hasrecorded a variety of boleros of yesteryear.Miguel’s recent album, Mis boleros fa-

voritos (My Favorite Boleros, 2002), in-cludes his versions of such now classicboleros as “Perfidia” (“Treachery,” origi-nally by Alberto Domínguez) and “Sola-mente una vez” (“Only Once,” by AgustínLara). Other key figures in the revival ofthe bolero include the Venezuelan JoséLuis Rodríguez, better known as El Puma,who has brought out several albums ofboleros and whose recent double CD enti-tled Inolvidable (Unforgettable, 1997–1999) reworks the songs of Los Panchos,one of the classic trios performing boleromusic.

The Mexican transnational pop icon JuanGabriel is another prominent figure to havecontinued the bolero tradition. Gabriel hasbrought out albums that include a variety ofboleros such as “Frente a frente” (“Face toFace”) and “No me vuelvo a enamorar” (“IWon’t Fall in Love Again”). Similarly, fig-ures such as the Puerto Rican José Feli-ciano have performed in the bolero genre,with the Grammy-nominated album Señor

bolero (Mr. Bolero, 1998) including some ofFeliciano’s best work in this genre. Contem-porary revivals of the bolero are dominatedby male singers, but some female vocalistsstand out, such as the Puerto RicanLucecita Benítez, who has incorporated thebolero genre into albums such as Mujer sin


tiempo (Timeless Woman, 1983). Even therecent phenomenon of the Buena Vista So-cial Club has engaged in the renaissance ofthe bolero, with Ibrahím Ferrer recentlyrecording boleros.

—Claire Taylor

See also: Popular Music: Mariachi, Ranchera,Norteña, Tex-Mex; Merengue; Salsa;Transnational Pop Icons

Bibliography

Rico Salazar, Jaime. 1987. Cien años de boleros:

Su historia, sus compositores, sus

intérpretes y 500 boleros inolvidables.

Bogota: Centro Editorial de EstudiosMusicales.

Valdés Cantero, Alicia, ed. 2000. Nosotros y el

bolero. Havana: Letras Cubanas.Zavala, Iris M. 2000. El bolero: Historia de un

amor. Madrid: Celeste.

Mambo

Mambo is based on an Afro-Cuban rhythmand is most frequently associated with theCuban musician Dámaso Pérez Prado. Themambo came about as a development ofthe danzón, adding the conga drum to thecharanga ensemble, which characteristi-cally features a wooden Creole flute, piano,bass, violins, güiro (a type of scraper madefrom a hollowed-out gourd), and timbales(a set of drums). This music was firstcalled danzón de nuevo ritmo (danzón ofthe new rhythm) and later came to beknown as mambo.

Although there is no single inventor ofthis style, its early origins are usually asso-ciated with the musician Orestes “Macho”López, whose 1938 tune “Mambo” is seenby many as the earliest example of thistype of music. However, the most promi-nent name in the history of mambo has to

be the Cuban musician Dámaso PérezPrado, who, from the 1940s onward,adopted the term “mambo” and recordedseveral songs of this style with his band.Pérez Prado, whose range as a musicianstretched from pianist and organist tobandleader, arranger, and composer, islargely credited with popularizing themambo musical form. He developed themambo formula for his band with a brassand saxophone lineup, essentially unitingbig, jazz-band sound with Latin rhythms. In1948 he settled in Mexico, where herecorded several songs, many of them withfellow Cuban Benny Moré. After establish-ing himself in Mexico, he began to gain in-ternational fame in the mid-1950s as themambo fad spread across the UnitedStates, fueled by the U.S. Latino popula-tion. Notably, his “Cereza Rosa” (1951),sung in English in 1955 as “Cherry Pink andApple Blossom White,” was a key cross-over hit. It stayed at number one for tenweeks in the United States and for twoweeks in the United Kingdom.

Aside from Pérez Prado, the three mostimportant bands in the U.S. Latino commu-nity were Machito y sus Afro-Cubanos andthe bands of Tito Puente and Tito Ro-dríguez. Tito Puente, one of the kings ofmambo, famous above all for his hit song“Oye como va” (“Hear How It Goes”), hasproduced many albums of mambo over theyears. Other leading players, such as CeliaCruz, have also sung mambo and have cre-ated fruitful crosscurrents between mamboand salsa.

The mambo craze proper was diminish-ing by the 1960s, but in recent years inter-est in mambo has resurfaced, partly owingto a variety of media crossovers. Oscar Hi-juelos’s novel The Mambo Kings Play

Songs of Love (1989) won the Pulitzer Prize


in 1990 and was subsequently made intothe film Mambo Kings (1992), a U.S.-French production directed by Arne Glim-cher and starring, among others, AntonioBanderas. The film, about two Cubanbrothers attempting to make their way onthe New York music scene, was full of ex-amples of mambo music and broughtmambo back to the attention of U.S. audi-ences. It also featured appearances bysome of the real-life mambo stars, such asCelia Cruz and Tito Puente, and the suc-cess of both novel and film revived interestin the mambo.

In addition to novels and feature films,mambo has come to the fore in the shapeof rerecordings and commercial uses.Pérez Prado’s 1949 hit “Mambo Number 5,”one of his several numbered mambos, roseto fame again in 1999 owing to the cover

version (a performance or recording of awork previously done by another per-former) by the German-born Lou Bega,whose version was a number one hit in theUnited Kingdom and Germany and appearson his album A Little Bit of Mambo. Simi-larly, Pérez Prado’s hit song “Guaglione”(1958) was revived for use in a Guinnesscommercial in 1994, leading to the songreaching the U.K. top ten in 1995.

—Claire Taylor

See also: Popular Music: Danzón; Salsa

Bibliography

Daniel, Yvonne. 1995. Rumba: Dance and

Social Change in Contemporary Cuba.

Bloomington: Indiana University Press.Gerard, Charley, with Marty Sheller. 1989.

Salsa! The Rhythm of Latin Music. CrownPoint, IN: White Cliffs Media.


Tito Puente drumming at Monterey Jazz Festival, Monterey, California. (Craig Lovell/Corbis)

Giro, Radamés. 1993. El mambo. Havana:Letras Cubanas.

Merengue

Merengue originated in the Dominican Re-public in the mid-nineteenth century and isarguably that country’s most popular dancemusic. It has since spread throughout LatinAmerica and the Caribbean. Thanks to agroup of Dominican and Puerto Rican DJsworking in New York, it has recently fusedwith house music to give rise to the musicknown as merenhouse.

The origins of the term “merengue” areobscure, although it is generally acceptedthat merengue as a musical genre derivedfrom principally two distinct sources: theFrench minuet of the nineteenth centuryand the music of African slaves. The slavesof the Dominican Republic took up thedance from their colonial rulers but addednew rhythms to it, including an upbeat.Thus, although early merengue had Euro-pean origins, it soon acquired an Afro-Caribbean flavor and, indeed, remains anexample of musical syncretism today.

The typical merengue ensemble consistsof the guitar, the güiro (a type of scrapermade from a hollowed-out gourd), thetambora (a two-headed drum), and themarimba. Although merengue is still per-formed by such traditional ensembles, vari-ations on merengue—from the growing in-fluence of big-band-style arrangementsthroughout the twentieth century to morerecent house and hip-hop reworkings—have brought about changes in the makeupof merengue bands.

A key figure in the development ofmerengue is the Dominican-born musicianJuan de Dios, who changed his name to the

more marketable and U.S.-friendly JohnnyVentura—itself symbolic of his commercialskills. In the 1960s, Ventura heralded theemergence of a new style of merengue,transforming some of the now traditionalbig-band setups into smaller ensembleswith fewer saxophones and horns. Key tothis was Ventura’s own weekly televisionshow, The Combo Show, which featuredmerengue in a much more vibrant setting,complete with dance steps, and whichlaunched the career of many othermerengue greats. Among other innova-tions, Ventura sped up merengue, incorpo-rated elements from rock and roll, and em-ployed a much more aggressive marketingstyle, able to compete with U.S. imports.

By the 1970s, it was the turn of WilfridoVargas, trumpeter, composer, singer, andbandleader, to transform merengue. Var-gas’s 1978 album Punto y aparte (Full

Stop) represented a defining moment inthe development of this musical style. Var-gas initiated a series of crossovers withother sounds, including elements fromHaitian bands, from cumbia, and from val-lenato, and introduced synthesizers insome of his later work.

By the 1980s merengue was gainingground as the Dominican recording industrybecame stronger, and a new style ofmerengue evolved. Partly owing to the in-creased immigration of Dominicans to theUnited States and partly because of the rela-tive simplicity of its two-step rhythm—aneasier dance step than salsa—merenguegrew in popularity, and for many Latinodancers it became the preferred dance style.

Perhaps the most significant figure in thecontemporary merengue scene is Juan LuisGuerra. Guerra, educated both in Domini-can music schools and in the United States,represents the internationalization of


merengue, as well as other musical forms.On his return to Santo Domingo from theUnited States, Guerra formed the vocalquartet 4.40, reputedly named after the A440. In the 1980s, Guerra developed asofter, slower, more poetic version of themerengue, exemplified by his 1987 hit“Ojalá que llueva café” (“Let It Rain Cof-fee”). This song, originally written for a tel-evision commercial for coffee, wasadopted by coffee growers around thecountry and became their unofficial an-them. Guerra’s skill lies in transformingmerengue to include jazz and African influ-ences while maintaining a Dominican fo-cus in terms of lyrics.

Guerra is joined by the group Rikarena,made up of fellow Dominicans, on the con-temporary merengue scene. Rikarena’s al-bums, such as Sin medir distancia (Mea-

sureless Distance, 1997) and Rikarena . . .

con tó (Rikarena . . . with Everything,

1998), are examples of the fast, danceablemerengue that has become their trademark.

In addition to the Dominican brand ofmerengue, groups from other Latin Ameri-can countries have sprung up in recentyears. One long-standing player on themerengue scene is Jossie Esteban, who in1979 founded the group Jossie Esteban y laPatrulla 15. Based in Puerto Rico, Este-ban’s group has continued to have a stringof hits, with the CD Hot, hot merengue

(1992) being of particular interest, espe-cially for its reworking of the classic bolero“Perfidia” (“Treachery”) into a merenguerhythm. Even more recent is the Puerto Ri-can group La Makina, whose best work in-cludes Para el bailador (For the Dancer,

1999). Similarly, singer Elvis Crespo—bornin New York but of Puerto Rican origin—has had a string of merengue hits, includ-ing his chart-topping single “Suavemente”

(“Softly”). This song and the album of thesame name to which it belongs are exam-ples of some of the best combinations ofmerengue with a rock-pop sound.

A further development in the genesis ofmerengue, and one that will doubtless con-tinue, is the emerging work of a group ofnew producers and DJs who are generatingmusical hybrids of merengue and house mu-sic. Such so-called merenhouse style is bestexemplified by bands such as Proyecto Uno,a group founded in 1988, made up of two Do-minicans and two Puerto Ricans, and basedin New York. Proyecto Uno’s albums includeIn Da House (1994), which remained on thecharts for months, and their recent Pura

gozadera (Pure Pleasure, 2002).—Claire Taylor

See also: Popular Music: Bolero; Cumbia;Salsa; Vallenato

Bibliography

Austerlitz, Paul. 1997. Merengue: Dominican

Music and Dominican Identity.

Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Manuel, Peter, with Kenneth Bilby and Michael

Largey. 1995. Caribbean Currents:

Caribbean Music from Rumba to Reggae.

London: Latin American Bureau.Steward, Sue. 1999. “Santo Domingo: The

Merengue Capital.” Pp. 105–117 in Salsa:

Musical Heartbeat of Latin America.

London: Thames and Hudson.

Vallenato

The musical form known as vallenato origi-nated on the Caribbean coast of Colombia.More than most other popular musicalforms in contemporary Latin America, val-lenato maintains a close relationship withits particular geographical region of origin.Indeed, the term itself, “vallenato,” comes


from valle (valley), referring to the north-ern coastal region of Valledupar, and nato

(born): as its name makes clear, this is mu-sic that was born in Valledupar.

Traditionally, the music is played onthree main instruments: the guacharaca,the accordion, and the caja drum. Theguacharaca, the original instrument of thetrio, is a wooden instrument with ridges;sound is produced by scraping the surfacewith a hard instrument. The name“guacharaca” derives from a tropical forestbird whose cry the instrument is supposedto imitate. The next in the trio is the three-row button accordion, which nowadayshas come to be the defining feature of val-lenato. Legend has it that the accordionwas brought to Colombia by Germansailors in the nineteenth century. The finalinstrument, the caja, is a small, high-pitched, single-headed drum. Vallenato’smusical trio represents the triple heritageof Colombia’s northern region and the syn-cretism of this music: the guacharaca, ofindigenous origin; the accordion, of Euro-pean origin; and the caja, of African origin.

Vallenato in its early days was a type offolk music, one that was fundamentally apart of oral culture. Vallenato is part of oralculture in both its composition and its per-formance: vallenato songs have been pre-served and transmitted in oral form, andsome of the key masters of vallenato wereunable to read written music. The oralquality of vallenato songs is closely linkedto their original motivations. Vallenato is,principally, a storytelling device. It sprangup as a type of informal “news service” thatpassed on news in a pretechnological envi-ronment.

The orality of this music can be seen inseveral ways in the songs themselves: theabundance of proper names, for instance,

is indicative of the fact that many of thesesongs described the deeds of local peopleor addressed them directly. An example isa classic vallenato composed by the nowlegendary Rafael Escalona, “MiguelCanales” (1944), which functions not onlyas a piece of music but as a way to conveya message from the composer, Escalona,to his friend, the eponymous Miguel. An-other example is “Testamento” (“Testa-ment,” 1948), which Escalona composedto one of his girlfriends and which in-cludes not only the personal story of thecomposer but also a description of a jour-ney through Valledupar.

Orality also affects the structure of thismusic. Typically vallenato songs have re-peated refrains at the beginning and at theend of each verse, which aids in the singingof the songs from memory rather than fromsheet music. In addition to these refrains,which are individual to each song, val-lenato has a “signature” feature: ayombe

(from ay hombre, “hey man” in Spanish) isusually shouted at the beginning or end ofa song or during a musical interlude be-tween verses.

In recent years, these more traditionalversions of vallenato have constantly beenrerecorded. Their most outstanding per-former is Jorge Oñate, whose style ofsinging maintains some of the oral andfolkloric inflections. Oñate’s album Lo

mejor de los mejores (The Best of the Best,

1994) is, as the name suggests, a collectionof some of the classic vallenato songs, in-cluding several by Escalona and by otherleading exponents of the genre, such asCarlos Huertas. Another similar exponentof this “classic” vallenato style is the duoLos Hermanos Zuleta, a partnership be-tween brothers Tomás Alfonso Zuleta andEmiliano Alcides Zuleta, with Tomás Al-


fonso, better known as Poncho, as the leadsinger and Emiliano as the accordionist.

In addition, a variety of singers from the1970s onward have played and composedmore modern vallenato works. The mostsignificant of these include Binomio deOro, which originally started out in themid-1970s as a duo, with Rafael Orozcoand Israel Romero as singer and accordion-ist, respectively. However, after the deathof Orozco in June 1992, the group becameknown as Binomio de Oro de América,with Jean Carlos Centeno replacing Orozcoas lead singer. Some of Binomio’s bestwork can be found on the albums Clase

Aparte (No Comparison, 1980) and Festi-

val Vallenato (1982). A su gusto (To Your

Taste, 1996) provides a good example ofthe sound of the “new” Binomio lineup.

In addition to the large-group style of Bi-nomio, there are a number of solo singers.The best is probably Diómedez Díaz, whobegan his musical career in the 1970s. Díazhas collaborated briefly with Cocha Molinaand has teamed up over the years princi-pally with three expert accordionists:Nicolás “Colacho” Mendoza, Juan Hum-berto Rois, and, most recently, Iván Zuleta,nephew of the aforementioned Zuletabrothers. The 1989 album Grandes éxitos

de Diómedez Díaz (Greatest Hits of

Díomedez Díaz) brings together some ofDíaz’s best work with a variety of accor-dionists, including the outstanding songs“Camino largo” (“The Long Path”), “Todoes para ti” (“Everything Is for You”), and“Cantando” (“Singing”), the last composedby Díaz himself. Of his later work withZuleta, the 1995 album Un canto celestial

(A Heavenly Song) stands out. It was pro-duced shortly after the death of Díaz’s pre-vious accordionist, Rois, and the title songis dedicated to Rois’s memory.

More recent groups include Los ChichesVallenatos, founded around 1987, whichspecializes in what can be termed val-

lenato romántico (romantic vallenato).The group’s 1994 album Grandes éxitos de

los Chiches Vallenatos (Greatest Hits of

the Chiches Vallenatos), produced by theubiquitous Discos Fuentes record com-pany, provides a compilation of some of itsbest work. Another key group in this strainof vallenato romántico is Los Diablitos,which began in the 1980s, led by the accor-dionist Omar Geles and singer MiguelMorales, although Morales later withdrewfrom the group and was replaced first byJesús Manuel Estrada and finally byAlexander Manga. Examples of some oftheir best music include the early albumDiabluras vallenatas (Vallenato Mischief,

c. 1998) with the Geles-Morales lineup.From the late 1980s and into the 1990s

vallenato took a new route, developing amore modern, “pop” sound. The outstand-ing figure in this transformation is thesinger and actor Carlos Vives, whose ca-reer was greatly aided by his performancein Caracol’s 1991 telenovela Escalona,

based on the life of Rafael Escalona. Vivesbrought out two albums derived from thesoap opera, Escalona, un canto a la vida

(Escalona, a Song to Life, 1994), andClásicos de la provincia (Classics of the

Province, 1994), which were generallyfaithful renderings of Escalona’s originals,but he then swiftly went on to composingand singing his own work, amalgamatingthe vallenato style with other rhythms andbringing in a strong presence of other in-struments, such as the electric guitar.Some of the best of Vives’s original workincludes his recent album Déjame entrar

(Let Me In, 2000), which illustrates this fu-sion of vallenato elements with sounds and


styles from rock and pop. Although val-lenato purists may deny that Vives’s latestcompositions fall into the vallenato cate-gory at all, what cannot be denied is theforce and originality of these works.

—Claire Taylor

See also: Mass Media: Telenovela

Bibliography

Abadía Morales, Guillermo. 1991. Instrumentos

musicales: Folklore colombiano. Bogota:Banco Popular.

Araujo Noguera, Consuelo. 1998. Escalona:

El hombre y el mito. Bogota: Planeta.Llerena Villalobos, Rito. 1985. Memoria

cultural en el vallenato: Un modelo de

textualidad en la canción folclórica

colombiana. Medellín: Centro deInvestigaciones, Facultad de CienciasHumanas, Universidad de Antioquia.

Posada, Consuelo. 1986. Canción vallenata y

tradición oral. Medellín: Universidad deAntioquia.

Quiroz Otero, Ciro. 1983. Vallenato: Hombre y

canto. Bogota: Icaro.

Tropicália

Tropicália, also sometimes referred to astropicalismo, emerged at the end of the1960s in Brazil, as part of a wider move-ment in the arts. Its creation was led bytwo singer-songwriters from the northeast-ern state of Bahia, Caetano Veloso andGilberto Gil, and although the style wasshort-lived, it had a profound impact on at-titudes and cultural production. The emer-gence of this musical style was heralded byVeloso’s performance of his song “Alegria,Alegria” (“Joy, Joy”) at a televised musicfestival in 1967. Tropicália coalesced as amovement in 1968, during a period of in-tense political and cultural upheaval thatcoincided with the hardening of Brazil’s

military dictatorship. Veloso’s and Gil’s ir-reverent performances had alarmed themilitary authorities, even though their cri-tique of contemporary Brazil in song lyricshad for the most part evaded the censors.In December 1968 the regime placed themunder house arrest, and they subsequentlywent into exile in London. Thus, by 1969Tropicália, as a coherent musical move-ment, had ended, although both Veloso andGil have gone on to enjoy widespread artis-tic and commercial success in their ownright.

Veloso’s performance of “Alegria, ale-gria” on the TV Record television station in1967 met with the outrage of the generalpublic, which considered his groundbreak-ing use of the electric guitar in this rocksong as a sign that Brazilian popular musichad sold out to North American and Euro-pean styles. From then on, Tropicália be-came a fusion of Brazilian and foreign in-fluences, taking much of its inspirationfrom the modernist poetry of Oswald deAndrade, who in the 1920s had advocatedthat Brazil devour and combine both home-grown cultural forms and those importedfrom abroad in order to create somethingnew and representative of Brazilian socio-cultural reality. Thus, the tropicalist musi-cians took their lead from contemporaryEuropean and North American artists,such as the Beatles and Bob Dylan.

In 1965 Veloso and Gil had moved fromtheir home state of Bahia to São Paulo.There they teamed up with other popularmusicians, such as Gal Costa, JúlioMedaglia, Torquato Neto, Tom Zé, JoséCarlos Capinan, and the rock group Os Mu-tantes (The Mutants). The so-called grupo

baiano (Bahian group), consisting ofVeloso, Gil, Costa, and Zé, developed a dy-namic artistic relationship with the leaders


of the avant-garde music scene in the city.The tropicalists’ contact with rampantmodernity and pervasive consumerism inthe industrialized metropolis of São Pauloclearly molded their musical output. InMay 1968 the core members of the groupcollaborated in the recording of the con-cept album Tropicália, ou panis et

circensis (Tropicalia, or Bread and Cir-

cuses), the movement’s musical manifesto,which also featured Nara Leão, the “muse”of bossa nova and Brazilian protest music,who had adhered to the tropicalist cause.The back of this album cover featured afilm script written by Veloso, whichopened with a chorus of internationalcelebrities singing “Brazil is the country ofthe future,” a tongue-in-cheek allusion tothe exaggeratedly patriotic samba-exal-

tação, which Veloso undermines by simul-taneously commenting that “this genre isout of fashion.” This album was seen asBrazil’s answer to the Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s

Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967).The name “Tropicália” was taken from

the title of a piece of installation art cre-ated in 1967 by the experimental artistHélio Oiticica, and it reflected the move-ment’s deliberate invocation of stereotypi-cal images of Brazil as a tropical paradise.The tropicalist musicians, however, sub-verted these clichéd images of the nationby alluding in their songs to the politicalviolence and social misery under the mili-tary dictatorship in the late 1960s. Trop-icália’s two manifesto songs were “Trop-icália,” by Veloso, and “Geléia Geral”(“General Jelly”), by Gil and Neto, whosehighly intelligent and ironic lyrics charac-terized the movement as a whole. “Trop-icália” was a powerful allegory of theBrazilian nation in the aftermath of the1964 military coup, and “General Jelly,”

which combined traditional folkloric mu-sic from the northern state of Maranhãowith rock music played on electric instru-ments, mixed hackneyed images of Brazil,such as allusions to samba and mixed-racebeauties, with references to the moderncapitalist world. The main themes of tropi-calist songs included urban migration,mass culture, third world marginality, andpolitical violence, and the songwriters cel-ebrated the kitsch aspects of Brazilianculture. The tropicalists delighted in cul-tural hybridity, mixing elements of highand low culture, the traditional and themodern, the national and the international.Thus, they made an important contribu-tion to dismantling the barriers betweenerudite and popular music. Their songs ar-ticulated a critique of Brazilian modernityand challenged dominant representationsof national culture. Tom Zé’s first solo al-bum of 1968, for example, can be inter-preted as a satirical chronicle of his firstimpressions of the city of São Paulo, par-ticularly its voracious capitalist culture.The tropicalists were not, however,protest musicians, and they were not con-sidered to be radicals or leftists. It wasVeloso’s and Gil’s visibility and notoriety,rather than any subversive message intheir songs, that prompted their house ar-rest on 27 December 1968 and their subse-quent voluntary exile in London, wherethey spent the next two and a half years.

Although their departure signaled theend of the movement, the shock waves ofTropicália have been felt in Brazil and be-yond to this day. The North American mu-sician Beck, for example, was inspired bythe work of Os Mutantes to release an al-bum in 1998 entitled Mutations, which in-cluded a track called “Tropicália.”

—Lisa Shaw


See also: Popular Music: Bossa Nova;Brazilian Protest Music; Samba; Sport and

Leisure: Consumerism (Brazil); Visual Arts

and Architecture: Art (Hélio Oiticica)

Bibliography

Dunn, Christopher. 2001. Brutality Garden:

Tropicália and the Emergence of a

Brazilian Counterculture. Chapel Hill andLondon: University of North Carolina Press.



Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Perrone, Charles. 1993. Masters of

Contemporary Brazilian Song: MPB

1965–1985. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Andean Rock and Popular Music

Popular music in the Andean countries (forthe purposes of this volume, Bolivia,Ecuador, and Peru) is inescapably influ-enced by the legacy of the Spanish con-quest: in the highlands, an influx of mainlyEuropean musical forms combined withthose of indigenous origin. Traditional An-dean wind instruments such as the quena(a bamboo flute held vertically) remain butare now played alongside European instru-ments. Chief among these is the guitar,though violin, harp, and even saxophonehave found their way into groups playingmestizo (culturally and ethnically mixed)forms of Andean music. In the latter half ofthe twentieth century, as a result of urbanmigration and of greater tolerance of in-digenous culture on the part of urbanwhites and mestizos, Andean music hasbegun to fuse with rock and other globalstyles.

The European influx gave rise to variousnew hybrid musical idioms. The mostprominent mestizo Andean song form by

far has been the huayno (to use the mostcommon term, though it is often calledwayñu in Bolivia and sanjuanito inEcuador). Huayno adapts native tonalstructures and the pentatonic scale to aEuropean format, allowing the incorpora-tion of indigenous oral storytelling strate-gies, whether the song is in Quechua orSpanish (or, as is often the case, both atonce). The form became more widely ac-cepted as a result of the early twentieth-century indigenista movement in Cusco,which set out to rehabilitate native culturein the definition of a national identity. Themost famous example of the genre is prob-ably “El condor pasa” (“The CondorPasses”), derived from a classical piece byDaniel Alomías Robles in the Huánucoarea of the central Peruvian highlands.The song has been covered (reperformedor rerecorded by other artists) andadapted countless times, most famouslyby Paul Simon in the 1970s. This veryadaptability, as well as the expressiverange of the form, may explain whyhuayno is still alive and important today.Andean “folklore” thrives in differing de-grees of authenticity. For instance, artistslike Ñanda Mañachi (Show Me the Way)from Ecuador have remained true to theirindigenous roots, and the Bolivian bandLos Kjarkas specializes in romantic bal-lads sung in the huayno style.

During the massive urban migration ofthe second half of the twentieth century,Andean music underwent a transforma-tion. This was particularly true of Peru, dueto the high degree of urban migrations andthe consequent transformation of the mu-sic as it came into contact with rock, pop,and Peruvian tropicalismo.

The result was the style known as chicha(the term comes from the name of a popu-


lar maize-based drink), which is not simplya form of music but also a broad culturalexpression belonging to displaced Andeanpeoples in their attempt to come to termswith city life. Chicha music uses melodicand structural patterns similar to those ofthe huayno, but its lineup of electric or am-plified instruments (mostly guitar anddrums) is designed to reach large audi-ences at open-air concerts and dances.Chicha’s popularity among the urban mi-grants of Lima and other large coastalcities drew the contempt of middle-classPeruvians, who were ever eager to hear thelatest rock and pop from the United Statesand the United Kingdom.

More recently Peru has witnessed theupsurge of tecnocumbia, which has largelysuperseded chicha as the musical expres-sion of the urban migrant and has becomea new target for the scorn of Lima sophisti-cates. Tecnocumbia bands—such as thesuccessful Skándalo (misspelt Spanish for“scandal”), which was followed by JovenSensación (Young Sensation) and severalothers—speak for a younger generation al-ready established in the city and with nomemories of the Andes. Hence, Andeantecnocumbia songs no longer have nostal-gic lyrics of yearning for an abandoned ru-ral idyll; rather, they express a will to ad-dress urban reality.

The Andean tradition has nonethelessbeen maintained, though in unavoidably al-tered form, among indigenous communities.At the same time, certain rock groups haveshown an interest in indigenous culture andeven in producing music in the native lan-guages. Among these are the Peruvian rockerMiki González, who was particularly promi-nent in the 1980s, and an Andean groupsinging in Quechua, Uchpa (Ash). In Boliviathe rock band Octavia has used tapes or live

performance of traditional native songs andbuilt compositions around them.

An almost unique phenomenon in An-dean music has been the career of Boliviansinger Luzmila Carpio, whose period of ex-ile in Paris resulted in her becoming wellknown and respected as a musical ambas-sador for her people. Carpio still lives inFrance, although she is a regular visitor toher home in the province of Norte Potosí.On albums like Warmi (Woman, 1998) shecontributes songs aimed at raising politicalconsciousness and levels of education.Carpio has been taken up by one of theWorld Music labels in the United Kingdom,a move that has not noticeably compro-mised her authenticity. Other Andeanartists belonging to this phenomenon, inrecent years, are the Bolivians Jenny Cár-denas and Emma Junaro.

Andean musical forms also found theirway into the nueva canción political songmovement, most notably in Chile and Ar-gentina during the periods of military dicta-torship of the 1970s and 1980s.

—Keith Richards

See also: Popular Music: Contemporary UrbanMusic: (Tecnocumbia); Nueva Canción

Bibliography

Aretz, Isabel. 1980. Síntesis de la etnomúsica

en América Latina. Caracas, Venezuela:Monte Avila Editores.

Olsen, Dale A., and Daniel E. Sheehy, eds. 1998.Garland Handbook of Latin American Music:

South America, Mexico, Central America,

and the Caribbean. New York: Garland.

Danzón

By today’s standards, danzón is a ratherold-fashioned, slow form of Latin ballroom


dancing. Nevertheless, it is still very popu-lar in its country of origin, Cuba, as well asin its adopted home, Mexico. It is based ona French courtly dance, the contredanse,and was taken to Cuba by Haitians fleeingrevolution in their own country in the lateeighteenth century. The contredanse thenblended with traditional Cuban danceforms to create the danza and, by the latenineteenth century, the danzón. Danzónbands were originally known as charangas

francesas (French orchestras)—a refer-ence to the type of European instrumentsused and possibly also to the Frenchwomen who ran the high-class brothels inHavana where the music was popular atthe turn of the century. Nowadays they aresimply known as charangas. Charangas

francesas usually comprised a smallrhythm section, a larger string section, anda wooden flute. It is this lack of emphasison percussion and the addition of the flutethat gives danzón its distinctive sweet, ele-gant, European sound. Nevertheless, syn-copated rhythms and the use of some per-cussion instruments did betray someAfro-Cuban influence. Increasingly sincethe 1950s, other instruments, such as thepiano or the conga drums, have been incor-porated into the orchestras, and a vocal el-ement, often a bolero (a romantic ballad),has been added to the music. There hasalso been evidence of influence from themore fully Afro-Cuban musical form, theson, and danzón is clearly one of the manyroots of contemporary salsa music. Never-theless, danzón still exists in its own rightas a recognizable traditional form of dance.

The dance itself is characterized by mod-esty and reserve. The music of the danzón issplit into a melody and a paseo (stroll). Dur-ing the melody the pairs of dancers follow astrict, limited pattern of steps, maintaining

an upright posture and holding each otherat a distance. The woman is also required toavert her gaze from her partner out of mod-esty. During the paseo, as the name sug-gests, the couples either stroll arm in armabout the dance floor, greeting the otherdancers, or stand still and talk together.

In Cuba the danzón became popular withboth the working classes and the bour-geoisie, and from the 1870s to the 1930s itwas considered the country’s nationaldance. Indeed, in its heyday danzón was sopopular that its influence reached as far asMexico, primarily the Gulf Coast region(Veracruz) and Mexico City. In Mexico thedance remains a predominantly working-class leisure activity, although it has beengiven a recent boost in popularity on a na-tional and international level by María No-varo’s 1991 film Danzón.

—Thea Pitman

See also: Popular Music: Bolero; Salsa

Bibliography

Fairley, Jan. 2000. “Cuba—Son and Afro-CubanMusic: ¡Qué rico bailo yo!” Pp. 386–413 inThe Rough Guide to World Music, vol. 2,Latin and North America, Caribbean,

India, Asia, and Pacific, edited by SimonBroughton and Mark Ellingham. London:Rough Guides.

Manuel, Peter, Kenneth Bilby, and MichaelLargey. 1995. Caribbean Currents:

Caribbean Music from Rumba to Reggae.

Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Salon Mexico. 2003. “A Brief History of

Danzón.” http://www.salonmexico.20m.com/custom2.html (consulted 7 January 2003).

Nueva Canción

Nueva canción (new song) was a move-ment rather than a single musical style. It


spread throughout Latin America betweenthe 1950s and 1970s, and its aim was to ex-press opposition to military dictatorshipsand foreign, particularly U.S., hegemony inthe region. Like many such forms of cul-tural expression it found a catalyst in thetriumph of the Cuban Revolution in 1959and in the general atmosphere of resis-tance to authority in Europe, the UnitedStates, and elsewhere, and it drew inspira-tion from earlier anti-imperialist move-ments, such as that of Sandino in 1930sNicaragua. In musical terms nueva can-ción, which usually featured acoustic in-struments (mainly guitar, percussion instru-ments, and occasionally wind instruments),drew upon a variety of sources that de-pended largely upon local or national popu-lar cultures. There were also strong foreigninfluences: the U.S. protest song move-ment, singer-songwriters in Europe, andsome strands of rock music. Most of themusicians who survived this violent erafound themselves in exile, and the impor-tance in this movement of that exile can-not be underestimated, since it led thetone and content of many of the songs tolean toward expressions of nostalgia andalienation.

One of the countries most closely associ-ated with nueva canción is Chile, where theoutstanding exponents were Violeta Parra(1917–1967) and Víctor Jara (1932–1973).Both became almost synonymous with thePopular Unity government of Salvador Al-lende in the early 1970s, but their individualstyles were different. Parra’s strange, other-worldly voice and quasi-mystical lyric stylewere seldom overtly polemical, stressinginstead the human spirit with its need forunity and potential for the celebration oflife. Her most famous song, “Gracias a lavida” (“Thanks to Life”), became a nueva

canción anthem despite the complete ab-sence of social or political allusions. On theother hand, Jara’s style was considerablymore straightforward, rooted in folk tradi-tion and emphasizing solidarity and politi-cal awareness with a talent for vividmetaphors that, in songs like “El arado”(“The Plough”), reached both unschooledand sophisticated audiences without de-scending into the facile or sentimental. Af-ter Jara’s brutal murder at the hands of Au-gusto Pinochet’s forces during the 1973coup (Parra had already died by that time),it was left to exiled artists like the Andeanfolk group Inti-Illimani (the name invokesrespectively the Inca sun god and Bolivia’shighest mountain) to maintain oppositionto the military regime.

Andean folk music also found its way intothe political song movement in Argentina,where antiestablishment figures like Mer-cedes Sosa and Atahualpa Yupanqui(1908–1992) were able to adapt and reclaimfolk traditions that had long been synony-mous with rural conservatism. Sosa’s potentvoice covered (reperformed or rerecordedmusic by another performer) songs byartists as diverse as Charly García and Bolade Nieve (real name Ignacio Jacinto Villa,1911–1971), memorably captured in Mer-

cedes Sosa en Argentina, a live concert al-bum marking her return from exile in 1983.The singer-songwriter Yupanqui, who, sig-nificantly, borrowed the name of the Incalord executed by the Spanish conquistadors,was known mainly as an exponent of folk-lore, but it seems clear that his songs ofhardship and persecution alluded largely tohis own experiences as a political fugitive.The controlled anger with which he wroteand performed was expressed throughstark, often ironic imagery that, despitemany years spent abroad, constantly drew


upon musical traditions of the Argentine in-terior. Songs like “Preguntitas sobre Dios”(“Little Questions about God”) also show-case his mastery of local guitar styles andtheir adaptation to his brooding sensibility.

In Buenos Aires and Montevideo, withtheir inevitable and understandable use ofEuropean cultural models, the musicalsources for nueva canción were found indiverse places: Spanish ballads, the Italianand French folk revivals, and British rock.The Argentine León Gieco’s “Sólo le pido aDios” (“I Just Pray to God”), which despiteits title is rhetorically secular, became an-other nueva canción anthem. Gieco, who inthe 1990s turned to making rock albums,distinguished himself through a terse yetimpassioned vocal and lyrical style. TheUruguayan Daniel Viglietti, meanwhile,was widely admired for his whimsical po-litical songs, sensitive cover versions of theworks of other songwriters, and musicalsettings of poetry, graced with a powerfulyet tender vocal delivery. The legendaryrock composer and performer Charly Gar-cía can also be attributed with some contri-bution to nueva canción in the form ofsongs such as “Dinosaurios” (“Dinosaurs”),a thinly veiled prophecy on the fate of theArgentine military junta that was allowedto escape censorship.

Another politically traumatized region inwhich nueva canción emerged as a voice ofdissent was Central America, where theNicaraguan brothers Carlos and Luis En-rique Mejía Godoy became its leadinglights. Their opposition to the regime ofAnastasio Somoza in Nicaragua was con-ducted from Costa Rica.

It is hardly surprising that the spirit ofnueva canción was most strongly and con-fidently expressed in Cuba. Unmolested bypolitical or military authority, the Nueva

Trova Cubana (New Cuban Troupe) was aloose grouping of artists eager to voice theisland’s revolutionary zeal and exuberance.The very name of the group hinted at abreak with the past, and such singers asSilvio Rodríguez and Pablo Milanés indeeddispensed with many elements of a Cubanmusical heritage that was seen as out-moded and redolent of a past, steeped ininequality, racism, and ignorance, whenCuban nightclubs, brothels, and casinoswere patronized by North American visi-tors. Ironically perhaps, the rehabilitationof son, cha-cha-cha, rumba, and other suchgenres began under Rodríguez’s tenure asminister of culture in the mid-1990s. Never-theless, the popularity of “Silvio y Pablo”(as they are invariably known in tandem),though past its 1980s heyday, remains high.The two men, despite their close associa-tion as figureheads, have quite distinctstyles. Rodríguez constructs highly intri-cate melodic patterns with poetically auda-cious, optimistic lyrics accompanied by hisvirtuoso guitar playing. Among his most fa-mous and popular albums are Días y flores

(Days and Flowers, 1975) and Unicornio

(Unicorn, 1985). He intersperses his moreexperimental songs, with their abstruseand whimsical imagery, with politicallyconfrontational songs. Likewise, Milanéshas always exercised a certain social re-sponsibility in his craft despite his morewistful reflections on love, loss, and socialresponsibility.

The legacy of nueva canción is, to date,more ideological than musical; it can beseen primarily in Latin American rock mu-sic, particularly during the 1980s and1990s. Explicit political content is unusual,but even some of those artists who refrainfrom even coded social comment often dis-play their leanings through their actions or


choice of material. One example is the Ar-gentine band Divididos (Divided), withtheir blues-rock adaptations of songs likeAtahualpa Yupanqui’s “El arriero” (“TheMuleteer”). Among other rock singers andcomposers whose sentiments and lyrics in-herit something of nueva canción is singer-composer Fito Páez, who in 1990 made anunequivocal political statement with the al-bum Tercer mundo (Third World), a musi-cal travelogue based on his own experi-ences in Latin America. In 1994 Páez gave aconcert in Havana at the invitation of SilvioRodríguez. In 1997 Páez and several of theartists mentioned above, plus Mexicanbands Café Tacuba, El Tri, and MalditaVecindad (Damned Neighborhood); Parala-mas do Sucesso (Mudguards of Success)from Brazil; and Los Tres (The Three ofThem) from Chile, participated in the bene-fit album Chiapas, whose proceeds wentto the Zapatismo movement in southernMexico.

—Keith Richards

See also: Popular Music: ContemporaryUrban Music (Rock Music); Popular Social

Movements and Politics: Zapatismo

Bibliography

Jara, Joan. 1998. Víctor: An Unfinished Song.

London: Bloomsbury.Sairley, Jan. 1994. “Nueva Canción.” Pp.

569–577 in World Music: The Rough Guide,

edited by Simon Broughton, Mark Ellingham,and Richard Trillo. London: Penguin Books.

Schechter, John M., ed. 1999. Music in Latin

American Culture: Regional Traditions.

New York: Schirmer Books.

Brazilian Protest Music

Although protest music in Brazil did notconstitute a movement as such, as it did in

other Latin American countries under dic-tatorships, during the days of repressionthere emerged a number of singer-song-writers who both inspired a politicallycommitted generation at the time and influ-enced the shape of popular music for fu-ture generations. The most significant ofthese singer-songwriters were GeraldoVandré and Chico Buarque.

Geraldo Vandré (Geraldo Pedrosa deAraújo Dias) was born in 1935 in Paraíbain northeastern Brazil. His musical stylehas been defined as a mixture of bossanova and the folkloric traditions of his na-tive region. His songs, often interpreted byother performers, proved very successfulat the televised music festivals of the mid-1960s, vehicles that revealed a wealth ofsongwriting talent. These music competi-tions eventually came to an end towardthe close of the 1960s because many of thepopular competitors had been forced intoexile and because material was increas-ingly being censored. Geraldo Vandré be-came famous at the festivals for his fieryprotest songs, especially “Prá não dizerque não falei de flores” (“So as Not to Say IDidn’t Speak of Flowers”), also knownsimply as “Caminhando” (“Walking”). Thesong took second place at a festival in1968 and was subsequently banned for tenyears by the military government for itslyrics, which were deemed offensive to thearmed forces, and for its capacity to pro-voke subversion, particularly among stu-dents. “Caminhando” quickly became a fa-vorite anthem among political protestersduring demonstrations, particularly duringthe difficult years of severe censorshipand imprisonment of political adversaries(1968–1976). As a result of the song’s pro-hibition, Vandré left Brazil for his ownsafety in 1969.


Another singer-songwriter to find fameon the music festival circuit was ChicoBuarque (Francisco Buarque de Holanda),who has enjoyed a considerably longerprofessional life than Geraldo Vandré.Buarque did not write traditional protestsongs as such; he wrote gentle sambaswith very clever and often intricate lyricsthat gradually, with the hardening of theBrazilian military regime in the late 1960s,came to challenge the political status quo.Eventually Buarque, like Vandré and theTropicália musicians Caetano Veloso andGilberto Gil, was forced to leave the coun-try for fear of persecution. On his return in1970, his songs were heavily censored (forexample, only one song in three releasedby him in 1971 was approved). In songssuch as “Construção” (“Construction”)from 1971, Buarque’s lyrics are so imagina-tive and deceptively simple that they arefrequently included in poetry anthologies.“Construção” depicts the alienation anddeath of a faceless construction worker,representative of the hundreds and thou-sands of migrant workers who came to Riode Janeiro and São Paulo in the 1960s and1970s to work, in the most precarious ofconditions, in the construction industry.The song thus criticizes the developmental-ist policies of the military government,which showed little concern for the vastmajority of Brazilians who experienced lit-tle or nothing of the supposed prosperity ofthe times. Occasionally, the censors weretemporarily fooled by Buarque’s intelligentand powerful lyrics, such as those con-tained in the ostensible love song “Apesarde você” (“In Spite of You”), whose refrainbegins “In spite of you tomorrow will beanother day”—a clear indictment of themilitary regime. The song was laterbanned. In 1973 he wrote with Gilberto Gil

the song “Cálice” (“Chalice”), further ex-pressing the bitterness felt toward the re-pressive government of the day. (In Por-tuguese the word cálice, in addition tomeaning “chalice,” is a homophone of thecommand cale-se, meaning “shut up,” andthus acts as a comment on the silencing ofdissent under the military dictatorship.)The first time Buarque and Gil attemptedto perform this song, they were “shut up”by the authorities, who invaded the stageand turned off their microphones. Thesong was subsequently banned, and it thenbecame, rather like Vandré’s “Camin-hando,” an anthem against the dictator-ship. Buarque had such difficulty with thecensors that he released material under apseudonym, Julinho de Adelaide. One suchwas the song “Acorda Amor” (“Wake Up,Love”), in which the singer, fearing for hissafety at home one night, tells his partnerto call a thief for help (“chame ladrão”),echoing a widely held belief at the timethat the real criminals in society were thepolice. By 1984, with the end of the militaryregime in sight, Buarque’s lyrics becamemore positive, as witnessed in the samba“Vai Passar,” with its double meaning of“it’s on its way past” (a reference to a Car-nival parade mentioned in the song) and “itwill soon be over” (a reference to the dicta-torship). Buarque also wrote musicals andlater, in the 1990s, best-selling novels. Hecontinues to write songs and perform be-fore live audiences, and his popularityshows no sign of waning.

—Stephanie Dennison

See also: Popular Music: Bossa Nova; Samba;Tropicália

Bibliography

Gonzalez, Mike, and David Treece. 1992. The

Gathering of Voices: The Twentieth-Century


Poetry of Latin America. London and NewYork: Verso.



Philadelphia: Temple University Press.Perrone, Charles. 1993. Masters of

Contemporary Brazilian Song: MPB

1965–1985. Austin: University of TexasPress.

Contemporary Urban Music

Brazilian Rap and Hip-Hop

Among the most successful and politicallycommitted urban music crazes to hit Brazilin the last ten years are rap and hip-hop, in-spired by North American rap (“rhythmand poetry”) music, which emerged inblack ghettos of the United States in the1980s. The most successful rap band inBrazil is Racionais MCs (The RationalMCs), one of many bands to appear sincethe late 1980s in the periferia, or poor sub-urbs that surround Brazil’s megacity, SãoPaulo. In the late 1980s break dancers, DJs,graffiti artists, and rappers would meet atthe Largo de São Bento and Rua 24 de Maioin the center of São Paulo on weekends,where Brazilian rap’s distinctive sound (of-ten incorporating roots, samba, and reg-gae) and lyrics began to be developed. Inthe 1990s, those interested in the hip-hopscene began to meet in the suburbs in“posses.” There are around 30,000 of theseposses in existence today. They were orga-nized in 1989 into a movement with thefounding of the Movimento Hip Hop Orga-nizado (Organized Hip Hop Movement,MH2O). The movement’s manifesto de-manded “poder para o povo preto” (powerfor the black people), so although in theUnited States such posses are often syn-

onymous with gangland violence, they aremuch more politically motivated in SãoPaulo. For example, posses would oftenhold discussion groups on racism, policeviolence, and black history, and thesethemes in turn would inform rap music’slyrics.

The first album by the Racionais MCswas released in 1992, entitled Holocausto

Urbano (Urban Holocaust). Between 1992and 1997 they gradually built up a follow-ing, both within the poor neighborhoods ofthe suburbs of São Paulo and Rio deJaneiro and among Brazil’s middle-classyouth. Their fourth album, Sobrevivendo

no inferno (Surviving in Hell, 1997) isBrazil’s most successful rap album to date:it sold over one million copies and waswidely pirated. Like many other rap acts,such as O Rappa from the Baixada Flumi-nense (poor suburbs of Rio de Janeiro), theRacionais MCs express an antialcohol orantidrug attitude in their music, seeingdrugs as destructive of their communities.An exception to this is the aptly namedband Planet Hemp, whose sole reason forexistence seems to be to rap about thevirtues of cannabis. Both Racionais MCsand O Rappa sponsor charity projects, andin a conscious effort to “keep it real,” manyrappers tend to avoid big media vehiclesand multinational music corporations.Most are signed to independent music la-bels, many of which are owned by rap per-formers themselves. The Racionais MCsown their own music label (Cosa Nostra).The Poder Para o Povo Preto (Power forBlack People) enterprise (partly owned byK. L. Jay, the Racionais DJ) comprises arecord label, two black music shops, andan Afro-hairdresser in São Paulo.

Not all Brazilian rap groups and perform-ers are black or of mixed race. For exam-


ple, Yuka, the front man of O Rappa, iswhite. In most cases white stars such asYuka are also from the poor suburbs andcan therefore relate to the common themesof rap music, such as the struggle for re-spect for their impoverished communitiesand the attempt to combat the proliferationof arms and police violence there. (Yukawas hit by a police bullet in 2002.) It is in-teresting, however, that O Rappa’s Websitecomplains about economic rather thanracial segregation in Brazil. Another suc-cessful white rapper, in this case from aprivileged background, is Gabriel o Pen-sador (Gabriel the Thinker—real nameGabriel Contino, born 1974), the white sonof a successful television presenter, whorepresents the pop side to rap music inBrazil.

At the other end of the spectrum of ac-ceptability are a number of popular rapacts that either met in prison or are still in-carcerated, for example, 509-E and Deten-tos do Rap (both from Carandirú prison inSão Paulo) and Escadinha, with a prisonconnection in Rio de Janeiro (Bangú).Needless to say, despite the politically mo-tivated and socially aware lyrics and atti-tude of the hip-hop movement in general inBrazil, particularly when compared withhip-hop acts in the United States, rappersand their audience have been and continueto be the victims of scorn, suspicion, vic-timization, and even violence at the handsof the press and the police.


See also: Popular Music: Samba


Brazilian singers Afro-X (left) and Dexter, who together form the rap music duo 509-E, pause inside

their uncharacteristically large cell in the Carandirú penal complex, where the two are inmates of

Latin America’s biggest prison, 21 June 2000. (Reuters/Corbis)

Bibliography

Caldeira, Teresa. 2000. City of Walls: Crime,

Segregation, and Citizenship in São Paulo.

Berkeley and Los Angeles: University ofCalifornia Press.

Hanchard, Michael. 1994. Orpheus and Power:

the “Movimento Negro” of Rio de Janeiro

and São Paulo. Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press.

Magaldi, Cristina. 1990. “Adopting Imports:New Images and Alliances in BrazilianPopular Music of the 1990s.” Popular Music

18, no. 3: 309–330.Michalas, Apostolos. 2001. “Rapping in the

Periphery of São Paulo: BlackConsciousness and Revolutionary Discoursein the Works of Racionais MCs.” MA thesis,Institute of Latin American Studies(London).

Mexican Rap and Hip-Hop

Just as Mexican popular music has had animpact on the music scene in the UnitedStates with Tex-Mex and Tejano, such U.S.-born musical styles as rock, rap, and hip-hop have also influenced the developmentof new hybrid forms south of the border.The key factor that facilitates this culturalexchange is the existence of the Chicano(and more broadly Latino) community,which is conversant in both Anglo andLatin American cultural traditions andwhich eclectically blends elements fromboth in its own music.

Rap and hip-hop music in the UnitedStates is traditionally associated with blackstreet culture and with urban youth in gen-eral. “Rap” refers to the performance ofrhythmic, slang-inflected monologues sup-ported by some musical backing; hip-hop isa slightly more danceable variant, fre-quently associated with the rise of breakdancing in the 1980s. Although rap has gen-erally been promoted as a black musicalphenomenon, the 1980s also saw the devel-

opment of Latino rap in the United States,as urban Latino youths quickly absorbedthe musical styles of their black neighbors.Rock Steady Crew, The Terror Squad, BigPun, and Fat Joe are some of the most suc-cessful of these Latino (often specificallyNuyorican) rap acts on the East Coast. Onthe West Coast, Latino (and more specifi-cally Chicano) acts such as Mellow ManAce and Kid Frost also became very popu-lar in the late 1980s. In the 1990s the boomcontinued, with new Chicano rap acts suchas Aztec Tribe, Darkroom Familia, andSouth Park Mexican. Shortly thereafter,full-fledged Mexican rap groups began toemerge, such as Control Machete (MacheteControl), from Monterrey, and Molotov,from Mexico City. Inevitably, these Mexi-can rap groups have continued to blendU.S. rap with elements of Mexican popularmusic and to combine U.S. English slangwith Mexican Spanish slang in a heady Chi-cano-inflected Spanglish. They have alsoproduced lyrics that speak directly to Mex-ican youth about their own social and po-litical situation. Control Machete, foundedin 1995, is most accurately classified aship-hop, blended with the distinctivesounds of traditional Mexican guitar har-monies and the rhythms of danzón, for ex-ample. One of their best-known tracks,“Danzón,” combines the traditional musicof danzón and a rap about the current stateof the Mexican nation; a line in the chorusis taken from the work of popular blackCuban poet Nicolás Guillén. In general,Control Machete’s lyrics are aggressivelyanti-imperialist and pro-raza (race, thecommon term that Mexicans and Chicanosuse to indicate their ethnicity).

Molotov, founded in 1996 (not to be con-fused with New York City–based punkband Molotov Cocktail), produces a potent


mix of rap, hip-hop, and the already hybridform that is Mexican rock. The group hasstirred up a substantial amount of contro-versy, both for the political views ex-pressed in its songs’ lyrics, which rageagainst Mexican media conglomeratessuch as Televisa, and for the rather puerile,sexist, and homophobic nature of much oftheir material. The group claims that thehumor it brings to its work should liberateit from the latter criticism.

Both Molotov and Control Machete havebeen immensely popular in Mexico, con-tributing songs to the soundtracks of anumber of highly successful recent Mexi-can films, such as Amores perros (Love’s a

Bitch, 2000, with music by Control Ma-chete) and Y tu mamá también (And Your

Mother Too, 2001, with music by Molotov).Molotov also provided the title and title

track for Fernando Sariñana’s blockbusterfilm Todo el poder (All the Power, 1999).These best-selling Mexican rap and hip-hop bands have also garnered a substan-tial following in the United States; culturalexchange at the U.S.-Mexican border con-tinues to flow in both directions. Molotovand Control Machete have both toured theUnited States and Europe, and Molotovhas toured with bands such as REM andMetallica. A number of critics considerthat the fusion of Latin American musicalstyles with rap and hip-hop seen in thework of these two groups is the way for-ward for popular music in general.

—Thea Pitman

See also: Popular Music: Mariachi, Ranchera,Norteña, Tex-Mex; Language: ChicanoSpanish; Popular Cinema: The Mexican Film


Rapper Fat Joe (center) and the Terror Squad perform during the VH1 Hip Hop Honors show,

3 October 2004, in New York City. (Scott Gries/Getty Images)

Industry (Box-Office Successes andContemporary Film in Mexico)

Bibliography

Cruz, Cesar A. 2003. “The Rage of the Youngand the Restless.” Digital Aztlan/Brownpride.com. http.//www.brownpride.com/latinrap/latinrap.asp?a=molotov/index (consulted 1April 2003).

Montes, Richard. 2003. “Hip-hop/Rap.” DigitalAztlan/Brownpride.com. http://www.brownpride.com/latinrap/default.asp(consulted 1 April 2003).

“Raperos mexicanos.” n.d. Digital Aztlan/Brownpride.com. http://www.brownpride.com/latinrap/latinrap.asp?a=mexside/index(consulted 1 April 2003).

Smith, Geri. 2000. “Will Young Rockers ReallyRock the Boat?” Businessweek Online, 26June. http://www.businessweek.com/2000/00_26/c3687167.htm (consulted 8 May 2003).

Mangue Beat

Mangue beat is a new Brazilian musical formthat appeared in the 1990s in the northeast-ern cities of Recife and Olinda. It was popu-larized by the talented Chico Science, whodied in a car crash in 1996. Science (Fran-cisco de Assis França, 1966–1996), broughtup in the suburbs of Olinda, an old colonialtown adjoining Recife, began experimentingwith black music in the 1980s in a variety ofbands, mixing 1960s rock with soul, funk,and hip-hop sounds. He took on the moniker“Chico Science” in order to sell himself asthe “King of Musical Alchemy.” In 1991 hemade contact with a Bloco Afro (Afro-Brazil-ian) Carnival club called Lamento Negro(Black Lament) from the suburbs of Olinda.The club’s regional percussion was mixedwith Chico Science’s black music, and a newband was formed: Nação Zumbi (Zumbi Na-tion). This new style of music was dubbedmangue (in a reference to the swampy landthat surrounds Recife, where many people

live in slums). Mangue beat has a hard, ag-gressive sound that cleverly blends heavyrock with northeastern folkloric music, in-cluding maracatu (an Afro-Brazilian slowprocessional dance form associated withCarnival in Recife) and embolada (an im-provisational musical form with tongue-twisting lyrics, often with a set refrain andusing alliterative words that are difficult topronounce). The band’s debut album, De

lama ao caos (From Mud to Chaos), was re-leased in 1994 to critical acclaim. Chico Sci-ence’s second and final album, Afro-

ciberdelia (1996), was influenced byambient music, rap, funk, and psychedelicguitar as well as by the familiar rhythms ofrock and maracatu and by northeasternbaião (accordion-based folk music, popular-ized in the 1940s by Luiz Gonzaga and backin fashion with Brazil’s urban middle class).The band’s songs were used, to dramatic ef-fect, in the 1997 film set in the backlands ofthe Northeast, Baile perfumado (Perfumed

Ball). Despite Chico Science’s untimelydeath, Nação Zumbi continues to producemusic in its native state of Pernambuco,along with other mangue beat bands such asFred Zero Quatro (Fred Zero Four).


See also: Popular Music: Contemporary UrbanMusic: (Brazilian Rap and Hip-Hop); Popular

Cinema: Youth Movies, Cinema, and Music;Popular Religion and Festivals: PopularFestivals (Carnival in Brazil)

Bibliography



Philadelphia: Temple University Press. “Rádio Piratininga: Especial Chico Science.”

n.d. http://www.winf.com.br/piratininga/historiachico.htm (consulted 10 May 2004).


Rock Music

Although rock music is a musical style andbroader cultural phenomenon born in theUnited States and practiced extensively inthe English-speaking world, its influencecan be felt throughout Latin America. Inthe first instance, in the 1950s and early1960s, Anglo rock music, known either asrocanrol or música rock, became popularin its own right in the region. Subsequently,local English-language covers (a perfor-mance or recording of a work previouslydone by another performer) of Anglo rocksongs were produced, followed by versionsof these same songs in literal and then inmuch freer translations. Gathering impetusfrom the early 1970s onward, local musi-cians have chosen to blend elements of An-glo rock music, such as the electric guitarand the accentuated 4/4 beat, with ele-ments taken from Latin American popularmusic (the immediately identifiable soundsof particular percussion instruments andthe rhythms and harmonies of danzón orcumbia, for example). This music hascome to be known throughout the Spanish-speaking world as rock en español (rock inSpanish).

Because this kind of rock music is ableto blend elements of both Anglo and LatinAmerican cultural traditions and thus toexpress, in both the music and the lyrics, aparticular national cultural identity, it hasalso been called rock nacional (nationalrock music). The conduit for cultural influ-ence has been the existence of the Latino(often Chicano) communities in the UnitedStates, which have themselves frequentlyblended U.S. rock music with elements oftheir cultures of origin to produce such keycrossover figures and acts as RitchieValens, Santana, Jerry García (of the Grate-ful Dead) and Los Lobos.

Throughout its short history, rock musichas been associated with youth culture andthe urban environment, particularly withthe more marginalized, such as the urbanpoor and the chavos banda (gangs). Rockmusic has sought to express the point ofview of this group and has been key in theformation of an urban youth countercul-ture in such countries as Mexico and Ar-gentina. It has had a difficult relationshipwith the establishment in both countries.In the first instance, the influence of Anglo-American music was seen by the establish-ment as a betrayal of local cultural values,even when songs were sung in Spanish.Nevertheless, at key moments both Mexicoand Argentina have endorsed rock en es-

pañol as a national cultural product, pro-ducing a complex relationship of both re-jection and acceptance between the stateand its organs of media diffusion, on theone hand, and the bands and artists them-selves, on the other.

In Mexico, rock music with a substantialemphasis on Anglo culture and on hedo-nism became a notable middle-class youthphenomenon in the 1960s. The adherents ofthis trend were known as jipitecas (Mexi-can hippies). In contrast to the jipitecas

were the more politically radical, and con-sequently less rock-oriented, participants inthe student movement. These two opposingcurrents in Mexican youth culture eventu-ally converged into the movement knownas La Onda (The Wave), which was born asa result of the Mexican government’s re-pression of all forms of youth culture, seenmost clearly in the 1968 massacre of hun-dreds of young people at Tlatelolco Squarein Mexico City. La Onda, although fre-quently condemned by critics for merelytranslating U.S. counterculture to a Mexi-can setting, sponsored the gradual change


from Anglo rock to more socially awareMexican rock nacional or guacarock (a hu-morous reference to the combination of theMexican dip guacamole and rock).

Even though the Mexican governmentdid its best to discourage the imperialistthreat to national culture that was Anglorock music and hippy culture, it was noless censorious of the growth of Mexicanrock music proper, and after permitting thestaging of the Avándaro rock concert in1971 (the Mexican Woodstock) in order togauge the strength of the counterculturalmovement, it clamped down even moreheavily on manifestations of youth culturein the aftermath. Mexican rock music thusretreated to the working-class neighbor-hoods of the big cities, to the hoyos fon-

quis (the underground clubs), until guac-arock was reborn in the 1980s, stimulatedby the spontaneous mobilization of largesectors of the urban working classes afterthe devastating 1985 Mexico City earth-quake. Groups and acts that date from thisearly period in Mexican rock are Rock-drigo, Botellita de Jerez, and Three Souls inMy Mind (this last band is almost a nationalinstitution in present-day Mexico and isknown affectionately as El Tri).

In recent years the massive and conserva-tive media conglomerate Televisa, which hasstrong allegiances to the Mexican govern-ment, has tried to manipulate the popular ap-peal of rock music by sponsoring certainpop-rock bands and singers such as Los Tim-birichi, Alejandra Guzmán, and transnationalpop icons Thalía and Gloria Trevi. Neverthe-less, some groups—such as Caifanes, CaféTacuba, Maldita Vecindad, Los de Abajo, andPlastilina Mosh—have managed to achievemassive success via such routes yet retaintheir countercultural edge. Evident, too, inthe work of these groups is the radical blend

of cultural influences: Caifanes had a big hitin the 1980s with “La negra Tomasa,” a rockversion of a traditional cumbia. MalditaVecindad is known for blending mambo,danzón, ska, rap, and rhythm and blueswithin any one song. Most recently the com-bination of rap and hip-hop with Mexicanrock nacional has become popular in thework of the band Molotov.

Argentine rock music has come to oc-cupy the same (urban) space and to per-form a social function (that of creating asense of solidarity among the marginalizedsectors of society) similar to that of Ar-gentina’s most identifiable popular musicalform, the tango, in the first half of the twen-tieth century. It is no surprise, then, that thefirst key figure in Argentine rock musicwent by the name of Tanguito. Tanguito wasa marginal, ephemeral figure who startedtranslating Anglo rock songs into Spanish(and composing a few of his own) in the late1960s. Under the military dictatorship(1976–1985), all forms of community andmass gatherings were repressed, and Argen-tine youth was specifically targeted for re-pression because it was considered innatelysubversive. Thus, rock music was censoredand concerts were banned. Nevertheless,the rock magazine Expreso imaginario

(The Imaginary Express) managed to keepup publication during the worst years of re-pression, and this helped rock music to sur-vive and indeed to flourish as the vehicle forthe expression of countercultural valuesand specific opposition to the regime.

During the Falklands/Malvinas War(1982), however, the Argentine governmentbanned the dissemination of English-lan-guage music and hence favored Argentinerock nacional despite its oppositionalstance. Although many musicians cautiouslybenefited from this increased dissemination


of their work, their audiences were attentiveto the relationship between artist and au-thority, and those thought to have compro-mised their integrity in this way were ac-cused of being transa (sellouts). It is also forthis reason that so many Argentine rockbands broke up once they started to achievemass appeal, and the most important Argen-tine rock musicians are best identified byname rather than by the many bands inwhich they played. Key figures here areCharly García, León Gieco, and Luis AlbertoSpinetta. The kind of rock favored by thesemusicians was progressive rock, with stronglinks to U.S. folk music (Bob Dylan, PeteSeeger, and so on) and to protest songs ingeneral. The resultant music was rarelydanceable and was appreciated more for itslyrics than for its upbeat tempo. Argentinerock music has continued to blend culturalcurrents, exploring its relationship with thetango (see, for example, García’s albumsTango, 1985, and Tango 4, 1991) and withArgentina’s other forms of popular music(see Gieco’s work with Argentinean folk mu-sicians on De Ushuaia a La Quiaca, From

Ushuaia to La Quiaca, 1985).Rock music has continued to be an im-

portant forum for youth culture in Ar-gentina in the years since the end of the dic-tatorship. Many of the older artists, such asGarcía, Spinetta, Fito Páez, and groupssuch as Virus and Patricio Rey y sus Re-donditos de Ricota (Patricio Rey and HisChubby Friends from Ricota), have contin-ued to produce interesting work. As haveMexican rock groups, other Argentine rockgroups, such as Soda Stéreo and Los Enani-tos Verdes (The Little Green Dwarves),have achieved mass appeal and interna-tional dissemination by media conglomer-ates; their reputations within the world ofrock culture have subsequently suffered.

Newcomers to the rock scene who haveachieved critical acclaim include rappersIllya Kuryaki and The Valderramas.

In Brazil, rock nacional coexists com-fortably alongside so-called Música PopularBrasileira (MPB, Brazilian Popular Music),foreign rock music (especially from theUnited States, Britain, and Ireland), andother popular forms such as hip-hop andsamba-reggae. By far the most successfulrock band to come out of Latin Americawas the Brazilian (but Phoenix, Arizona–based) “death metal” group Sepultura(Grave), which enjoyed considerable inter-national success in the late 1980s and1990s. Despite singing in English and thusidentifying strongly with their internationalfan base, Sepultura’s music was concernedwith Brazilian history and culture. For ex-ample, the 1996 album Roots, with its Afro-Brazilian percussion, dealt with the decima-tion of Brazil’s Amerindian populations andthe horrors of the slave trade. The band’sfounder, Max Cavalera, left in 1997 to formSoulfly, a band with musical aspirationssimilar to those of Sepultura, which alsodelves into Brazilian themes and rhythms.

—Thea Pitman and

Stephanie Dennison

See also: Popular Music: ContemporaryUrban Music (Mexican Rap and Hip-Hop);Cumbia; Danzón; Mambo; Nueva Canción;Tango; Transnational Pop Icons

Bibliography

Agustín, José. 1996. “Rock mexicano.” Pp. 111–116 in La contracultura en

México: La historia y el significado de los

rebeldes sin causa, los jipitecas, los

punks, y las bandas. Mexico City: Grijalbo.“Encyclopedia del rock argentino.” n.d. Website

del rock argentino. http://www.rock.com.ar(consulted 20 May 2003) [in Spanish].


“Historia del rock argentino” n.d. http://www.rockeros-argentinos.com.ar/paghistorock.htm (consulted 13 May 2003) [in Spanish].

Lipsitz, George. 1992. “Chicano Rock: Cruisingaround the Historical Bloc.” Pp. 267–279 inRockin’ the Boat: Mass Music and Mass

Movements, edited by Reebee Garofalo.Boston: South End.

Martínez, Rubén. 1993. “Corazón del rocanrol.”Pp. 150–165 in The Other Side: Notes from

the New L.A., Mexico City, and Beyond.

New York: Vintage.Monteleone, Jorge. 2002. “Figuras de la pasión

rockera: Ensayo sobre rock argentino.”Everba. http://www.everba.org/summer02/figuras_jorge.htm (consulted 13 May 2003)[in Spanish].

Morales, Ed. n.d. “Rock Is Dead and Living inMexico: The Resurrection of La NuevaOnda.” Rockeros Website. http://www.rockeros.com/tidbit/rockmex.htm (consulted13 May 2003).

Vila, Pablo. 1992. “Rock Nacional andDictatorship in Argentina.” Pp. 209–229 inRockin’ the Boat: Mass Music and Mass

Movements, edited by Reebee Garofalo.Boston: South End.

Zolov, Eric. 1999. Refried Elvis: The Rise of

Mexican Counterculture. Berkeley and LosAngeles: University of California Press.

Tecnocumbia

“Tecnocumbia” refers to recent reworkingsof the cumbia genre that combine this tra-ditionally Colombian folk music, which ex-presses local and national themes, withother musical forms from countries suchas Argentina and Peru to give rise to a vari-ety of musical hybrids.

Young Argentinean groups such as LosPibes Chorros (The Thieving Lads) andYerba Brava (The Wild Weed) have adaptedtraditional formats, transforming the oftenromantic content of cumbia into a socialprotest and description of harsh reality.This new style of cumbia, known variouslyas cumbia gangsta, hard cumbia, or cumbia

villera (slum cumbia), arose in the suburbsof Buenos Aires. It reworks both the con-tent and style of traditional cumbia. Interms of content, the lyrics are pepperedwith street slang and focus on social is-sues, often dealt with in uncompromisingterms. The changes to the style and soundof the music have come about throughcombining the cumbia rhythm with ele-ments from reggae, rap, and hip-hop,among others. Such bands have gainedfans in Chile, Paraguay, and Uruguay.

Modern urban versions of cumbia havealso been developed extensively in Peru andhave come to form what is now classified astecnocumbia. This music draws on a varietyof influences, including Tex-Mex music, therhythms of Brazilian music (especially thatof Manaus), Bolivian saya, merengue, andthe so-called música chicha, itself a hybridof Colombian cumbia and Andean music.This music mixes the more traditionalsounds of Peruvian cumbia with synthesiz-ers and keyboards, which have come to playa major role in the music. Tecnocumbia,which arose in the mid-1990s, is popularboth in Lima and in the provinces, and itsforemost exponent is Rosa Guerra Morales,or Rossy War, as she is better known. Warhas been called the “Queen of Tec-nocumbia,” and her first album, Como la

flor (Like a Flower, 1995), brought her hitswith the songs “Te acuerdas de mí” (“YouRemember Me”) and the title song “Como laflor.” War is one of Peru’s best-sellingsingers, and her music has also gained pop-ularity outside Peru. She has played acrossmuch of Latin America, including Chile, Bo-livia, Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela.

—Claire Taylor

See also: Popular Music: ContemporaryUrban Music (Mexican Rap and Hip-Hop);


Cumbia; Mariachi, Ranchera, Norteña, Tex-Mex; Merengue

Bibliography

Moss, Chris. 2002. “The People Will Be Heard.”Guardian, 4 October. http://www.guardian.co.uk/arts/fridayreview/story/0,12102,803625,00.html (consulted 7 October 2002).

Transnational Pop Icons

A number of contemporary Latin Americansingers and musicians have become house-hold names outside their countries of ori-gin, often even outside their cultural andlinguistic borders. In some cases artistshave adapted traditional musical styles,such as by smoothing stylistic raw edges,censoring content in order to become ac-ceptable abroad, or incorporating musicalstyles already globally popular into new fu-sions. The linguistic aspect is also crucial,and several artists have recorded in En-glish and other languages so as to pene-trate wider markets.

Mexican-U.S. border culture has beenvery important in the emergence oftransnational pop icons. The most promi-nent exponents of Tex-Mex music, theMexican accordionist Flaco Jiménez andNorth American guitarist Ry Cooder, havein turn inspired other artists to experimentwith new forms of cultural fusion, withex–Talking Heads veteran David Byrne andChicano rock band Los Lobos among thosealso dabbling in the genre. However, themost prominent artist springing from theU.S. Latino community, at least in terms ofrecord sales, is surely Texas-born Selena(1971–1995), whose album Amor pro-

hibido (Forbidden Love) achieved quadru-ple platinum in 1994. Selena helped Tejano

music spread beyond the cultural and eth-nic confines of the southeastern U.S.Latino community and rendered it mar-ketable on a world scale. Selena is remark-able not only for her huge success and thenear-deification that followed her murderin 1994 but also for bringing U.S. Latinoculture into Mexico on a scale previouslyunimaginable and for breaking down thesuspicion and scorn with which U.S.-basedartists were often seen south of the border.Another crossover artist, Cuban-born Glo-ria Estefan, represents another U.S. Latinocommunity. Her band, Miami Sound Ma-chine, which came to prominence in thelate 1970s, attracted Anglo audiences bytempering its original raw salsa with a ro-mantic element. She has remained success-ful, recording in Spanish, Portuguese, andEnglish with an eye to satisfying the fullspectrum of her fan base without overlycompromising her musical roots.

Cooder and Byrne, always with an eyeto the World Music market, have sepa-rately explored Latin America’s musicalheritage. Some of the results have beencollaborations, such as Cooder’s foray intoCuba and his famous “rediscovery” of sur-vivors from the pre-revolutionary night-club scene. Wim Wenders’s documentaryBuena Vista Social Club (1999) famouslyrecords the musical and personal interac-tions between classic exponents of bolero,son, guaracha, and other Cuban genres, onthe one hand, and their intrepid “savior,”Cooder, on the other. This film’s massivesuccess relaunched the careers of suchartists as Compay Segundo, RubénGonzález, Omara Portuondo, and IbrahímFerrer. Meanwhile, Byrne has producednumerous albums in collaboration withLatin American artists, most notablyNaked (1988) and Rei Momo (1989), as


well as many compilations of music fromBrazil, Cuba, and Peru.

A Peruvian artist who has benefited fromexposure to an international audience isthe singer Susana Baca, whose music fol-lows the traditions of her African heritage.The coastal Afro-Peruvian landó song form,which draws upon both African and Span-ish traditions, was made socially accept-able by the efforts of white singer ChabucaGranda in the 1960s and was subsequentlypopularized by such artists as Eva Ayllón,Andrés Soto, and Tania Libertad. Baca, whoacted as Granda’s personal assistant forsome years, is notable for continuing thesetraditions while making careful innovationsbased on contact with Latin American andother musical forms. Her 2001 album Es-

píritu vivo (Live Spirit), recorded in NewYork, brings in a number of influences pre-viously unseen in her work, including mate-

rial by Caetano Veloso, Björk, and Cubanpercussionist Mongo Santamaría.

An altogether more overtly commercialartist is Thalía, who made her name in te-lenovelas in her native Mexico but hassince become a successful pop singer whocommands the affection of a wide audi-ence. Cheerfully deploying her sexualityand benefiting from a slick publicity ma-chine, Thalía is nonetheless a respectedand genuinely popular professional whohas made a name across not only LatinAmerica and the United States but also inEurope. Despite her recent moves towardcrossover, she is seen as an essentiallyMexican artist. Other Mexican stars havingenjoyed similar success include LuisMiguel (born in Puerto Rico of an Italianmother and Spanish father), whose careerhas spanned more than two decades, dur-ing which he has moved from pop to


Cuban group Buena Vista Social Club (right to left): Amadito Valdés, Barbarito López, Ibrahím Ferrer,

Eliades Ochoa, Omara Portuondo, Guajiro Maribal, Pio Leyva, and Cachaito López, during a press

conference in Mexico City on 20 May 2002. (Henry Romero/Reuters/Corbis)

boleros. The romantic image associatedwith this artist’s good looks and impas-sioned delivery has been crucial to his en-during prominence and to his winning astring of international awards. Mexicansinger-songwriter Juan Gabriel has alsoachieved international fame, without thechildhood advantages Luis Miguel’s showbusiness upbringing brought him. Indeed,Juan Gabriel’s troubled early life in Mi-choacán and Ciudad Juárez is legendaryand has ultimately enhanced his image asan artist who, being the product of a disad-vantaged background and true to his roots,embodies all senses of the word “popular.”

A singer-songwriter who blends tradi-tional forms with entirely modern sensibili-

ties is Lila Downs. Her music proclaims hermanifold cultural heritage, not just a Mexi-can-U.S. double heritage but a combinationof her mother’s indigenous roots and thoseof her white North American father. Herwork reflects a life shared among ruralOaxaca (one of the Mexican states in whichnative culture is strongest), California,Mexico City, and Wisconsin. Downs is ableto sing in Mixtec, Nahuatl, and Zapotec aswell as in Spanish and English, and shedoes so as a declaration of pride and cul-tural affirmation. Her use of rural nativedress invites comparisons with FridaKahlo, comparisons that were strengthenedby her appearance in the film Frida (2002).Of her two albums to date, Árbol de la vida


Peruvian singer Susana Baca performs during the OFF-Fest four-day music festival held in the

Macedonian capital Skopje, 6 June 2004. (Robert Atanasovski/AFT/Getty Images)

(Tree of Life, 1999) is closer to indigenoustradition; La línea (The Border, 2001) is acollection of songs taken from all theabove-mentioned traditions to make up apowerful statement on the problems of theMexican-U.S. border.

The Puerto Rican singer Ricky Martin iscredited with bringing Latin pop into themainstream. Enrique Morales IV (known asKiki to his close friends) was born in 1971in San Juan, the capital of Puerto Rico.From an early age he took an interest inperforming, trying out for Menudo, a kid-die-pop band based in Puerto Rico, and

eventually being offered a place in thegroup two years later. Menudo went on todominate the teen music market all overLatin America, including Brazil (where itreleased records in Portuguese and inad-vertently caused riots at its live shows), aswell as the Latino music market in theUnited States. After five years with theband, Ricky tried and failed to launch asolo career in New York. He then moved toMexico, where he took part in musicalsand telenovelas and secured a record dealwith Sony. He released a self-titled albumin 1992, followed by Me amarás (You Will

Love Me, 1993), A medio vivir (Half Alive,

1995), and Vuelve (Come Back, 1998). HisSpanish-language album sales reached astaggering thirty million. Meanwhile, he


Singer Lila Downs participates in the American

Civil Liberties Union’s Freedom Concert at

Avery Fisher Hall, 4 October 2004, in New York

City. (Matthew Peyton/Getty Images)

Ricky Martin arrives at the premiere of Cold

Mountain in Los Angeles, California,

7 December 2003. (Frank Trapper/Corbis)

tried his luck again in 1994 in the UnitedStates, taking a role in the daytime soapopera General Hospital and singing onBroadway. By the release of his fourth al-bum (Vuelve) in 1998, he was beginning toget noticed beyond the Latin American andLatino market (the single “Maria,” for ex-ample, was a big summer hit in clubs in theUnited States and in the holiday resorts ofEurope). Also taken from that album was“The Cup of Life,” the signature tune to the1998 football (soccer) World Cup finalsheld in France. As with most Latino singingstars, it was not until Ricky released hisfirst English-language album (Ricky Mar-

tin) in 1999 and gave an electrifying per-formance at the 1999 Grammy Awards (hislive shows are always dazzling affairs) thathe broke into the U.S. market (his albumwent straight to number one on the Bill-board Charts). He was on the cover ofTime magazine in the same week that hisalbum was released. Ricky Martin is sixfeet two inches tall, lean and chisel-jawed,with pale skin and blond-highlighted hair.On stage he is known for his sexy gyratinghips, but in fact he sticks to a very limitedrange of dance moves. His music is astraightforward blend of U.S. pop and non-specific Latin American rhythms, with theodd reference in Spanish thrown into thechorus (see, for example, the single “Livin’La Vida Loca,” which made him a house-hold name). His looks, moves, and songsthus offer a familiar, easily absorbed, andsafe version of Latin American culture forAnglos in the United States and for middle-of-the-road music listeners elsewhere(Ricky has a huge following in Russia, forexample). Ricky followed up the successof Ricky Martin with a second English-lan-guage album, Sound Loaded (2000), whichincluded the hit single “She Bangs” and a

duet performed with another singer ofLatin American origin, Cristina Aguilera,entitled “Nobody Wants to Be Lonely.”

Despite his high-profile on-off relation-ship with Mexican TV presenter Rebeccade Alba, the international press has de-lighted in debating Ricky’s sexuality. Likepre-outed George Michael, Ricky refuses tobe drawn on the subject. Keeping his fansguessing has helped ensure a large follow-ing of both teenage girls and gay men. Hehas not been quite so successful at avoid-ing controversy in other areas of his life,however. He was sued by his former man-ager in 2004 and was said to have alienatedhis one-time songwriter-producer RobiDraco Rosa by his participation in theopening ceremony of George W. Bush’spresidential inauguration, which Rosa feltwas a betrayal of what every Puerto Ricanshould stand for. He did, however, turndown the chance to star alongside JenniferLopez in a remake of West Side Story, fear-ing the film would promote negativestereotypes of Puerto Ricans.

The diminutive Colombian singer-song-writer Shakira (Shakira Isabel MebarakRipoll) is one of the most successful LatinAmerican artists on the international stagein recent years. Born in 1977 in Barranquilla,an industrial city with a population of onemillion located on the Caribbean coast, to aColombian mother and Lebanese father, hermeteoric rise to fame outside of Colombia(she has been a superstar there since shewas a teenager) coincided with a boom ininterest in all things Latino in the U.S. enter-tainment industry. Like Ricky Martin, hermusical style can be described as a mixtureof Latin rhythms and stadium rock, but un-like Ricky, she has been able to garner a cer-tain credibility with the international musicpress by writing her own material; playing


guitar, harmonica, and drums; and occasion-ally voicing controversial views, such as herantiwar stance during her U.S. and Britishtour of 2003. According to good friend,Boom writer, and fellow Colombian GabrielGarcía Márquez, her success is partly due tothe fact that she is hardworking, very deter-mined, and completely focused on her musi-cal career. She had not even started second-ary school when a record company signedher in her native Colombia, and she releasedher first album in 1990. Like Ricky Martin,before making it really big in the music in-dustry, she made an incursion into theworld of the telenovela, starring in 1992 inthe Colombian production El Oasis (The

Oasis).Shakira moved to Miami, the mecca for

all Latino performers seeking transnational

success, in the mid-1990s. There she madecontact with Gloria and Emilio Estefan.Gloria would be a significant influence onShakira’s songwriting from then on. Herfourth album, Donde están los ladrones?

(Where Are the Thieves?, 1998), sold well inLatin America and in the Latino market inNorth America. The musical influences onthe album are heavy rock, mariachi, andLebanese music. After the album’s successand on the eve of the launch of her interna-tional career, Shakira dyed her hair blondeand began to use thick eyeliner, eliciting theinevitable comparisons to other young star-lets such as Britney Spears and ChristinaAguilera (and alienating some of her home-grown fans). Her first album in English,Laundry Service, was recorded on a farmin Uruguay and released in 2001. It sold two


Colombian pop star Shakira performs at El Campin stadium in Bogota, 12 March 2003. Shakira sang

songs from her English-language album Laundry Service for the first time in Colombia. (Daniel

Munoz/Reuters/Corbis)

million copies in the United States alone.The first single from the album, “Whenever,Wherever,” went to number one in manycountries. The song featured Andean pan-pipes and a pop-rock chorus, and the ac-companying video included some obliga-tory belly dancing to remind fans of herMiddle Eastern roots. On Laundry Service,

the singer notably toned down the stridentquality of her voice, which had until thensounded like a cross between ululating andthe mock-Irish warbling of Dolores O’Rior-dan of The Cranberries.

As Shakira’s international career was be-ing carefully forged, she was conducting avery high-profile relationship with AntonioDe La Rua, the lawyer son of ex–Argentinepresident Fernando De La Rua (the single“Underneath Your Clothes” from Laundry

Service was written about her famousboyfriend). The jet-set Latin American cou-ple faced considerable criticism for theirflashy lifestyle after the economic crash inArgentina in 2001.

—Keith Richards and

Stephanie Dennison

See also: Popular Music: Bolero; Mariachi,Ranchera, Norteña, Tex-Mex; Salsa; Popular

Literature: The Boom; Mass Media:

Telenovela; Popular Cinema: Youth Movies,

Cinema, and Music; Visual Arts and

Architecture: Art (Frida Kahlo)

Bibliography

Adams, Rachel. 2002. “Shakira.” Ch. 3 in “GreatFemale Singers of Our Time and Place,” MAthesis, University of Manchester.

Bethell, Leslie, ed. 1998. A Cultural History of

Latin America: Literature, Music, and the

Visual Arts in the 19th and 20th Centuries.

Cambridge and New York: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Clark, Walter Aaron, ed. 2002. From Tejano to

Tango: Latin American Popular Music. NewYork: Routledge.

Furman, Elina. 1999. Ricky Martin. New York:St. Martin’s.

García Márquez, Gabriel. 2002. “The Poet andthe Princess.” Guardian Weekend, 8 June,16–19.

Patterson, John. 1999. “Spanglish Made Easy.”London Guardian, 3 June.

Peña, Manuel H. 1999. The Mexican American

Orquesta: Music, Culture, and the Dialectic

of Conflict. Austin: University of Texas Press.Ricky Martin Official Website. http://www.

rickymartin.com (consulted 30 August 2003).Roberts, John S. 1998. The Latin Tinge: The

Impact of Latin American Music on the

United States. 2nd ed. New York: OxfordUniversity Press.

San Miguel, Guadalupe. 2002. Tejano Proud:

Tex-Mex Music in the Twentieth Century.

College Station: Texas A&M UniversityPress.


3Popular Social Movements

and Politics

Popular movements in Latin America in the late twentieth century havegenerally been a response to two major phenomena: first, the wave ofmilitary dictatorships that overtook the region between the 1960s and1970s, and second, the imposition of neoliberal economic policies fromthe mid-1980s to the present. Numerous other contributory factors andconsequences have accompanied these phenomena, of course, such asthe inroads made by foreign economic interests after most of the regionachieved independence from Spanish rule in the 1820s. The emergenceof vigorous indigenous movements in several countries must also betaken into account, as must the increasing role in the political process,both formal and otherwise, of women.

Spanish rule had ended in continental Latin America by the thirddecade of the nineteenth century. (The last colony to become indepen-dent, nominally at least, was Cuba in 1898.) The region then came underthe influence of mostly British economic concerns. Argentine beef wasone main British interest, and railways were built to bring the supply tothe port of Buenos Aires, from which tinned meats were sent to theUnited Kingdom. The British exploited nitrates from the Pacific coast ofBolivia (a coastline later taken by Chile) and guano from the Peruviancoast for fertilizer. European governments and companies coveted oildeposits across the region, as did the new emerging power of the UnitedStates. For although the British hand could be seen behind such con-flicts as the War of the Pacific (1879–1883), in which Bolivia and Peruboth lost territory to Chile, and the Chaco War (1932–1935), in whichParaguay took over most of the oil deposits of southeastern Bolivia,Latin America’s northern neighbor was to become far more influential inthe twentieth century, taking a leading role in developing fruit-growingenterprises in the Caribbean region and moving aggressively into re-sources of raw materials elsewhere.

The legacy of Latin America’s colonial past, and its correlate, its neo-colonial and neoliberal present, is a social reality still bereft of the institu-

popular music - bowling green state university

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