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Feb 12, 2019 · The origins of Latin music in the U.S. can be dated back to the early 1930s and 1940s with the rhumba. In the thirties the rhumba became synonymous with Cuban-styled ballroom dance in the U.S., and then in the sixties salsa music, hailing primarily from Cuba and Puerto Rico, came to New York City.
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Latin American music, musical traditions of Mexico, Central America, and the portions of South America and the Caribbean colonized by the Spanish and the Portuguese. These traditions reflect the distinctive mixtures of Native American, African, and European influences that have shifted throughout the region over time.
This article surveys religious, folk, and art (informally, classical) music through time and over the hemisphere. After a brief discussion of the uses of music in preconquest cultures (for further treatment, see Native American music), the narrative turns to how Europeans introduced Iberian church music and began the hybridization of musical practices in both the religious and the folk realms. At the same time, imported art music practices became part of the colonial cultures and were in turn infused with local and regional flavours. By the 21st century various national musical characteristics had asserted themselves in all types of musical practice, while international trends flowed into the regional musical stream as well.
At the time of Christopher Columbus’s first encounter of the “New World” in 1492, numerous indigenous cultures were spread from the northern Mexican mountains to the southern tip of South America and on the Caribbean islands. These cultures ranged from isolated and technologically primitive peoples to highly organized societies with advanced technological knowledge. Little is known about the musical activities or systems of these precolonial civilizations, but available sources do afford glimpses into the roles of music in the most-advanced cultures. These sources include surviving musical instruments, dictionaries of Indian languages compiled by early European missionaries, chronicles written by Europeans of the 16th century, and, for Mesoamerica, a substantial number of pre-Columbian Mexican codices. (A codex is a manuscript in book form.) Some scholars have studied the musical cultures of isolated indigenous communities of the 20th century as a means to understanding the past; although such an approach may be somewhat useful, it is not wise to assume that traditions are continuous and uninfluenced over centuries.
The type of ancient Mesoamerican music that is best-documented is the ritual music of the courts (primarily Aztec and Mayan). Music performance (often allied with dance) is depicted as a large-ensemble activity, in which numerous participants variously play instruments, sing, or dance. The 8th-century murals of the Bonampak temple, for example, show a procession with trumpets, drums, and rattles.
To an extent that is remarkable in light of their numerous differences in other artistic and cultural realms, the different cultures from at least the 8th century to the early 16th century used similar instruments. Drums and wind instruments, primarily flutes, are commonly described in texts and found in artifacts. The teponaztli, a two-key slit drum played with a mallet, and the huehuetl, a single-headed cylindrical upright drum played with bare hands, occupied a special position in Aztec rituals and were considered sacred instruments. Many of the archaeological examples of these drums carry elaborate carvings with glyphs and drawings that reveal symbolically their ritual uses and functions. Comparable instruments served essential functions for the Maya.
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Many flutes from Mesoamerican cultures survive. Among the Aztec they were known generically as tlapizalli. An especially intriguing type of flute found near the Gulf of Mexico coast consists of two, three, or four tubes sounded from a single mouthpiece. Such instruments prove the existence of harmonic possibilities, up to four notes simultaneously, but it is not known how they were used. Ancient Mesoamericans did not develop musical notation, and the Spanish did not transcribe music they heard. Surviving instruments provide some indication of sound quality and pitch but not any precise way of determining scales or melodies.
- Gerard Béhague
We think the answer lies in first describing what it is not: It's not just traditional genres of Latin music (salsa, merengue, cumbia), nor is it American hip-hop, indie or rock. Borders and ...
This chapter traces the consolidation of Latin American music as a category and of Latin America as a musical space since the 1950s, as part of a larger web of commercial, political, diplomatic, and musicological practices and discourses that consolidated the region as such.
Apr 23, 2020 · Tracing the category of Latin American music means dealing with the wider history of the conceptualizations of Latin America as a cultural space, and with its overlapping with those of individual nations, the Western hemisphere, and the world.
The earliest popular Latin American music in the United States came with the rhumba in the early 1930s, followed by calypso in the mid-1940s, mambo in the late 1940s and early 1950s, chachachá and charanga in the mid-1950s, bolero in the late 1950s, and finally boogaloo in the mid-1960s.
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Sep 13, 2022 · The Origins of 7 Key Latin Music Genres. Colonization of the Americas allowed for the melding of European, Indigenous and African sounds—creating some very danceable musical styles. By:...
