Cumbia serves as a unifier of Mexican people, especially families, and serves as a sociocultural outlet for celebration and upholds cultural traditions. A main theme of Mexican culture is togetherness of the family, and many celebrations create a community and place for family involvement. Celebrating together creates and maintains bonds and is an outlet for expression sharing commonalities such as cultural thoughts and ideas. Solidifying a connection in the community with people that listen to cumbia strengthens the culture and forms unity. Mexican cumbia is a significant aspect of Mexican identity and produces a gateway environment for embracing heritage and reflects a highly family and community oriented culture. Cumbia originated in the coastal region of Colombia in the early 1800’s. There were three predominant cultures in Colombia at that time: the indigenous peoples, the Spaniards, and the African slaves. The cumbia began with the essential instrumentation of the tambor drums and the gaita flutes, which derive from both indigenous and Congo-based African roots. The genre was entertainment for the slaves, beginning as a courtship dance. It later became an outlet for national resistance and protest as Colombia was contesting for its independence. The music was able to diffuse throughout the nation, spreading from the coast, primarily for the reason that many African populations were scattered in various regions. Barranquilla, a port city in Colombia, was the core of where the music became established and played for the masses, and where instruments such as horns and bass began to be incorporated into cumbia, giving it a more Latin feel. As cumbia evolved and spread to Mexico around the 1930’s, it changed from the influence o... ... middle of paper ... ...n the Twentieth Century. College Station, TX: Texas A&M Univ., 2002. Print. Morales, Ed. The Latin Beat: The Rhythms and Roots of Latin Music from Bossa Nova to Salsa and Beyond. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Da Capo, 2003. Print. Peña, Manuel H. "Ritual Structure in a Chicano Dance." University of Texas Press: Latin American Music Review Spring- Summer 1980 1.1 (1980): 47-73. Print. Ragland, Cathy. "Mexican Deejays and the Transnational Space of Youth Dances in New York and New Jersey." University of Illinois Press: Ethnomusicology. Autumn 2003 47.3 (2003): 338-53. Print. Ragland, Cathy. Música Norteña: Mexican Migrants Creating a Nation between Nations. Philadelphia, PA: Temple UP, 2009. Print. Wisner, Heather. “With a Hop, A Kick, And A Turn, Cumbia Enters the Global Stage.” Dance Magazine 80.9 (2006): 64-68. Humanities Abstracts (H.W. Wilson). Web. 7 Dec. 2011
Canciones de arargue, or songs of bitterness – was the original name for the creolized form Bachata. Many closely associate Bachata with the other Caribbean styles of the African diaspora such as merengue and son. In Intro to Music Cultures of the World we were tasked with attending a world music concert. I chose to attend a Bachata concert because I already had an interest in Caribbean music. The concert was not as I had expected, but was rather intriguing and thoroughly enjoyable. In this report I hope to analyze Bachata’s roots, report on its concert style, and compare it to another piece in the genre.
Perrone, Charles A., and Christopher Dunn. Brazilian Popular Music & Globalization. Gainesville: University of Florida, 2001. Print.
Culturally, America is fascinated with popularizing music that is perceived as damaging. Due to its association with drug trafficking and the history of drugs in Mexico, Narcocorridos have captured the American customary significance in music. The culture associated with the drugs should not be glamorized, nor should they be popularized. Mexico continues to endure its struggle to control drug trafficking, while America sits back and listens to the consequences of drug trafficking and the use of drugs in Mexico.
Torres, Hector Avalos. 2007. Conversations with Contemporary Chicana and Chicano Writers. U.S.: University of New Mexico press, 315-324.
Since its humble beginnings, salsa has been quickly becoming a global sensation. At the beginning, Salsa was not the most popular genre of music because there were many other dominant genres in Latin America that shadowed salsa. As time progressed and multiple talented artists refined the music, it began gaining recognition by the world. The purpose of this paper is to analyze the evolution of salsa from its beginning.
In the Our Latin Thing/Nuestra Cosa film, Director Leon Gast highlights the lives of the Fania All-Stars on and off stage, in addition to the salsa culture in New York City. As Marisol Berrios-Miranda states in her article, “Salsa Music as Expressive Liberation,” “Our Latin Thing was the first documentary that portrayed salsa as an expression of Latin American urban social identity” (Berrios-Miranda, 160). The film illustrates that salsa culture is more than just musicians playing at nightclubs for an audience, dancing to the music. It is kids playing on makeshift drums, couples dancing in the streets, men having their roosters participate in cockfights, men playing dominos, people singing and playing music while smoking cigarettes, and women and children getting Coke snow cones.
Mauro Refosco is a percussionist musician born on October 16, 1966 in Santa Catarina, Brazil. Being of italian descent, he developed a unique sensitivity for Italian rhythms in southern music which ultimately lead to him taking interest in the brazilian tambourine, the pandeiro, and the haunting berimbao. As his name became more prominent amongst percussionists, so did his instruments. In fact, according to Google’s statistics, the prominence of the word, pandeiro, has grown about 12 times as popular since the 1980’s, and for the berimbao, it has almost doubled. Ergo, it is reasonable to credit him for the popularization of the prominence of these instruments in today’s society. Furthermore, Refosco would form a band, the Hot Chili Peppers.
Samba can be heard all throughout Brazil. It is a musical genre accompanied by song and dance that includes an ensemble of percussion instruments and guitar. The puxador (lead singer) initiates the samba, sometimes singing the same song for hours at a time. The responsibility of keeping thousands of voices in time with the drum section rests on his shoulders. Gradually, the other members of the escola (samba group) join in, and with a whistle from the mestre de bateria (percussion conductor) - the most exciting moment of the parade occurs as the percussion section crashes in. The surdos (bass drums) keep the 2 / 4 meter, while caixas (snare drums) and tamborins accent the second beat. This percussion ensemble, referred to as the 'bateria', often i...
Natividad Cano had a passion for mariachi music that drove his desire to change the stereotypical social relations associated with mariachi music. However, many traditionalists accused Cano for breaking away from traditional elements and commercializing mariachi music as a meaningless choreographed form that would appeal to western audiences (Shay, 2006, p. 77). I see the positive results of Cano’s strive to take mariachi music out of the stereotypical local cantinas and onto the stages of national concert halls, where the artistic value of mariachi music can be truly appreciated by a widespread audience.
Many times, you hear how great this music and dance is but it is rare that you would initiate a conversation about the importance of its impact on our predecessors and those pioneers who came to the U.S. from Puerto Rico. This research will provide concrete understanding on why the music and dance became as important as it did and why today our senior relatives find that sharing it and integrating it into the new additions to the family is imperative if they are born anywhere outside of Puerto Rico.
Bachata originated from the Dominican Republic in the early 20th century. During dictator Trujillo’s rule, Merengue was the official music to the nation. Because many Dominicans did not accept their African roots, their dances and rhythms were oppressed. Bachata, with its African influences, was considered crude and lower class, only played by campesinos- peasants. It was only popular in the rural parts of the Dominican Republic. However beginning in the early 60s, bachata was steady becoming tolerated, and eventually loved. (Pacini)
Saturday, October 17, 2015 Miramar Cultural Center presented Ballet Hispanico. A ballet that completely left me lost for words… How I’m supposed to write about it now? First of all the Theater was breathtaking, there were three rows that lead to a beautiful stage. I sat in the middle to get the best view. They started right on time introducing the Ballet and explaining some of the importance of the Ballet. Ballet Hispanico was founded by Tina Ramirez in 1970. After the show Artistic Director Eduardo Vilaro explained that the purpose of Ballet Hispanico is to reflect the Latin American Culture. Knowing one of the performers Christopher Hernandez, he told me that all the dances gives a feel of what it is like in the Latin culture. The dance
... Spanish cultures with the African cultures to create the Mestizo heritage. The African culture brought the heavy use of percussion to traditional Latin American music. The third and final theme from the Pacific Latin American region is the strong sense of nationalism that was so common. This theme can be tied back to the theme of regional identity in the fact that much of the music that migrated from the rural areas to the big cities and around the world instilled a great sense of nationalism in the natives.
Bachata is a form of music and danceable rhythm that originated in the countrysides of the Dominican Republic. It is now known for it’s catchy danceable rhythm making it a music genre that is known internationally. It all started may 31st 1962. A group of musicians whose lead singer was Jose Manuel Calderon recorded the first “Bachata album” during the decades of the 1940s and 1950s DR was influenced by Merengue,
This is a critical acclaim encyclopedic production in which reflects on as well as celebrates the history of the roots of rhythm the popular sounds we call Latin music, to the tribal celebrations in African jungles and the wild carnivals which focuses on array artists such as Gloria Estefan, Tito Puente, Dizzy Gillespie, Desi Arnaz, Celia Cruz, Ruben Blades, Isaac Oviedo, King Sunny Ade also the rare archival footage features Dizzy Gillespie's 1948 number "Manteca," bandleader Xavier Cugat's "Gypsy Mambo," and a cartoon clip of Donald Duck doing "Tico Tech