Folk and popular music
Regional styles and genres
Latin American folk and popular music comprises numerous musical styles and genres that have emerged over time in specific countries or regions. These styles originate in the indigenous, European, and African heritage of Latin America; the particular combination of influences varies by country, region, and social group.
Hispanic American and Luso-Brazilian folk musics continue to relate to their Iberian heritage. The most pervasive elements of that heritage are the main features of the European musical system: modal and tonal melodies, symmetric melodic contours, tonal harmony, sectional formal structures, and particular types of ensemble combinations and arrangements. Typical traits of Spanish folk song, such as regular two- and four-bar phrases with a repeated structure, prevail in the extensive repertory of Hispanic American vocal and instrumental music.
The most widespread song genres in Hispanic America are the Spanish romance, a ballad type of medieval origin, in a décima (10-line verse) or copla (couplet) literary structure; the song duel that gave rise to the desafio (“challenge”), contrapunto (poetry contest), and porfía (“dispute”); the generic son; the amatory tonada; and children’s songs. The traditional Spanish villancicos have developed into many Christmas song genres, including the aguinaldo (carol), adoración, and coplas de Navidad (Christmas couplets). Iberian work song genres, particularly those associated with farming, found their suitable place in many Latin American rural communities. Types of ballads are the Mexican, Central American, and Chilean corrido; the Cuban punto guajiro (peasant song); and the coplas and romances of various nations. The vast repertory of the canción, found with many different regional names, tends to have a lyrical, romantic character.
By far the most numerous genres are combinations of song and dance. Nearly all of the major national genres follow this format. Examples are the son of Mexico and of Cuba, the merengue of the Dominican Republic, the plena of Puerto Rico, the bambuco of Colombia, the joropo of Venezuela, the pasillo of Ecuador, the huayno and marinera of Peru, the cueca of Bolivia and of Chile, the tango-canción of Argentina and its Uruguayan counterpart, and the samba of Brazil.
Mestizo musics of either Indian-Hispanic or Afro-Iberian traditions exhibit their own stylistic idiosyncrasies. For example, mestizo music of the Andean regions is strongly influenced by Quechua descending pentatonic melodies and by characteristic two-beat rhythmic patterns. Call-and-response patterns characterize Afro-Iberian styles; other aspects of those styles include syncopated melodies and accompaniments, driving rhythms, complex polyrhythmic textures, and extensive improvisation.
Although the indigenous cultures used numerous percussion and wind instruments, stringed instruments arrived with the colonists. The rich Iberian tradition of stringed instruments—guitar and guitarlike instruments, lute, mandolin, harp, and violin—spread rapidly through all of Latin America. Yet in practice these instruments respond to different aesthetic outlooks. In the Andean area, for example, the common charango is a lutelike or guitarlike instrument of five courses of multiple strings, frequently with a body made of an armadillo shell; it sounds quite differently among Indians, who use thin metal strings, and mestizos, who use nylon strings. The Spanish classical guitar and the Portuguese viola (a guitarlike instrument with five courses of double strings, as a rule) have become the characteristic folk instruments of Hispanic America and Brazil, respectively. The berimbau, a type of musical bow, probably of African origin, became the foundation of music for the Brazilian capoeira. Combinations of instruments in ensemble performance frequently integrate the tri-ethnic heritage, as, for example, in the Guatemalan ensemble of chirimía, marimba (of African origin), and Mayan drum (tun or tunkul).
As mentioned above, Indian cultures throughout Latin America created numerous wind instruments, many of them flutes. Most of the flutes are single-pipe vertical flutes with either whistle-type (e.g., the pincollos of the Inca) or end-notched (e.g., the Andean quena) mouthpieces. Whistles and ocarinas are also found throughout Latin America. Folk and popular music traditions continue to use numerous types of panpipes (for example, the sicuris of the Aymara people, the antaras of the Quechua, and the zampoña of mestizo Andean musicians), with varying numbers of pipes in single or double rows. (See flute for more-detailed descriptions of vertical flutes, ocarinas, whistles, and panpipes.) Natural trumpets (such as the clarín of indigenous Peruvians and the trutruka of the Mapuche of Argentina and Chile) also represent another native contribution to contemporary instrumentation.
Throughout the colonial period, European influences continued to be felt as more instruments and ensembles were introduced to Latin America. Single- and double-reed woodwinds—for example, the chirimía (a Spanish folk oboe)—appear in many countries and in various ensemble combinations. Military-style brass bands became popular in the 19th century and developed into the common town band (banda del pueblo) used for civic occasions. Brass instruments and woodwinds are incorporated into various band arrangements among mestizo and Indian communities (as, for example, in the fiestas of the Purépecha of Michoacán, Mexico), as well as in a wide array of urban popular dance music. The European accordion, introduced in the second half of the 19th century, became an authentic folk and popular instrument in many Latin American and Caribbean genres, among them the Texan-Mexican conjunto, the Mexican norteño polka, the Colombian vallenato, the Brazilian baião and forró, and the Argentine cuarteto. The button accordion known as the bandoneón is one of the primary instruments of the tango of Argentina and Uruguay.
Latin American music is particularly characterized by its prominent use of percussion instruments. Each of the major traditions contributed percussion instruments that remained in common use. The indigenous cultures had slit drums, single-headed small drums, cup-shaped ceramic drums, double-headed drums (e.g., bombos), and a great variety of shaken rattles (maracas), scrapers, and stamping tubes.
Instruments of African derivation constitute the largest group of percussion instruments in Latin American use. Afro-Cuban religious music retains the batá drums of the Yoruba of Nigeria, as well as several types and sizes of conga drums (including the quinto drum of the rumba) and the larger tumbadora. In most Afro-Caribbean and Afro-Latin American traditional religions, drums are considered sacred instruments and undergo a rite of passage (“baptism”) to sacralize them. Conga-type drums (cone-shaped) and barrel-shaped drums are found with regional names in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, and Brazil. Other typical drums include certain friction drums used in various folk and popular dance genres (e.g., Brazilian cuíca, Venezuelan furruco) and the bongos (two joined small drums of different sizes) of Cuba and Puerto Rico.
Many other percussion instruments are also of African origin. A large number of scrapers were adapted to regional use, including the Cuban güiro, Colombian carrasca, Brazilian reco-reco, and many others. These join with bells, stamping tubes, wood blocks, claves (hardwood sticks struck together), and various types of rattles to form part of numerous ensembles. A large and deep-sounding version of the African mbira or sansa (“thumb piano”) is found in the Caribbean, where it is known as the marímbula. The marimba of southern Mexico, Guatemala, and other Central American countries, as well as the Pacific coastal region of Colombia, is of African origin and fulfills a solo or accompaniment function in specific local genres.
The most widespread European-derived percussion instruments are the bass drum, the snare drum, and various types of tambourines, such as the Brazilian adufo and the pandereta (both without jingles); the pandereta is especially significant in the Puerto Rican plena, a narrative song genre. The pipe and tabor combination in indigenous music making frequently consists of a large European type of bass drum and a small flute of Indian derivation.
The genres of Latin American and Caribbean urban popular music that developed in the 20th century incorporated musical instruments of all three traditions, most often European string, woodwind, brass, and keyboard melodic instruments supported by Indian or African-derived harmonic and rhythmic instruments.