Indigenous, African, and Vernacular Traditions

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LEARNING OBJECTIVES

Be ready to:

- Analyze selected works of different styles and genres from a broadly representative geographical range to examine how Latin American concert music has been understood in the international musical community.
- Examine the music of select indigenous peoples of South America.
- Analyze the impact by European colonial powers to expunge South American indigenous languages, music, and religious practices.
- Examine the musical impact of African slaves on the music of South America, such as call and response, the use of percussion instruments, and capoeira (an elaborately choreographed martial art), to name a few.
- Identify indigenous composers who were trained by the missionaries, such as the early nineteenth-century composer Manuel Dias de Oliveira (1764-1837), who synthesized European musical styles in music such as the samba, samba-reggae, and bossa nova.
- Examine how Latin American vernacular music, such as the Brazilian bossa nova or the Colombian cumbia, has been used to mark holidays, enliven repetitive or physically demanding work, celebrate national identity, and express other aspects of the human condition.
- Analyze Latin American concert music, the impact of Hollywood on it, and how protest songs, corridos, and operas based on the tumultuous history of Latin America inspired both North and South American composers.

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References

Latin American Composers on the World Stage (Continued)

Gabriela Ortiz Torres, also Mexican, studied with Mario Lavista as well as in London. She has written for piano, small ensembles, and orchestra, and, starting in the 1990s, began composing electro-acoustic music, that is, music that uses some electronic element. In Things Like that Happen, for cello solo and tape, the "natural" sounds of the cello interact with Ortiz's electronic manipulation of these same sounds, played back on the tape. Another electro-acoustic piece is El Trompo (The Spinning Top), which, as the composer explains, is "open to" influences such as Latin jazz, salsa, and mambo without drawing on any of these in an obvious way. She has worked with the adventuresome string quartet, the Kronos Quartet.

Altar de Muertos by Gabriela Ortiz Torres, performed by the Kronos Quartet

Other important women composers are Diana Fernández Calvo and Marta Lambertini of Argentina, Tania León of Cuba, and Gabriela Lena Frank, who was born in Berkeley, California to a Peruvian mother and a Jewish-American father. Her music combines indigenous Peruvian music and Jewish cantorial singing, as shown in her orchestral work of 2003, An American in Perú.

Diana Fernández Calvo

Marta Lambertini

Tania León

Gabriela Lena Frank

Other Latin American composers of note include Claudio Santoro (1919-1989) of Brazil, who composed instrumental music in traditional genres, such as the symphony and the string quartet. In Venezuela, Paul Desenne (born 1959) has written many imaginative works, some of which address musical memory. Andrés Posada, born in Colombia in 1954, has had his chamber music performed at Carnegie Hall, the renowned concert hall in New York City, and has been active at the Latin American Music Center at Indiana University. Founded by the Chilean composer Juan Orrego-Salas in 1961, the Center promotes Latin American concert music and holds a wealth of scores and other materials. Universities are important patrons of contemporary music, and have done much to foster an international environment for music of the Americas.

Claudio Santoro

Paul Desenne

Andrés Posada

Juan Orrego-Salas

Conclusion

We have seen how different voices in Latin American history-indigenous, African, vernacular-have merged in concert music. We have also observed how some vernacular genres, such as the Brazilian bossa nova or the Colombian cumbia, have been enjoyed far from their points of origin. Interest in Latin dances in the U.S. has prompted some to consider all Latin American music light, catchy, and dance-worthy. Hollywood movies, especially those from the 1930s and 40s with flashy dance numbers, have contributed to this lopsided perception. As we have seen, this is hardly the case. Protest songs, corridos, and operas based on the tumultuous history of Latin America offer a depth to Latin American music that North American composers have been inspired by. Moreover, several non-Latin American composers of concert music have been inspired by Latin dances in highly original ways. The Russian composer Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971), for example, wrote several tangos in a sharp, modern musical language that only remotely resembles the Argentine dance. Composers from the United States, such as Aaron Copland (1900-1990), George Gershwin (1898-1937), and Morton Gould (1913-1996) all "went Latin" as well, sometimes retaining the bright, accessible quality of dance music and sometimes offering a more complex reading. Clearly, Latin American music is ripe for any number of re-interpretations. Even if many Latin American composers today are taking a markedly internationalist stance, others draw on their own heritage. In sum, the Latin American musical panorama, with its rich contrasts and seemingly endless variety, will continue to delight audiences all over the world.

"Your emperor may be a great prince; I do not doubt it, seeing that he has sent his subjects so far across the waters; and I am willing to treat him as a brother. As for your pope of whom you speak, he must be mad to speak of giving away countries that do not belong to him. As for my faith, I will not change it. Your own God, as you tell me, was put to death by the very men He created. But my God still looks down on His children."

-Atahualpa, Inca Chief

"After seeing the ruins at Machu Picchu, the fabulous cultures of antiquity seemed to be made of cardboard, Papier-mâché…"

-Pablo Neruda, 1954

String instruments did not exist in the Peru region prior to the Spanish conquest

Smithsonian Folkways