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7Lincoln Center Institute | AAssppeeccttss ooff AAiilleeyy IIII |Lincoln Center Institute | Viajes en un mundo nuevo |

Viajes en un mundo nuevoThe following materials concern the artists who created Viajes en un mundo nuevo andtheir creative process. Here are some of the questions this Window addresses. You maywish to reflect on some or all of these questions before or during reading.

What kinds of musical genres emerged from the intersection of classical andpopular music styles of Europe and the Americas at the end of the 19th

century? What were the roots of these musical styles?

How are the musical styles of Brazil, Spain, Cuba, and New Orleans similarand how are they different?

Who were some of the composers and pianists in the 19th century whocombined popular and classical traditions?

How did this hybrid of popular and classical traditions contribute to thedevelopment of jazz?

How does Oriente Lopez’s background contribute to his fluency in the musicallanguages of jazz and the 19th century genres explored in this program?

How does a jazz performer of today draw upon earlier musical forms tocreate a personal language?

What kinds of instruments are used in Oriente Lopez’s jazz ensemble?

How do the instruments in the group share melodic and rhythmic roles?

How did Oriente Lopez capture and transform musical styles in his Viajes en

un mundo nuevo?

Approaching the Work of Art

9Lincoln Center Institute | Viajes en un mundo nuevo |

700 AD

Spain is invaded by the Moors.

Late 1400s

Gypsy migration to Spain takes place.

1492

Christopher Columbus lands in Cuba andbegins a period of colonization by Spain.

1520

The first African slaves arrive in Cuba duringthis decade.

1809

The first significant Cuban migration comesto New Orleans.

1817

Cuban composer Manuel Saumell is born inHavana.

1820s

Yoruban slaves arrive in Cuba.

1829

Louis Moreau Gottschalk, American composerand pianist, is born in New Orleans.

1835

Cuban composer and violinist, José White yFitte, is born.

1847

Cuban composer and pianist IgnacioCervantes is born in Havana.

Francisca “Chiquinha” Gonzaga, Braziliancomposer and pianist, is born in Rio deJaneiro.

1849

Gottschalk chooses Paris for his formaldebut as a professional pianist.

1854

Gottschalk visits Cuba.

1860

Isaac Albéniz, Spanish composer and pianist,is born in Spain.

1863

Ernesto Nazareth, Brazilian composer andpianist, is born in Rio de Janeiro.

1869

Gottschalk dies in Brazil at the age of fortyand is later reburied in Brooklyn, New York.

1870

The choro, an urban instrumental music,develops around this time in Rio de Janeiro.

1880

The Cuban danzon, a dance for couples,emerges in Cuba around the late 1870s andearly 1880s.

1884

World’s Industrial and Cotton CentennialExposition is hosted by New Orleans.

1886

Slavery is abolished by the Spanishgovernment in Cuba.

1890

Ferdinand La Mothe, also known as JellyRoll Morton, jazz composer and piano player,is born in New Orleans.

1898

Cuba is freed from Spanish rule.

The Spanish-American War takes placebetween April and August in Cuba.

Pixinguinha, composer and instrumentalist,is born in Brazil.

1900

W.C. Handy travels to Cuba with his band.

1914

W.C. Handy composes his St. Louis Blues.

1919

Pixinguinha puts together his first band.

1930

Cuban dance music is introduced to theUnited States for the first time on Broadway.

TimelineCompiled by Wayne Rush

1947

Afro-Cuban jazz symbolically begins with themeeting of Dizzy Gillespie and Chano Pozo.

1959

Fidel Castro takes control of Cuba.

1962

The Cuban missile crisis takes place inOctober.

Oriente Lopez is born in Havana.

1974

At the age of twelve, Oriente Lopez begins toperform as a professional musician in Cuba.

1977

Cultural exchanges are allowed between theUnited States and Cuba.

1980

The Mariel boat lift occurs and thousands ofCubans move to the United States

1984

Oriente Lopez begins working withsinger/songwriter Silvio Rodríguez.

1986

Oriente Lopez graduates from the InstitutoSuperior de Arte with a bachelor of arts inmusic.

1993

Lopez moves to New York and begins workingas performer, composer, and arranger.

2000

Oriente Lopez earns a masters degree in finearts at the Tisch School of Arts and beginsleading his own various ensembles.

| Viajes en un mundo nuevo | Heckscher Foundation Resource Center10


Oriente Lopez was born and raised in amusical family in Havana, Cuba. Since earlychildhood, his musical interests bridgedvarious styles, from classical to jazz,Brazilian, Latin, and various folklorictraditions. At the age of twelve, Orientebegan performing as a professional musician.

In the eighties, Oriente became the keyboardplayer and flutist of the groundbreakinggroup Afrocuba. In 1984, he began workingwith Silvio Rodriguez. The collaborationignited Oriente’s special mastery atarranging. This led him to subsequentcollaborations with Chico Buarque deHollanda, Chucho Valdés, Arturo Sandoval,Fito Páez and Pablo Milanés. In 1986, hegraduated from the Instituto Superior de Artewith a bachelor of art in music.

In 1993, Oriente moved to New York. Inrecent years, he has composed for, and/orperformed with, Paul Simon, PaquitoD’Rivera, Marc Anthony, Ruben Blades,Regina Carter, Charlie Haden, and GonzaloRubalcaba among others. Three of Oriente’scollaborations were awarded Grammy’s, in2000, 2001, and 2005. Additionally, he is therecipient of numerous ASCAP ComposersAwards, a Yamaha Best Song award, andseveral awards for instrumental compositionand orchestration.

Oriente’s writing credits include composingfor film, ballet, musical theater, classicalrepertory, jazz and Latin productions. Heearned a masters degree in fine arts at theTisch School of the Arts in 2000.

Photo: Bartomeu Amengual

ArtistsBiographies

Here is the background, in brief, of the prolific composer and the musicianswho help him bring forth the unique sound of his musical vision.

Oriente Lopez

Oriente Lopez


David C. SillimanDuring his stellar 25-year career, drummerand percussionist David Silliman has workedon three continents, with artists as varied asMariah Carey, Cassandra Wilson, BlossomDearie, Al Di Meola, Aretha Franklin, andflamenco guitarist and composer Romero.

David was born and raised in the SanFrancisco Bay Area, where he was exposedfirst to classical music—studying snaredrum, xylophone, and timpani—then jazz,Latin jazz, Brazilian and Funk music. David’scurrent setup includes a standard Americandrum set (bass drum, snare drum, and toms)with cymbals (hi-hat, ride, crash).Augmenting the set-up is a South Americancajon, Middle Eastern dumbek, Africandjembe, and conga, as well as varioustriangles, shakers, chimes, and, as they arecalled in the business, “toys.” Using hisunique setup allows him to move seamlesslyfrom one instrument to another, thuscreating a rhythmic sound filled with energy.

His recent performance at the La Pataia JazzFestival in Punta del Este, Uruguay, withPaquito D’Rivera, garnered praise from criticsand audiences alike. He is showcased onRomero’s new CD, Un Segundo Una Vida.

David Silliman photo by Martin [email protected]

Courtesy of Itaiguara Brandao©itaiguara.com

David C. Silliman Itaiguara Brandao

Itaiguara BrandaoItaiguara, electric-bass player from Rio deJaneiro, Brazil, has performed in his countryfor over ten years. In May ’93 he moved toBoston, where he studied at Berklee andgraduated summa cum laude. He becameinvolved in several live performances,radio/TV appearances, and CD recordings.After receiving a Professional MusicAchievement Award from Berklee College ofMusic in April 1995, he moved to New YorkCity, where he has been working for majorrecord companies such as SONY and BMG,and performing and recording with PauloBraga Band (as music director), RandyBrecker, Paul Winter, Paquito D’ Rivera, RobinEubanks, Dave Kikoski, Emilio Santiago, ElbaRamalho, Guilherme Arantes, Bebel Gilberto,Romero Lubambo, Hugo Fattoruso. Itaiguara’sbass has taken him to stages across the USAand Europe. He participated in an educationalbook/CD written by Nelson Faria andpublished by Sher Music Co.


Gustavo SaianiGuitarist, singer, composer, arranger, andmultiinstrumentalist Gustavo Saiani wasraised in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. He startedout on the guitar at age 15 and quickly beganperforming in his city and across the country,with numerous groups and artists. With hisjazz quartet, he played the most importantvenues in Rio. Since moving to New York in2001, Saiani has performed with virtuallyevery name in the New York Brazilian jazzscene, and with many renowned straight-ahead jazz artists, at places like Birdland andthe Zinc Bar. His collaborations include JaneIra Bloom, Eliane Elias, Etienne Stadjwick,Jamey Haddad, Maucha Adnet, and others.Gustavo has also released his Americanquartet CD, Aurora, with pianist JaredShapiro, and appears on CDs by Sting andGeorge Benson. He is currently recording hisnext project, featuring original compositionsin rare instrumentations, to be released inthe second half of 2005.

Photo: Daniel Klajmic

Gustavo Saiani


…[T]he most celebrated and well-documentedmid-century example of Latin influence onAmerican music is the work of Louis MoreauGottschalk (1829–1869), a composer withclaims to have been the first U.S. pianovirtuoso.

Gottschalk, who studied in Paris and wasfriendly with Chopin, Saint-Saëns, andOffenbach, began composing works onpopular themes from his first composition, a“polka de salon.” In 1848 he wrote twofamous pieces based on his memories of NewOrleans Creole music, “Bamboula” and “LaSavanne, Ballade Créole.”

Gottschalk returned to the U.S. in 1853, and ayear later went to Cuba for professional andhealth reasons. Within a month of his arrivalhe had produced his first Cuban-influencedwork, an impromptu based on an Afro-Cubandance called “El Cocoye,” which he played athis first Havana concert on March 13. Besidesperforming all over Cuba, Gottschalk spent aperiod recuperating from malaria on aplantation near Cienfuegos, where he talks inhis diary of spending nights listening to theslaves singing.

In 1855, Gottschalk left Cuba for NewOrleans, where he presented in concert anumber called “Maria La O” whose origin,according to the program notes, was thesinging of “a band of revelling Negroes.” Localcritics called “Maria La O” more mature andstronger than “Bamboula,” but it aroused solittle interest outside New Orleans that it wasnever published.

Gottschalk returned to Cuba in 1857, givingseveral successful concerts before embarkingon a tour with Adelina Patti and her father,which included the Puerto Rican cities of SanJuan and Ponce, as well as Haiti and Jamaica.Moving on to South America, he performed inCaracas, Venezuela, and the Guianas, beforetraveling south down the Brazilian coast ofPara, as far as Belém.

In early February, Gottschalk spent severalmonths in Martinique and Guadeloupe, duringwhich he wrote a number of Latin- andCaribbean-inspired compositions. Theseincluded a “Marche des Gibaros,” thought tohave been based on a Puerto Rican folk song,and one of his finest short piano pieces, aCuban dance called “Ojos Criollos.” He also

Image: © CORBIS

From The Latin Tinge: Impact of LatinAmerican Music on the U.S., SecondEdition by John Storm Roberts, copyright© 1979 by John Storm Roberts. Used bypermission of Oxford University Press, Inc.

The Man Who LovedTwo Continents

Oriente Lopez was inspired by the work of several well-known composersfrom the turn of the 20th century. These include the Cubans Manuel Saumell,Ignacio Cervantes, and José White; the Spaniard Isaac Albéniz; NewOrleans natives Louis Moreau Gottschalk and Jelly Roll Morton; and

Brazilians Chiquinha Gonzaga and Ernesto Nazareth. José White was a violinist; theothers were pianists, and all were recognized in their time as great musicians whosecompositions incorporated the languages of popular and classical music. As a “northAmerican,” Gottschalk perhaps stands out because of his profound affection for the idiomof both Americas. He was as prolific as he was flamboyant, given to vast musical gesturesand fiery interpretations of the Star Spangled Banner; he also spent extended periods oftime in Brazil and the Caribbean, writing music that mixed the Spanish, French, andAfrican influences of his native New Orleans with Cuban-inspired elements.

Louis Moreau GottschalkBy John Storm Roberts

Louis Moreau Gottschalk


composed a two-movement symphony calledNuit des Tropiques, apparently based onFrench Antillean creole music, with rhythmsin the second movement very similar to the20th century biguine.

In early 1860, Gottschalk returned to Havanain style, giving a concert in February for anorchestra of more than six hundred, a drumcorps of fifty, some eighty trumpets, and achorus of one hundred voices strong. Amongthe works he played were the Nuit des

Tropiques and Escenas Campestres Cubanas,a suite for voices and orchestra. In April hegave an even larger concert which includedno less than thirty-nine pianos playing “OjosCriollos” and another work of Cubaninspiration, “Ay Pompillo, no me Mates.”

Gottschalk returned to the U.S. from 1862 to1865, when he left California after a scandal,and traveled to Panama, Peru, and—in 1866—Chile. In 1867 he was in Buenos Aires, andUruguay. In 1868 he went to Rio de Janeiro,where he played several pieces for theBrazilian court, including “Ojos Criollos” anda fantasy on the Brazilian national anthem. Aseries of huge festival concerts in Rio for 800performers came to a premature end when hecollapsed at the piano after playing the firstfew bars of the second concert, dying ofperitonitis on December 18, 1869.

Because of our common musical interests, I knew Oriente and I would notlack a subject of conversation, but, before I met him, I didn’t know that Iwould also meet someone whose clarity of vision was exceptional. By naminginfluences from all the points along the sea trade routes of the nineteenth and

early twentieth-century, he had cast a wide net indeed, and I couldn’t wait to hear himexplain how he planned to put all this together. We spoke on April 28, 2005.

The Interview

Speaking with Oriente LopezConducted by Janet Grice

Janet: You have listed, as your influences increating this program, specific Spanish,Cuban, and Brazilian composer-pianists fromthe turn of the century. What is theconnection that you see between them, andhow did they inspire your program?

Oriente: They were contemporaries; andthey all traveled extensively to thesecountries. Their cross-cultural experienceswere reflected in their music. I will performmusic influenced by the regions connectedby the port cities along the trade routes inthe late 1800s.

Janet: When you’re dealing with theinfluence of these composers, do you try to

be true to some of music that they’vewritten, do you use it as a springboard forimprovisation only, or do you stay close tothe tradition that is at the root of theirmusic?

Oriente: Depending on what my intention iswithin a composition, I will either composetrue to the tradition of a particular style,and/or elaborate on that. I sometimes includeimprovisation.

Janet: Can you tell us a bit about each pieceon the program?

Oriente: The first segment of the concertfocuses on flamenco music from Spain. The


next section, which centers on Havana,combines rumba flamenco, contradanza, andWest African rhythms. The third focus of ourpresentation will be on New Orleans and theragtime and blues from that period. The lastpart of this journey will take us to Brazil andintroduces the listener to chorinhos, a formvery similar to ragtime. In between eachsection, as a transition, we will play a piecewhich symbolizes the journey between ports.

Janet: When did you first hear the music ofthese composers who influenced you:Albéniz, Nazareth, and others?

Oriente: At the music conservatory inHavana in the 1970s.

Janet: They wrote music that bridgedclassical and popular styles. Do you, as acomposer, want to achieve similar results?

Oriente: Yes. Since I was a child I’ve beenexposed to both classical and popular music,and I do it naturally.

Janet: What kinds of rhythmic elementsinterest you in the works of Spanish pianists?How does their music differ from the others?

Oriente: I am drawn to odd meters. Flamencomusic has an odd number of bars, unlike asixteen or eight-bar structure. I like tocombine that with harmonic progressions offlamenco music.

Janet: Using mixed meter means that youmight be going along in two, and then therewould be a bar of three, then a bar of four,perhaps. It’s not a twelve-bar form, like theblues, or chorinhos, which are usually in aformal structure.

Oriente: Yes, as well as ragtime and thecontradanza, which also have the samenumber of bars.

Janet: Is flamenco less structured?

Oriente: It’s more free.

Janet: Spanish composers were influencedby gypsy music; what are somecharacteristics of gypsy music?

Oriente: The south of Spain was permeatedand influenced by gypsy culture in general.

The use of modal scales, melismas (vocalcries), are characteristic of gypsy music.

Janet: What do you see as African influencesin the music of these composers?

Oriente: In Cuba, I think it was differentthan in the south of Spain, which wasinfluenced by northern Africa, manycenturies ago. In New Orleans, there mighthave been transculturation in the late 1800s.By then, the combination of European andAfrican traditions had become a part ofCuba. I think that the African presence was alittle bit stronger in Cuban music than inNew Orleans and Brazil, because there wasless segregation in the culture.

Janet: It also may have had to do with thegeographical positioning of Cuba, which isan obvious port of call for a ship comingfrom Africa.

Oriente: Certainly Havana’s locationcontributed to it becoming an influentialstopping place for people traveling fromEurope, Africa, and the Caribbean. At thebeginning of the 19th century, trade in coffee,sugar, and slaves was very strong betweenNew Orleans and Havana. That required a lotof traveling between Cuba and Louisiana.Many plantation owners in Haiti freed theblack people after the revolution there. Thefreed Haitians came to New Orleans, but theycame through Havana. So did the Europeantheater and operetta companies, when theytraveled to North America and South America.They went first to the south of Spain, and thenthey came to Havana. They went to NewOrleans for a season, they went to Rio deJaneiro and Buenos Aires, then back toEurope. That made Havana and New Orleansthe dominating ports in the Caribbean and inthe entire region.

Janet: How important is performancepractice to interpretation of the music genresthat you are using in this program?

Oriente: Practice is very important, becausemost of the music is written, and I choseperformers who have their own signature.

Janet: So you know that the musiciansunderstand the styles of music that you’retrying to work with.

Oriente: Yes. It’s very hard to findperformers that cover that many styles. I ambeing accompanied by two musicians fromBrazil (guitar and bass), and a percussionistfrom the United States.

Janet: Will your percussionist use a standarddrum set, with bass drums and cymbals, aswell as hand percussion?

Oriente: For the New Orleans sound, he hasto play some trap drums, but mainly he’ll beusing percussion instruments, includingcajon, timbales, udu, pandeiro, etc.

Janet: How did your musical educationinfluence your interest in jazz and LatinAmerican styles?

Oriente: My mother loved jazz. Both she andmy uncle are pianists. My mother attendedcollege in the United States in the ’50s,where she was exposed to jazz. When I was achild she played a wide range of music, fromGershwin to Cole Porter, Broadway, and thepopular jazz tunes of the ’40s and ’50s. Ilearned most of the jazz standards with myuncle. I remember my mother playingclassical music as well as jazz in the house.

Janet: How about the ’60s and ’70s? Did youhear jazz fusion and Wayne Shorter, andothers of that time?

Oriente: As a student in the conservatory, Ioften traded cassette recordings withclassmates, through which I was introducedto artists such as Maynard Ferguson, ChickCorea, and Herbie Hancock, among others. Itwas also an inspiration for me to hear TonyWilliams, John McLaughlin, Weather Report,Hubert Laws, and Jaco Pastorius live inHavana during the ’70s.

Janet: In perusing your biography, I noticedthat you worked with a famous musicianfrom Brazil, Chico Buarque. How did youbecome interested in Brazilian music? Is itpopular in Cuba or is it still as little knownthere as it is in the USA?

Oriente: My mother introduced me to themusic of Antonio Carlos Jobim. She hadbooks of his music and played it a lot. Later,my aunt moved to Venezuela, and she usedto send me all the music that was popular

and current, Like Caetano Veloso and GalCosta. I like beautiful melodies, and Brazilianmusic has very beautiful melodies.

In the ’70s, the relations were more openbetween Cuba and Brazil, and I saw ChicoBuarque and Djavan live, when Djavan wasjust a kid. Later, in the ’80s, I was exposed tothe music of Egberto Gismonti and HermetoPascoal, composers of instrumental music. Ialways kept my ears open to new music fromBrazil.

Janet: Why did you choose the combinationof piano, flute, percussion, bass, andcavaquinho or guitar, for your program?

Oriente: I happen to play piano and flute.

Janet: Well, there you’ve got two of them.And you play some percussion.

Oriente: A little bit of percussion. I alwaysuse the piano to compose. I choose to includethe flute in this project as it adds anotherdimension to the music. I choose variousdrums, as well as the bass to give it a broadersound. The guitar is an instrument that hasbeen central to all the styles we are going toexplore. I am using the guitar as both a soloinstrument and an integral part of theorchestra. The guitar plays melodies andaccompaniment, and sometimes it playsrhythm.

Janet: Does your guitarist play thecavaquinho in the Brazilian chorinho style ofmusic, for authenticity?

Oriente: Yes, although on some of thechorinhos he will be playing the guitar. I’musing the guitar for color, but also in thestructure, like an orchestral arrangement.

Janet: Are you using acoustic or electric bass?

Oriente: Electric bass.

Janet: Maybe you could list the names of thepercussion instruments you know thepercussionist might be using.

Oriente: The cajon, which is a wooden boxoriginally from Spain, played in flamenco,Cuban, and Peruvian music.



Janet: The cajon is being used in contem-porary flamenco music.

Oriente: In tango, as well. He will playtimbales in the contradanzas section onCuban influences; and shekere, which is aninstrument from Africa. As we said, he willbe playing a small drum set. There is thepandeiro tambourine, and I might includeother Brazilian percussion instruments, suchas a rain stick.

Janet: How do you communicate to themusicians in your group how you want yourmusic to sound?

Oriente: First, I explain what my intention is.After they have assimilated my instructions, Iencourage them to express their ownfeelings. I begin by listening to what I havewritten, and if I feel it to be necessary, I thenmake changes. So, I have composed theseworks separately, and now I am rearrangingthem in the form of a suite. I’m going to tryto do it as a concert with no interruption. Assoon as I finish the last note of one piece, I’lltransition into the next piece.

Janet: How extensively are your composi-tions notated?

Oriente: Around 90% of the music is notated.I am not including too much space forimprovisation in this presentation.

Janet: In the parts that are improvised,would improvisation take place over theform of the piece, or over a section?

Oriente: Yes.

Janet: So it wouldn’t be free improvisation.It would be connected to the style of thesong that you’re playing.

Oriente: Yes.

Janet: Do you have a lead sheet that wouldhave the chords and the measures on it? Ordo you have a section delineated forimprovisation?

Oriente: There is a specific section with thechords that I want them to [play]. Chorinhos

are less open to improvisation because theform and style are strict. In the Cubansection, I have two compositions wherethere can be improvisation over the entireform, and it is notated.

Janet: So, the four of you will illuminate somany different styles of music, and so manydifferent ways of interpreting them toexpress your ideas. And, in doing so, you willtake us on a journey.

Oriente: Yes. Each musician will give hisbest and we’re all going to help each other inthe process.

Photo: Character Generators

The band takes a bow


No one knows exactly when music of theCaribbean and the United States first met,but it was probably in early nineteenth-century New Orleans. A city known for itstropical climate, European architecture, andcosmopolitan lifestyle (it boasted twopermanent opera companies in the 1830s,before any other city in the United States hadeven one), New Orleans was a vibrant portcity with a multiethnic population. Creoles,Spanish, French, Italians, free and enslavedblacks, and immigrants from the Caribbeanand Mexico shared the city with a transientpopulation of political exiles, merchantseamen, and travelers. The city supported alarge number of hotels, restaurants, theaters,dance halls, and operas, all of which keptmany musicians employed.

Musical ideas were traded along withtobacco and sugar in this busy port city.African drums, outlawed in most of NorthAmerica, could be heard on select days inNew Orleans’s Congo Square. Minstrels,fiddlers, and singers of various kindsinhabited the street corners. In 1836, aHavana troupe considered to be the bestopera company in the Western Hemisphere

relocated to the Crescent City. Thecompany’s Italian conductor, Luigi Gabici,remained in New Orleans and became aprominent composer and music teacher….

The danza rhythm favored by [composer andpianist Louis Moreau] Gottschalk was a pan-Caribbean dance form of the early nineteenthcentury. It was descended from theeighteenth-century French contredanse andits derivative in Spain, the contradanza

española. In the hands of Caribbeanmusicians, the contradanza, called thedanza for short, acquired a more syncopatedand sensuous quality. By the 1850s, danzas

had developed into concert music composedprimarily for piano. Notable musicians whocomposed danzas included Manuel Saumell,Nicolás Ruiz Espadero, Ignacio Cervantes,Juan Morel Campos, Ernesto Lecuona, andmore recently, Jesús “Chucho” Valdés. InCuba and Puerto Rico, respective variationsof the danza became symbols of nationalism.

Around the mid-nineteenth century, vocalswere added to the danza. Eventually theform became strictly vocal and took thename of habanera (from Habana, Spanish

Jazz music came from New

Orleans, and New Orleans was

inhabited with maybe every

race on the face of the globe.

—Jelly Roll Morton

Sidebar and article: Fernández, Raúl,“Chapter 1: Roots and Routes.” From LATINJAZZ: THE PERFECT COMBINATION.©2002 by the Smithsonian Institute.Reproduced with permission fromChronicle Books LLC, San Francisco. To purchase, please visitwww.ChronicleBooks.com

Origins and Craft

Trade RoutesAlthough the ninteenth-century trade routes pertained largely to goods boughtand sold, a cultural trade thrived as well; all sorts of entertainers toured thecircuit of port cities such as Havana, Rio de Janeiro, and New Orleans.Inspired by a rich variety of popular music, these turn-of-the-century

troubadours spread the word of tango, rumba, samba, and flamenco by composing,publishing sheet music, and performing interpretations of these styles. Today’s Latin jazz isone of the legacies of this cultural interchange.

Roots and RoutesBy Raúl Fernández


for Havana.) It was characterized by asyncopated rhythm inherited from the danza

and known generally as the habanera beat.(Toward the end of the nineteenth century,the habanera mixed with the local dances ofArgentina and evolved into the tango.)European composers, notably Georges Bizet,Maurice Ravel, Claude Debussy, and Manuelde Falla, used the habanera rhythm in theircompositions.

In the late 1870s and early 1880s—more orless at the same time as ragtime and pre-jazzmusic were developing in New Orleans—theCuban danzón emerged. A slower and morevaried style than the earlier danza, thedanzón relied on a rhythmic figure known asthe cinquillo, very common in Caribbeanmusic. The danzón was a dance for couples,and it replaced the danza as the nationalmusic of Cuba in the late nineteenth and theearly twentieth century.

Cuban musicians in New Orleans werewriting danzones by the last decades of thenineteenth century. The music spread asmusicians from Cuba and Mexico traveled ontrade vessels between Havana and NewOrleans, sometimes via Veracruz or Tampico,to find work in various ports. Cuban and

Mexican performers played not only danzas

and danzones but also waltzes, mazurkas,and world music of many kinds.

The popularity of Latin rhythms in NewOrleans expanded when the city played hostto the World’s Cotton and IndustrialExposition of 1884–85. The hit of the festivalwas Mexico’s Eighth Cavalry Military Band,which became known locally as the MexicanBand. This talented sixty- to eighty-piecegroup played a variety of Latin music,including the danza and habanera. Latintunes became the rage throughout the city,and local music publishers put out a series ofpieces labeled “as played by the MexicanBand.”

© Lake County Museum/CORBIS

Havana port, 1904


The music of Latin America is fully as variedas one would expect of an area containingalmost thirty countries and encompassingboth tropical and temperate climates. Itmakes use of two European languages,embraces three cultures—European, African,and Amerindian—and within each of thesesubdivisions, there are further variations.Brazil’s main European culture is Portuguese;the rest of Latin America’s is Spanish. BothFrench and Italian music were also highlyinfluential in the 19th century, and Americanin the 20th; and even countries sharingcommon musical influences made use ofthem in different ways.

The resulting unity-in-diversity is extra-ordinary. Even the smallest country has itsown clearly identifiable musical culture,ranging from the simplest folk idioms tonational conservatory styles. Yet fromanother perspective, all represent versions ofone cultural mix, even though not all itselements are equal, or even present, in everycountry: Cuban and other Latin-Caribbeanmusic have no discernible Amerindiansurvivals, for example, and the styles ofsome Andean nations have few overtlyAfrican ingredients.

Despite this great musical richness, relativelyfew Latin styles affected the music of theUnited States, and most of those that didwere big-city popular forms. The enduringinfluences came from four countries: Cuba,Brazil, Argentina, and Mexico. Of these, theimpact of Cuban music, not only directly butthrough its effects on most of the others, hasbeen much the greatest, most varied, andmost long lasting.

Taken as a whole, Cuban music presents amore equal balance of African and Spanishingredients than that of any other Latincountry except Brazilian. Spanish folkloreenriched the music of the countryside, of thecity, and of the salon. At the same time—aided by an illicit slave trade that continuedright through the 19th century—the pureAfrican strain remained stronger in Cuba thananywhere else. Yoruba and Congolesereligious cults, and the Abakwá secret society,which is of eastern Nigerian origin, remainedpowerful almost everywhere. As a result,western African melody and drumming—andeven the Yoruba language—were broughtcheek by jowl with country music based onSpanish ten-line decima verses and southernSpanish melody. The co-existence ofEuropean and African rhythmic, melodic, andharmonic procedures led, of course, to theirblending, and that blending took place at themost profound level.

The basic building block of Cuban music isclave, a 3-2, (occasionally 2-3) rhythmicpattern, which covers two measures that aretreated as [if they were only one]. This is sofundamental that, as Cuban musicologistEmilio Grenet put it, to play out of clave“produces such a notorious discrepancybetween the melody and the rhythm that itbecomes unbearable to ears accustomed toour music.”

Clave, which has a strong first part and ananswering second part, like the call-and-response structure common in African andAfro-American music, appears to be a way ofincorporating into European measure-patterns the basic western African rhythmic


Musical RootsThe basic building block of Cuban music is clave, a rhythmic pattern with astrong first part and answering second part, as in the call-and-responsestructure common to African music. The co-existence of these African musicalelements with European styles led to a profound blend of styles, which are the

roots of the musical forms that developed in Cuba in the nineteenth century.

The Building BlocksBy John Storm Roberts

pattern of eight notes and rests, usually builtup of combinations of two and three beats.

Almost all the Cuban styles that influencedmusic in the U.S. displayed this blend ofEuropean and African elements, in varyingproportions and degrees of homogenization.The first style—and in the long run probablythe most influential of all—was thehabanera, which was one root of theArgentinian tango (itself a major influence onU.S. music) and also affected jazz directly,besides feeding into Mexican styles that wereto travel north.

Most Latin musical forms are remarkablyresistant to being pinned down, since theyusually involve a rhythm, a dance, a style orstyles of playing, typical tempi and evensubject matter. Moreover, their origins areoften unclear and they frequently changegreatly over a period.

The mid-19th century song form called thehabanera is no exception. Cuban musicalhistorian Emilio Grenet called it “perhaps themost universal of our musical genres,” citingexamples from Sebastian Yradier’s “LaPaloma” to the habanera in Bizet’s Carmen.Yet “La Paloma” was written by a Spaniardstationed in Havana and may have come tothe U.S. via Mexico, where it is often taken fora local song, and Grenet remarks that Bizet’shabanera is “more or less a Spanish tango.”

The habanera’s immediate ancestor was thecontradanza, a Spanish version of a linedance thought to derive from the English“country dance,” and which came to theAmericas via Spain. The contradanza waswell established in Cuba by the early 19thcentury (the earliest surviving example, acomposition called San Pascual Bailón,dates from 1803). The form that swept theisland wasn’t the Spanish “contradanza,”however, but its French counterpart, thecontredanse, introduced somewhat later byFrench refugees from the Haitian revolution.In Cuba it soon developed two (closelyrelated) time-signatures, 6/8 and 2/4, both ofwhich influenced later dances.

From its earliest days, the Cubancontradanza took on African-derivedelements. Though whites and blacks playedthe same numbers, blacks added a “lift,” as

Cuban historian and critic, Alejo Carpentierput it—a certain swing. It was presumablyblack musicians who began to syncopate thecontradanza’s rhythm. A so-called ritmo de

tango, extremely similar to the Argentiniantango, became a feature of Cubancontradanzas, and spread into many otherlocal forms. So (probably via the Frenchcontradanza) did the cinquillo, a fast five-beat throb that is basic to Puerto Ricanmusic and the Dominican and Haitianmerengue. Both patterns appear to havebecome fundamental to the contradanza

habanera by the very early 19th century.Black musicians further syncopated the beatof this ritmo de tango. An 1856 contradanzacalled “Tu Madre Es Conga” (Your mother isCongolese—an interesting title in the circum-stances) introduces a held first note with aneffect identical with the Afro-Cuban conga.

The habanera, in fact, seems to have got itsname from abbreviating the phrasecontradanza habanera, the “Havanesecontradanza,” and its nature from anAfricanization of a widespread Europeandance. This despite the fact that, soCarpentier remarks, it was not a purelyHavanese style—and was never called thehabanera by the people who created it!

The habanera had one very importantcharacteristic that helped it to be absorbedinto U.S. music. Though it preserves anelement of African call-and-response in astrong first part and a weaker “answer,” itsrhythmic pattern is contained in a singlemeasure. Another factor was perhaps equallyimportant, given that in the 19th century themost effective way in which any new formcould spread was by way of sheet-music: theearly use of the habanera bass in pianocompositions—the earliest known pianoversion being a piece called “La Pimienta,”written in 1836.

The international influence of Latin idiomshas often rested on individual compositions,and the habanera was no exception. “LaPaloma” seems to have been the first, and ina sense crucial, habanera to have beenexported. Written before 1865, it wasextremely influential in Mexico by twentyyears later, became a nationally knownstandard in the U.S., and had a similarimpact in Europe.



Another important individual work wasEduardo Sanchez de Fuentes’s 1890 habanera“Tu”, which, in Carpentier’s words, “erasedthe memory of earlier habaneras.” “Tu” wasoriginally slower than earlier habaneras,having what the Mexicans called a“hammock rhythm.” It was republished as atango habanera in Paris, and became verypopular in Buenos Aires because it was closeto Argentinian music in feeling.

The Cuban style that had the most directimpact on U.S. music was very different fromthe habanera. The son, the basis of the 1930srumba craze, has been described as the firstrhythm invented by Cubans. It began as anAfro-Cuban rural form that was originallyaccompanied by percussion. It made use ofwidespread Afro-Latin rhythmic patterns,including the anticipated bass and the ritmode tango; its revolutionary quality, accordingto Carpentier, was a “sense of polyrhythmsubjected to a unity of tempo.” It also hadanother highly African characteristic: itsmelody had no rhythmic connection with theunderlying percussion….

The Latin elements in the hot U.S. Latinsubstyle that has come to be called salsa andits antecedents were very largely Cuban.They included basic structural elements likeclave, and other aspects to be dealt with in

their due place. U.S. Latin groups were alsomodeled on the various Cuban types ofensemble: the string quartets and trumpet-ledseptets that performed sones in the 1930s;brass-and-sax orchestras adapted from jazz,which mostly played the big Havana hotels;the trumpets-and-percussion conjuntos, andthe flute-and-fiddle charangas.

These various types of groups wereassociated with different styles and evenrhythms. During the early 1870s, a coupledance called the danzón—a descendant ofthe contradanza and thus distantly related tothe habanera—became popular.

Up to around 1916, danzones were playedoutdoors by so-called orquestas típicas—cornet-led bands supported by clarinets andtrombone, with tympani predominant in thepercussion. Grenet describes their soundlyrically as a “picture of blinding luminositywhich brought our most remote sensuality tothe surface.”

Indoors, the same danzones were played bygroups known as charangas francesas

(French orchestras), or charangas for short,in which violins backed a flute lead, and thetympani were replaced by the smallertimbales.


New Orleans is at the center of an area so rich in diverse cultural influencesthat it was inevitable that they would meet, marry, and produce superbmusical children.

Black American music has frequently beenthe channel by which the Latin tinge enteredmass-popular styles, and the process wasunderway even before the formative years ofjazz and ragtime. Nineteenth-century NewOrleans had a particularly important Latininfluence, though in such a polyglot musicalculture, the Latin strands are often difficultto disentangle with any certainty. First, NewOrleans creole music itself was sufficientlysimilar to cause problems. Second, the

jazzmen who provided most of theinformation often referred to both Spaniardsand Latinos as “Spanish” (just as manypeople, Latino and non-Latino, still do).Nevertheless, the Latin influence was cer-tainly there…

It is difficult to gauge the effect NewOrleans’s considerable Latin tinge had uponearly jazz, but it may well be that much thathas been labeled “creole” is either Cuban or

Habanera to Jazz, via New OrleansBy John Storm Roberts


syncretized with Cuban music….Whileindividual examples from a later period donot in any sense constitute proof, theavailable evidence does suggest that theLatin ingredients in early New Orleans jazzare more important than has beenrealized….Pianist Jelly Roll Morton calledNew Orleans the stomping ground for all thecountry’s greatest pianists. “We had Spanish,we had coloured, we had white….”

Despite Morton’s theories, the “Spanishtinge” was by no means missing fromragtime. It has already been pointed out thatthe habanera’s ritmo de tango was virtuallyidentical with the cakewalk rhythm—and infact, both are versions of a rhythmic motifcommon in a wide range of Afro-Americanmusic. If ragtime pianists had used the kindof held notes in their left hand that convertedthe ritmo de tango into an early version ofthe conga, that might have given theirplaying an apparent but misleading Latinflavor. But ragtime’s bass-patterns were keptvery pure. So when Eubie Blake says thatpianist Jesse Pickett used a habanera rhythmfor this composition “The Dream” in the1880s, it is virtually certain that it was in facta habanera, not a direct development fromthe cakewalk….

The habanera was also part of other blackNew York musicians’ arsenal by the 1890s.William H. Tyers was to become a founder-member of ASCAP, and composer of the jazzstandard, “Panama,” itself important in black-Latin crossover in the early 20 century.

Fifteen years before “Panama,” in 1896, Tyerspublished a “Cuban Dance,” called “LaTrocha,” with the now familiar habanerabass.

Black/Latin musical crossover increased asmore black musicians came in contact withCuban music. In 1900, W.C. Handy’s bandtraveled to Cuba and, while he was there, hebought a copy of the national anthem, the“Hymno Bayames” and arranged it for thegroup. Handy was particularly struck by thesmall bands playing in the backstreets.

[Handy said] These fascinated me becausethey were playing a strange native air,new and interesting to me. More thanthirty years later I heard that rhythmagain. By then it had gained respectabilityin New York and had acquired a name—the Rumba.

(If Handy was correctly identifying hisrhythm, this suggests that the son had arrivedin Havana by the turn of the century, not atthe end of World War I as is usually said.)…

The role of Latin music in ragtime during the early 20th century is—as was ragtimeitself—interwoven with the history ofcommercial music publishing. This fact,together with a tendency to disapproval ofperceived threats to a loved style, mayexplain why the Latin tinge in ragtime hasbeen so little remarked upon.

Jelly Roll Morton claimed that

the “Spanish tinge” was the

essential ingredient

differentiating jazz from

ragtime. “If you can’t manage

to put tinges of Spanish in

your tunes, you will never be

able to get the right seasoning,

I call it, for jazz.”

—Janet Grice


Latin jazz emerged in New York City whenAfro-Cuban rhythms mixed with bebop in the 1940s….

Born from two other genres, Latin jazzbecame something entirely distinct anddifferent. It evolved beyond just mixing Afro-Cuban rhythms with jazz phrasing andsoloing. It may have started that way, but ithas gone far deeper. Latin jazz is aboutdeveloping a jazz sensibility about the music,its structure, its swing, which implies thatthe musicians can spontaneously engage in amusical conversation with each other at avery high level.

Latin jazz possesses a level of energy unlikeany other music I know. There is somethingabout its rhythm that makes audiencesbecome very intensely involved. Latin jazzrhythms move the music in a way thatenergizes and loosens up audiences. That isbecause the rhythms of Latin jazz have thepower that dance music has…they containthe essence of dance. Dancers sometimesinspire a band to play in a particular manner,and sometimes our playing inspires thedancers to move in a certain way. The energythat passes between the performers and theaudience is vital to Latin jazz. It’s a two-wayexchange that expands the total energyinvolved.

Latin and jazz were bound to

connect. Both flow in even

tempi; both are

improvisational; both are

black-invented musics arising

in key cities such as New

Orleans, Havana, and New

York. Today, Latin jazz is one

of the strongest musics of the

planet. Still and all, what is

Latin jazz?

—Robert Farris Thompson


Sidebar: Thompson, Robert Farris.“Preface.” From LATIN JAZZ: THEPERFECT COMBINATION. © 2002 by theSmithsonian Institute. Reproduced withpermission from Chronicle Books LLC, SanFrancisco. To purchase, please visitwww.ChronicleBooks.com

Article: González, Andy. “Foreword.” FromLATIN JAZZ: THE PERFECTCOMBINATION. © 2002 by the SmithsonianInstitute. Reproduced with permission fromChronicle Books LLC, San Francisco. Topurchase, please visitwww.ChronicleBooks.com

Andy González wrote that Latin jazz is more than a mixing of Afro-Cubanrhythms and jazz phrasing; it is about developing a jazz sensibility about themusic.

Latin JazzBy Andy González

Itaiguara Brandao on bass


About 11 million people inhabit the Republicof Cuba, a nation of more than sixteenhundred keys and islands located in thenorthwestern Antilles. The main island, Cuba,with a surface area of 105,007 squarekilometers, is the largest of the Antilles. Mostof the national population is descended fromSpaniards (mostly from Andalucía and theCanary Islands) and Africans (mostly Bantuand Yoruba). Small populations derive fromCaribbeans of other islands, French, andChinese. Spanish is the official language, butsome Cubans still speak several African-derived languages. Local religions includeseveral derived from African religions, but thelargest in membership is Roman Catholicism.

Historical Background The convenience of Cuba’s geographicalposition made it a mandatory way station forSpanish ships traveling to Mexico and SouthAmerica. Cuba provided facilities forrepairing ships and supplies of food andwater. The demand for provisions fosteredthe local development of agriculture, which,since Indian workers were rapidly decliningin numbers, necessitated new sources oflabor: slaves, brought from Africa. By about1550, these slaves had replaced indigenouslaborers to become the decisive factor in thecolony’s economic development.

During the colonial era, Spanish settlers andvisitors brought music from Spain. Themilitary bands that came over with Spanishtroops played an important role in musicallife, as did musicians who came to settle.They brought their musical instruments,including the laúd, the bandurria, and the

guitar. A revival of Spanish poetry in meter,such as the cuarteta and the décima, tookplace, and even the whole romancero español

played an important role in the texts of songs.

Afro-Cuban MusicThe most important African ethnic groupsthat participated in the amalgamation of theCuban population were the Yoruba, differentgroups of Bantu linguistic stock, and somegroups from the former area of Calabar(Dahomey). There is little documentation ofearly African music in Cuba. The music ofAfrican people and their descendants in Cubawas played on instruments fashioned afterAfrican prototypes. African music foundfertile soil for development, particularly aspart of the slaves’ reorganization of theirreligions and beliefs. Because all Africanreligions have their own music, the religionsbrought by African groups to Cuba enrichedthe art of the entire region. Even now, weoften find musical instruments, characteristicways of playing them, songs, rhythms, dances,and even the use of music for magicalfunctions—all practiced in a way resemblingtheir New World beginnings, much as theymust have been when Africans brought themto Cuba, hundreds of years ago….

The Emergence of Cuban MusicIn social and economic spheres and the formsof artistic expression, a distinctively Cubannationality is thought to have emergedbetween 1790 and 1868, when there appearedmusical genres that, despite having theirroots in Spain and Africa, displayed elementsof Cuban origin. There occurred a great surgeof music played by Spanish musicians with

Olavo Alén Rodriguez, “South America,Mexico, Central America, and theCaribbean,” in Cuba, Dale A. Olsen andDaniel E. Sheehy, eds. New York: GarlandPublishing, 1998. 822-823, 827-833, 835.Copyright © Dale A. Olsen and Daniel E.Sheehy. Reprinted by Permission. Perauthorization of Taylor and Francis.

Cuban MusicCuba’s geographical position made it an important way station betweenEurope, South America, and Africa as far back as the sixteenth century. A distinct Cuban musical nationality emerged in the late 1700s, and hascontinued to evolve as the music of Caribbean immigrants and the language

of jazz were woven into the texture.

CubaBy Olavo Alén Rodríguez

academic training, who evidenced solidtechnical foundations in composition and inperformance. Musical ensembles wereorganized around the churches, particularlyin Havana and Santiago de Cuba. This periodalso witnessed the immigration of people ofFrench descent from Haiti, and later fromLouisiana.

Another important influence during thisperiod was the introduction of opera andzarzuela companies that came from Italy andSpain. In urban areas, genres such as theCuban contradanza and later the habanerawere born. Traditional Cuban song tookshape, as did the orquestas típicas thatplayed dances. In rural areas, the musicalgenres that were later to be known as thepunto campesino (in central and westernCuba) and the son (in eastern Cuba) alsoemerged. In the chapels of Santiago de Cubaand Havana, musicians such as Esteban Salasy Castro (1725–1803) and Juan Paris(1759–1845) modernized the compositionaltechniques of Cuban ecclesiastical music.

The period 1868–1898 was marked byrebellions against Spanish rule. The Spanishgovernment abolished slavery gradually in1880 and definitively in 1886, freeing about aquarter of a million landless blacks, many ofwhom migrated to urban outskirts andmargins. Before 1871, an estimated 150,000Chinese laborers were brought over mainlyfrom Canton; though they eventuallyorganized their own Chinatown in Havanaand spread throughout the country, theirtendency to stick together in closed groupslimited their contribution to the commonmusical culture.

Important Cuban folkloric genres appearedon the urban peripheries during this period.Notable among these were the rumba and thecomparsas...

A vast migration from rural to urban areas,especially to Havana, contributed to theintegration of many local traditions that haddeveloped in different areas of the country.The effects of this migration werecomplemented by the movement of troopsresulting from the wars for independence.Concert music changed considerably,particularly piano music in the city ofHavana. Outstanding musicians appeared,

such as Manuel Saumell (1817–1870), whosecontradanzas for piano gave rise to Cuba’sown concert music.

In 1898, in the last of the three wars forindependence, U.S. intervention on behalf ofthe rebels helped free Cuba from Spanishrule. But U.S. military occupation (1 January1899 to 20 May 1902) brought NorthAmerican capital investments in Cuba, andwith them came the influence of NorthAmerican lifeways on Cuban culturalexpression.

The Republican Period, 1902–1959Under the republic, a national consciousnessbased on Cuba’s position as a politicallyindependent nation began to arise. Peoplebecame increasingly aware of the need todevelop a Cuban musical culture, andsimultaneously the music of Cuba began tohave influence outside Cuba. The earlycontacts of Cuban musical genres—particu-larly the son—with American jazz left markedeffects on the Cuban genres and jazz, and onthe popular music of the United States. Inturn, the rumba, and the son, and later thecha-cha-chá and the mambo, had impact onEurope during this period….

Professional popular music, with deep rootsamong the population and intimate links todance, left its mark too. Professional popularmusic differed from folk music by the use oftechnical elements in composition andinterpretation that were taken from the musicof Europe. This music became easilycommercializable because of its readyadaptation to radio and television, the mediaof mass communication. These media, inturn, affected the development of the Cubanfolkloric ensembles of the times. Dancemusic was by far the most popular, with rootsdeep in tradition.

Cuban music was nourished by waves ofimmigrants from the Caribbean, mainly fromHaiti and Jamaica. These immigrants werebrought to remedy the shortage of manpowerin the sugar industry and in the growth of therailroads. The increased importance of radio,the introduction of television (in 1950), theappearance of several small recordcompanies, and the construction of importantmusical theaters—all fostered a boom inCuban music, mostly limited to Havana.



The history of Cuba’s musical culture reflectsa complex pattern of migrations and culturalconfluences, leading to the emergence ofwidely differing musical traditions in remoteareas of the country. These factorscontributed to the development of a var-iegated national musical culture with localmusical types. Communication among theseareas and among the strata of the populationhas helped some local traditions gainnational popularity and become typicalexpressions of a Cuban national identity.

The genres of Cuban traditional music divideinto five complexes (son, rumba, canción,

danzón, and punto guajiro), eachcomprising related musical genres based oncommon musical aptitudes and behaviors.These complexes are determined by style,instrumentation, and the makeup oftraditional ensembles.

The Son ComplexThe combination of plucked strings and

African-derived percussion instruments gavebirth to a musical genre called son, firstpopular among peasants of eastern Cuba.During the twentieth century, the son

complex, because of its influence on dancemusic and its projection into practically allsocial and functional spheres of musicalactivity in the country, has been the mostimportant musical genre in Cuba. Its earliestmanifestations, perhaps dating as far back asabout 1750, were among the first Cubanmusical genres or styles about whichinformation survives.

The son took shape in rural easternmostCuba. Its oldest genres include the son

montuno (from the Sierra Maestra range)and the changüí (from the area ofGuantánamo). The formal structure of theoldest sones is the constant alternation of asoloist with a refrain, typically sung by asmall group. When the son emerged fromrural areas, it acquired another importantstructural element: the inclusion of an initial

Traditional genres of Cuban

music are called complexes,

each differentiated by style

and instrumentation. These

complexes have been further

transformed and manipulated

by both jazz and classical

music composers, forming the

basis of a composition, or

merely suggesting an

influence.

— Olavo Alén Rodríguez

Olavo Alén Rodríguez, “South America,Mexico, Central America, and theCaribbean,” in Cuba, Dale A. Olsen andDaniel E. Sheehy, eds. New York: GarlandPublishing, 1998. 822-823, 827-833, 835.Copyright © Dale A. Olsen and Daniel E.Sheehy. Reprinted by Permission. Perauthorization of Taylor and Francis.

Isaac Albéniz (1860–1909) was a Spanish composer/pianist whose musicwas inspired by the culture of Andalusia in the southernmost region of Spain.Following the invasion by the Moors in 711 AD, the folk music of this regionincorporated Arab rhythms and vocal styles and was later transformed by the

arrival of the gypsies in the late 1400s. A musical style called cante jondo, a deeplyemotional, expressive song of Gypsy origin that predates the modern flamenco, becamepopular. A typical cante jondo song consists of 12 beats, with accents on the 3rd, 6th, 8th,10th, and 12th beats, resulting in a mixed meter of 3+3+2+2+2; some of the Andalusiandance rhythms that Albéniz borrowed use different metric alternations, such as therepetition of a bar of 3/4 followed by one of 6/8. He also incorporated folk melodiesthat progress in parallel motion within the range of a sixth, used repeated tones in thecante jondo style, transferred characteristic guitar idioms to the piano and employed thePhrygian mode with coloristic inflections and ornamentations.

The canción, or song, embodied Afro-Cuban forms and styles of singing. Since the early1800s songs for two voices in parallel thirds or sixths were popular, and gave rise to thecanción trovadoresca, that is, “the song of the troubadours.” Primarily a music forlistening, these early songs joined with other Cuban musical genres, such as the son andbolero, producing mixed genres that influenced Cuban dance and instrumental music.

Musical Genres

The Cuban VariationsBy Olavo Alén Rodríguez

closed structure in binary form, followed bya montuno, a section in which a soloistalternates with a small choir.

The instrumental ensembles…that playedsones always combined plucked stringinstruments—guitar, laúd (a type of guitar),tres, and later the string bass—withpercussive instruments such as bongos,tumbadoras (congas), claves, maracas, andthe güiro. The vocal soloist is often the onewho plays the claves, and the singers of therefrain are the other instrumentalists in theensemble.

Within the context of the son, musiciansexploited two important instruments forCuban music—the tres (a variant of theguitar) and bongos…The tres is a Cubanplucked stringed instrument that differs fromthe guitar mainly because of the way thestrings are tuned. Three pairs of strings(each with a pitch and its octave) areplucked to build melodies as counterpointsto the main melodies of the singer.

The Rumba ComplexAnother important generic complex in Cubais the rumba, whose name probably derivesfrom African-Caribbean words (such astumba, macumba, and tambo) referring to acollective secular festivity. Originally, inmarginal suburbs of Havana and Matanzas,the word meant simply a feast. In time, ittook the meaning of a Cuban musical genreand acquired a specific instrumental formatfor its performance. It even gave rise to itsown instruments: tumbadoras (often calledcongas), which have spread throughout theworld.

In the beginning, the instruments that playedrumbas were different-size wooden boxes.Eventually, they evolved into three barrel-shaped drums, first called hembra ‘female’,macho ‘male’, and quinto ‘fifth’, and latercalled salidor ‘starter’, tres-dos ‘three-two’,and quinto. In African musical cultures,female drums, also called mother drums, aretuned in the lowest registers. Male drums arein the mid-registers, and quintos are tuned inthe upper registers. The salidor is the firstdrum that plays. Tres-dos indicates that thedrum will normally be beaten in acombination of three and two beats. Thesedrums were generically called tumbadoras.

With their appearance, the instrumentalformat of the rumba was fixed. Thisensemble is often complemented by a smallcatá, a hollowed tree trunk, struck with twosticks.

All genres of the rumba have the samestructure. The lead singer starts with asection that rumberos (rumba players) callthe diana. The singer then goes into a sec-tion of text that introduces the theme, andonly after this does the rumba proper begin,with more active instrumental playing and asection alternating between the soloist andthe small choir.

Of the genres that make up the rumbacomplex, the guaguancó, the Columbia, andthe yambu are the most popular in Cuba.The guaguancó has most deeply penetratedinto other functional spheres of Cubanmusic, and is most generally identified withthe concept of the rumba. The performanceof guaguancó may include couple dancing,and the music and the dance have elementsthat reflect Bantu traits. The ensembles(primarily drums and idiophones) are calledcomparsas….

The Danzón ComplexA large migration of French people andHaitians with French customs arrived inCuba at the end of the 1700s, when thecharacter of the Cuban nation was takingshape. This migration gave rise to the fourthgeneric complex, the danzón, which had itsorigins in the early Cuban contradanzas, andprojects forward in time to the cha-cha-chá.

The interpretation in Cuba of Frenchcontredanses—especially with the violin-piano-flute format—led to the development ofa contradanza that may be considered Cuban,especially with the later introduction ofpercussive instruments taken from Afro-Cuban music. The earliest contradanzas

were played by two different musicalensembles: the charanga (a Cuban popularmusic orchestra consisting of two flutes,piano, pailas, claves, guiro, two tumbadoras,

four violins, and eventually a cello) and theorquesta típica ‘folkloric orchestra’. Thedevelopment of these orchestras, and theevolution and change experienced by theFrench and local contredanses in Cuba, gaverise to musical genres such as the danza, the


danzón, the danzonete, the mambo, and thecha-cha-chá.

The contradanza acquired its distinctiveprofile during the 1800s and became the firstgenre of Cuban music to gain popularityabroad. It had four well-defined routines:paseo ‘walk’, cadena ‘chain’ (taking of handsto make a chain), sostenido ‘holding ofpartners’, and cedazo ‘passing through’ (assome couples make arches with their armswhile others pass under them). Its structureis binary, and each section usually has eightmeasures. In the mid-1800s, the composerand pianist Manuel Saumell transformed itinto a vehicle for concert music; thus, itbecame the first autochthonous genreincluded in the concert-hall repertoire.

Danzas cubanas were the result of theevolution of the older contradanzas. Playedby ensembles known as French charangas

(charangas francesas), they evidencedgreater contrast between the first and secondparts of the overall binary structure. Thesepieces gave rise to the most importantmember of the complex, the danzón, ofwhich Miguel Failde composed andpremiered the first example, “Las Alturas de

Simpson,” in Matanzas in 1879.

Like the contradanza, the danzón was asquare dance, but its figurations were more

complex. The transformations brought aboutin it, particularly through the addition of newparts, gave it the structure of a five-partrondo. This might have been the origin of itsname, since the addition of pans enlarged thepiece, making it a “big danza” (the -ón suffixin Spanish is augmentative). The danzón isan instrumental genre usually written in 2/4meter. Once considered the national dance ofCuba, it enjoyed enormous popularity duringthe late 1800s and early 1900s….

Vocal and Instrumental EnsemblesThe charanga típica includes a five-keytransverse flute, a piano, a string bass,pailas, two violins, and a guiro. It emergedduring the first decade of the twentiethcentury; after 1940, it doubled the number ofviolins, and added a tumbadora and, later,sometimes a cello. Some charangas havereplaced the pailas with a complete set ofdrums and have included electricinstruments such as electric bass, electricpiano, and synthesizer. The term orquesta

(‘orchestra’) has been commonly used sinceabout the 1960s. Foremost in the repertoiresof these orchestras was the danzón, but nowthe son is the most frequently played genre.During its popularity, these ensembles hadno vocalists, but with the creation of the cha-cha-chá in the 1950s, they began tofeature singers or a small choir. Arcaño y susMaravillas and the Orquesta Gris are amongthe most important representatives of theinstrumental phase of the charanga, andOrquesta Aragón and Enrique Jorrín’sorchestra are probably the most important ofthe phase that included vocalists.



Oriente Lopez


Chôro is a style of Brazilian popular musicthat originated in the late 19th century and isstill performed today. Chôro pre-dates sambaand bossa nova as a national music style, anddeveloped from Brazilian performersinterpreting European dance music with Af-rican-influenced rhythms. At first chôro wasan unwritten performance practice, but itsoon developed into a genre of instrumentalmusic, usually in 2/4 meter and rondo form,marked by characteristic syncopation andharmonic modulations. Chôro today is awritten music that involves a degree ofrhythmic improvisation, variation andornamentation in performance.

Chôro has been played in a wide variety ofinstrumentations since its birth. The originalchôro group, called a “terno,” was a trio offlute and two guitars. During the 1920s chôrowas influenced by Dixieland ensembles andperformed in larger bands including trumpets,saxophones, trombones, and string bass, inaddition to flute, guitar, and native percussion.

Today, traditional chôro ensembles, known asconjuntos, usually include 5 or 6 players. Themelody is typically played by a bandolim, theBrazilian mandolin, or a flute or clarinet. Twoviolões, a type of Brazilian guitar, are usuallyincluded: a 6-string that plays a rhythmicaccompaniment based on written chordsymbols, and a 7-string that improvises a bass-line. The cavaquinho, a small guitar-shapedinstrument similar to the ukulele, is used as ahigh rhythm instrument, and sometimes alsoplays the melody. The pandeiro, a tambourine-like hand drum, is the main rhythminstrument and is played in a steady accentedsixteenth-note pattern. Solo chôros are alsowritten, combining elements from the variouslines of the conjunto into written scores forpiano or classical guitar. There is widevariation in instrumentation for contemporarychôro performance, from duos to largegroups, some including electric instruments.

Originally chôro conjuntos were socialorganizations whose private parties and jam

Mair, Marilynn. “What is Chôro? & AHistory of Chôro in Context.” Mandolin

Quarterly Volume 5, No. 1, March 2000.Copyright © Plucked String. Reprinted bypermission.

Some of the best choro playing I have heard was on a Sunday evening at anopen-air bar in a residential neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro. The casualsetting was deceptive; I soon realized the audience was filled withinternational choro aficionados and local celebrities. Choro can be

appreciated on many levels; while providing the listener an opportunity to revel in pulsingsamba-like rhythms and displays of solo virtuosity, the repertory is vast and familiarity withthe various composers and songs adds to the enjoyment. Each song consists of a complexmusical structure of three repeated sections in related tonalities, with up to 50 measures ofnon-stop 16th note patterns, usually played at a fast tempo. On this occasion the coregroup consisted of bandolim, flute, and pandeiro, but musicians from the audiencecontinually materialized to give a “canja” (sit in with the band; it literally means “chickensoup”), including the legendary saxophonist Paulo Moura, one of Brazil’s greatest livingchoro/jazz artists. What impressed me was the fact that each song was played withoutsheet music, by memory. The player of the seven-stringed guitar improvised intricatecounterpoint to the melody, while the pandeiro player flipped his tambourine in acrobaticdisplays of technique.

The canción, or song, embodied Afro-Cuban forms and styles of singing. Since the early1800s songs for two voices in parallel thirds or sixths were popular, and gave rise to thecanción trovadoresca, that is, “the song of the troubadours.” Primarily a music forlistening, these early songs joined with other Cuban musical genres, such as the son andbolero, producing mixed genres that influenced Cuban dance and instrumental music.

What is Choro? By Marilynn Mair

sessions would occur almost spontaneously inneighborhood homes and cafes. Chôrões, aschôro players are called, were highlyrespected musicians since chôro music isquite virtuosic, but they generally played inexchange for food and drink and earned theirliving by other means. There is an almostspiritual quality attached to chôroperformance, and many players feel it is themost deeply Brazilian of all the national musicstyles. Today the chôro community is far lesspervasive in Brazil, as MPB, Brazilian popularmusic, has continued to evolve, and tra-ditional chôro conjuntos are often consideredformal and old-fashioned. But contemporarychôro groups are modernizing the genre,extemporizing on traditional forms andwriting new pieces. Brazilian jazz and popmusicians, revisiting the musical roots of theiryouth, are also playing and recording chôro,presenting it to a new audience. The worldmusic boom of the 1990’s has introducedchôro to a global market as well, and it isincreasingly popular outside of Brazil, bothwith audiences and performers. As we startthe 21st century, chôro is enjoying a revival,reinventing itself through new performers athome and abroad, and finding a new audienceand a new community.

A History of Chôro in ContextChôro has been called Brazil’s firstindependent national music. Beginning as anunwritten performance style in Rio de Janeiroin the mid-1800s, chôro compositions firstappeared in print in the 1870s. Chôro’s fulldevelopment came with the music ofPixinguinha in the 1920s, before its popularitygave way to the new simpler style of samba.The virtuoso instrumentals of chôro wereeclipsed by the popularity of vocal styles inthe early days of radio and recording, but itexperienced a strong revival in the 1940s,sparked by the compositions of Jacob doBandolim and others. This period gave usmost of the standard repertoire performedtoday, before chôro once again fell from favor,obscured by the new style of bossa nova.Chôro had its second strong revival in the1970s, a period that saw an increased interestin professional performances and recordings.Recently, sparked by the 100th anniversary ofPixinguinha’s birth and a new interest in themusic of chôro pioneer Chiquinha Gonzaga,musicians in Brazil and the rest of the worldhave rediscovered the delights of chôro

music, updating its performance style and in-strumentation and writing new material totake chôro into its third century….

European folk-based music was exported toBrazil as part of the highly-esteemed courtstyle, and once established was assimilatedinto the realm of popular music andtransformed by native performance practiceto become the roots for Brazil’s own nationalmusic. Similar developments in the UnitedStates in the late 1800s lead to a variety ofnational styles including ragtime, blues, andthe improvisational beginnings of jazz. Thenew styles began with European forms, andwere transformed by the incorporation ofAfrican elements of rhythm, syncopation,melody and pitch alteration, like chromaticslides and “bent” notes. Thus, throughout theAmericas in the 19th century new styles ofnational music were developing, not from theindigenous native music of the countries, butfrom the combined elements of two dissimilarforeign music styles, European and African,brought to the New World by Europeancolonization and the subsequent importationof African slaves….

The earliest classically-trained Braziliancomposer to adopt the chôro style wasFrancisca Hedwiges Gonzaga (1847–1935),known as “Chiquinha”. Her aristocratic familydisapproved of her musical career, even moreso when she ventured outside the genteelworld of salon music and into the popularstyles of marches, polca and chôro. Knownfor her fiery temper, she cut ties with herfamily and left her shipbuilder husband tocontinue her music career. Gonzaga, a pianist,composer and conductor, was attracted to thechôro performance style she heard in localstreet bands, and incorporated its rhythmsand harmonic elements into her piano musicand songs. In 1877 she wrote “Atrahente,”designated as a polca, but clearly attemptingto reproduce the improvised performancestyle of chôro. “In the evolution of urbandance in Rio de Janeiro, Francisca Gonzagaplayed an important role because she blendedand recreated the essence of the authenticchôros and serenades with the prevailingEuropean dances.” (Gérard Béhague, “PopularMusic Currents in the Art Music of the EarlyNationalistic period in Brazil, circa1870–1920,” p. 129).



…Flutist Joaquim Callado enriched urbanpopular music in the middle of the lastcentury with a new instrumentationconsisting of flute (Callado’s famous ebonyflute), cavaquinho and guitar. This was thebeginning of the choro, soon to develop intoa new musical genre of great artisticsophistication.

Flutes of every kind, and particularlytransverse flutes, comprise the third pillar ofBrazilian instrumental music, along with thestrings and percussion. Since Callado’s time,MPB’s history has been filled with greatflutists. Pixinguinha, Altamiro Carrilho,Copinha, Carlos Poyares, Manoel Gomez,Benedito Lacerda and, more recently,Hermeto Pascoal are but a few of them.

PercussionThe percussion instruments played in Braziltoday are so numerous that it would beimpossible to treat them all here. The‘African connection’ has special significance.It is interesting to note, for example, how thepandeiro reached the Iberian Peninsula fromNorth Africa before the discovery of Brazil,quickly becoming a national folk musicinstrument. Later it was assimilated byAfrican slaves in Lisbon, who then brought itwith them to Brazil. As an Afro-Portugueseimport, it met up there with slaves newlyarrived from Africa. The pandeiro was alsointegrated into Afro-Brazilian cults….

The pandeiro is played for all types ofbatuques. It is customarily held in the lefthand, with several fingers in contact with theinstrument’s underside serving to accentuatethe rhythm or to modulate the pitch. The

right hand beats out the main rhythm, withthe thumb accenting the main beat; thefingers syncopate in pearling succession.Like circus jugglers, experienced pandeiroplayers can bring off the most amazingrhythmic feats. Often the thumb is slightlymoistened and drawn over the skin toproduce a constant clattering, rolling sound.

We would label the pandeiro a tamborine.But the tamborim in Brazil is somethingelse—a kind of small pandeiro about fifteencentimeters in diameter, without jingles. It isstruck on its rim and skin with a small stick,while the hand that is holding it can applyvarying degrees of pressure from underneathto stretch the skin….


Schreiner, Claus. Música Brasileira: A

History of Popular Music and the People

of Brazil. London: Marion BoyarsPublishers Ltd., 2002. Copyright © ClausSchreiner. Reprinted by permission.

As in Cuba, Brazil’s independence from the European monarchy’s rule at theend of the 19th century contributed to the rise of a national consciousness.Dances of European origin were transformed by African rhythms into nationalcrazes, such as the rumba in Cuba and the samba in Brazil, and barriers of

class and race eroded as people from all walks of life celebrated the new-foundawareness of their culture. Popular and classical music became equals: performers fromboth spheres published sheet music and toured internationally, significantly influencing thecomposers of art music.

Folkloric CompendiumBy Claus SchreinerTranslated from the German by Mark Weinstein

David Silliman and his unique drum-and-percussion set

The Belle EpoqueCariocas in the nineteenth century had aspecial affinity for French flair. Therestaurants Eldorado and Alcazar devotedthemselves to featuring vaudeville acts andcelebrated the operettas of Jacques Offenbachin 1869. It was inevitable that cariocas, too,would want their own Belle Epoque. And theygot it. Their bela época occurred between1870 and 1920 and laid the foundation fortoday’s MPB (Brazilian Popular Music) withits basic forms: the maxixe, choro, samba andthe myriad mixed forms resulting from them.

This epoch was characterized by the transitionfrom a monarchy to a republic (1889), by theabolition of slavery (1888), by a growingBrazilian national consciousness, and by thebeginning of industrialization. Brazil was in astate of upheaval, with all the economic andpolitical problems of emerging nationhood.The emancipation of the slaves flooded thebig cities with droves of blacks who wereleaving the plantations. Many wasted awaytheir lives in slum quarters, which housed thecity’s socially disadvantaged. All in all, it was aclimate that nourished social tension.Nevertheless, or perhaps directly owing to thesituation, optimal conditions were present forthe creation of an urban popular music.Similar preconditions provided fertile soil forthe tango porteño in Buenos Aires, thecalypso in Trinidad, and ragtime and jazz inNew Orleans.

The modinha and lundu had alreadymanaged to secure a place for themselves inRio de Janeiro before the beginning of theBelle Epoch. The waltz and polka joinedthem in the first half of the nineteenthcentury. While the waltz offered the citizenryof the elegant salons and royal court feelingof aristocratic dignity, the polka quicklygained a following in all strata of thepopulace. Polka fever spread like wildfire.Polcar came into use to describe a neweasygoing, carefree life-style in the salonsand on the streets. Most song and danceforms in Rio were combined with the polca

(whose Brazilianization is reflected in thenew spelling), resulting in ever newvariations. Polca-lundus and polca-tangos(influenced by the Cuban habanera)competed for the cariocas’ favor, both withinthe salon repertoire as well as by morepopular orchestras.

Other fashionable dances from Europe soonappeared on the scene in Rio. The cariocas’turn to the European Romantic helped themdiscover the mazurka and schottische. But,above all, the mazurka was welcomed as thealternative to the waltz, contredanse andquadrille. Especially the latter, a successor tothe minuet, and the xotis (or xote) dances,which are related to the schottische, arecentral to the repertoire of rural dancefestivals in the música sertaneja tradition.

New and vigorous tones could be heard at alltypes of parades and processions, reflectingthe growth of a national consciousness. Themarch was a suitable vehicle. Nevertheless,as the chronicles report, the march arrived inBrazil a bastard, born of such related formsas the pasodoble, military march and quickmarch. Brazilians played them in their ownway—with somewhat more swing and aforced tempo (calling for exactly onehundred steps per minute) as dobrado toaccompany three-part musical compositions.

It goes without saying that neither thearistocracy nor the bourgeoisie could meetthe demand for musicians for balls, marchorchestras, theater and opera from their ownranks. As a result, the musicians bestinformed about the latest dances alwayscame from the Cidade Nova, a section of thecity where the lower classes lived. Theyplayed there in the neighborhood bars or inthe brothels in Rua do Senado. It is hard tosay whether the first fusions of theirbatuques, lundus and ranchos with Europeandances occurred here or in the concert hallsand salons of the ruling class. Whatever thecase, a new bastard form—the maxixe, ahybrid of the polca, lundu, and habanera—suddenly appeared. The maxixe was a merrydance characterized by a forced, lightlysyncopated rhythm. The dancers thought upall sorts of almost acrobatic steps and figuresfor it. It has been surmised that the frevo,which arose in Recife at the turn of thecentury, still profits today fromchoreographic elements of the maxixe.

Where does the name maxixe derive from?Maxixe is supposed to have been the nameof one of the dancers in the Estudantes doHeidelberg (a club for students fromHeidelberg, Germany). Or maybe the name


comes from machiche, (a type of slidingdance) or La Mattchitche, as a particularsong title from the period was spelled. Themaxixe which arose in 1870 represents thefirst urban dance of Brazilian creation….

Choro RhythmPopular music styles of the latter half of thenineteenth century became the melodic andrhythmic source material for a developmentwithin MPB known as choro. SeveralBrazilian musicologists even regard thechoro as the only typical, independent formof Brazilian music. In view of the country’ssize and the great number of musical styles,one might well question this assertion.Nevertheless, it is certainly true that choro isthe most interesting form of instrumentalexpression in Rio, and of no less importancethan early instrumental forms of jazz andtango. Indeed, the choro is several decadesolder than jazz. Choro music first developedat the outset of the Belle Epoque as a purelyinstrumental form, when the mulatto JoseAntonio da Silva Callado began playingpopular polcas with new instrumentation.Callado’s original arrangement (essentially aterno de pau e cordas) put together for thefirst time guitar, cavaquinho and flute in sucha way that the cavaquinho played theharmonies and the guitar played backcontrapuntally in the bass line the melodycarried by Callado’s ebony flute. (Jazz utilizesthe same principle, but with jazz the melodyis carried by the contrabass, and it arosemuch later.)

By around 1930 the pandeiro, reco-reco, andother percussion instruments customary forthe samba began to back up the naturalswing arising from the interplay of guitar andcavaquinho. The new sound, subtlymelancholic in character, resulting from theparticular interplay of instruments and fromthe ringing, graceful strains of cavaquinhoand guitar, lent this new form its name.Choro, derived from chorar, means ‘towail’or ‘to weep’. The musicians came to beknown as chorão and chorões. There areindications of a possible semantic derivationfrom the African xolo dance.

The choro rhythm, where it is not identicalwith the polca or other playing styles, isaptly described in Waldir Azevedo’s chorotitle ‘Arraste-Pé’, meaning ‘dragged foot’,

that is walking with one foot dragging behindthe other….

A young woman took up the task of carryingon the still young choro tradition. In 1877, atthe tender age of thirty, Francisca Hedwigesde Lima Gonzaga, better known as ChiquinhaGonzaga (1847–1935), composed a pieceentitled ‘Atrevida’ which is still in thechorões’ repertoire today. Her 1899composition ‘Só no Choro’ demonstrated theexistence of the chorões’ instrumentalplaying style as an independent musicalform.

The daughter of wealthy parents, ChiquinhaGonzaga received the benefits of pianolessons and a general musical education.(She was an extremely emancipated womanfor an age characterized by a strict moralcode.) Initially, the Cidade Nova did not wantto accept the fact that a woman couldassume the leading position in a musicalmovement. ‘This Chiquinha is a devil,’ manyproclaimed.

The success of her carnival march ‘O AbreAlás’ in 1899 must have won her sympathy inthe eyes of the public. Several years later,active as a committed suffragette, she gotmixed up in a national scandal. The wife ofthe President of the Republic had extendedto Gonzaga an invitation to the Palace; theleading families of the nation were furious tosee the composer of ‘Corta Jaca’ (‘a songfrom the gutter,’ they said) celebrated in thepalace. The choro, after all, like all musicalforms originating among the lower classes,was not considered fit for proper society.

Prior to all this, Chiquinha Gonzaga hadbegun calling her choros and maxixes‘Brazilian tangos’. In his Pequenha Historia

da Música Popular, Tinhorão hypothesizedthat her intention was to help this newmusical form along to social recognition andthat, in turn, it would win it a measure ofpopularity among the upper social strata.

PixinguinhaWind instruments, clarinets among them, firsttook their place in the choro conjuntos at theend of the nineteenth century. Rio was full ofmilitary bands in those days, and they servedas important reservoirs of young musicaltalent for the choro conjuntos, while, in turn,



the choro was adopted by the bandsthemselves. The arrival of jazz on the musicalscene brought the saxophone to Brazil. April23, 1898, marks the birth of the next greatfigure after Ernesto Nazareth in Brazil’smusical history. Pixinguinha; remembered andhonored as flautist and saxophonist, as wellas a brilliant composer and arranger, hecreated well over six-hundred instrumentalpieces, ranging from valsas and polcas tomaxixes and chotes, not to mention sambasand choroes. In the final analysis, it wasPixinguinha who established a new standardfor choro music and, simultaneously, for thefurther development of Brazil’s popularinstrumental music in our century.

Pixinguinha grew up in the working-classdistrict of Catumbi in the north of Rio as ason of the power-line worker Alfredo daRocha Viana. The grandfather called AlfredJr. by the African name Pizinguim (meaning‘small rogue’), which later became Pizidin,and eventually Pixinguinha.

The father was a passable flautist. His homebecame the focal point for many of theneighborhood’s choro musicians, and byfifteen years of age Pixinguinha, along withhis four brothers and sisters, was beingallowed to stay up for all-night jam sessionsand to play a little guitar. Still wearing shortpants, he bought himself a flute and wassoon to be found wherever music could beheard. One could be especially sure to findhim during carnival time, which he loved sodearly. At sixteen he was already well-accepted in the music circles of the entirenorthern district of Rio. In addition to choro,he had a special liking for all the songs anddances of African origin that were played atfestivals in the Macumba and Candomblecenters. Pixinguinha put together his firstband in 1919….

Pixinguinha seldom appeared as soloist,limiting himself instead to melodies andharmonies on his flute or saxophone. Heenjoyed accompanying other soloists muchmore. Pixinguinha’s larger significance restsin his work as a composer and arranger.Antonio Carlos Jobim regards Pixinguinha asthe founder of a new epoch in MPB, whichuntil then had been strongly influenced byChopin. Like Jobim, many musicologiststoday consider Pixinguinha to be the firstarranger in MPB. In fact, this is one of the

main reasons so many Brazilian musiciansnowadays honor him as a genius.

Kinship BondsA final look at the choro’s significance in itsPan-American context could proveilluminating. The tango, choro and jazz (or itsprecursor, ragtime) all have their roots in thelatter half of the nineteenth century. Thetango arose under the direct influence of theCuban habanera, the choro from thehabanera via the maxixe, and ragtime rightby the Caribbean in New Orleans. All threemusical forms were born as mixed forms ofdifferent cultural spheres within theneighborhoods of underprivileged socialgroups: the tango in the Orillas of BuenosAires, the choro in the Cidade Nova of Rio deJaneiro and ragtime or jazz in the FrenchQuarter of New Orleans.

Jazz and choro most certainly arose withAfrican participation, whereas the tango, as aconsequence of its kinship to the habaneraand the small African populace in BuenosAires, can only be regarded as having aminimal African element.

Tango, choro and ragtime: all three wereprimarily purely instrumental forms. Thefollowing elements common to the three are striking:

1. Small, mobile orchestras.2. One or two melodic instruments

accompanied by stringed instrumentsplaying the harmonies and bass lines;percussion.

3. Collective performance.4. Improvisation.5. Musicians of each genre’s early period

are honored accordingly: Guardia Vieja(Argentina), Guarda Velha (Brazil),Legends of Jazz (USA).

6. Rhythmical characteristics: Choro andragtime can be easily confused witheach other. The tango rhythm, too,exhibits the braking effect typical ofchoro and ragtime. All three arefrequently characterized by apredominance of sixteenth notes.

7. Injection of the musician’s personality.Tango, choro, jazz (ragtime), in theiroriginal forms, were always influencedby the musician’s personal mannerisms,means of expression and disposition,through which he communicated himselfto his audience.


Shekere © Royalty Free/CORBIS

Flute © William Whitehurst/CORBIS

Piano © Randy Duchaine/CORBIS

The musicians in Oriente Lopez’s ensemble play a variety of traditional andmodern instruments. Stringed instruments include the guitar, cavaquinho(which looks a little like a ukulele), and electric bass. There are many kinds ofpercussion played; some, like the rain stick—an indigenous South American

instrument—produce coloristic effects, such as the sound of rain falling lightly in a forest.The Brazilian pandeiro is a tambourine with small cymbals that jingle on its sides, not tobe confused with the Brazilian tamborim, which is a small, round frame drum of Africanand Portuguese origin, struck with a thin stick.

The cajon is a large Afro-Peruvian rectangular wooden box drum, which the percussionistplays by drumming on it with his or her hands while sitting on it, and is often used inSpanish flamenco ensembles. The shekere, an African rattle made from a hollowed gourdwrapped in a lattice of beads, is played by shaking or twisting to produce rattle soundsor by hitting the bottom with the palm of the hand to produce deep sounds, and iscommonly played in Afro-Caribbean music.

Like the composers that influenced him, Oriente Lopez plays the piano. Although he likesto use the piano to compose and orchestrate his ideas, he enjoys playing the flute, whichhe has studied since childhood. He says it gives him the opportunity to “sing,” as it relieson the body and breath to produce “the voice.”

Flutes feature prominently in Latin music. The five-key wooden transverse flute, thecharanga, was popular in Cuba during the first half of the twentieth century. Today, mostCuban artists play the easier Boehm system silver flute, although it lacks the pure tone ofthe wooden flute. There is a folk tradition in Brazil’s northeast of wooden flutes calledpífanos. Often the lead instrument in Brazilian choro, the flute is played by many Brazilianjazz stylists such as Hermeto Pascoal, who has been known to play a choro in doubletime on a soda bottle.

The Instruments

Shekere

Flute

Piano


Bandolim and cavaquinho are the aristocratsof the popular stringed instruments; the guitaris king. The particular significance of theseinstruments is highlighted by the fact thatrabeca and viola virtuosos usually remainunknown to the greater public, while theguitar, cavaquinho and bandolim—allassociated with the names of excellentmusicians—have gained entry into the fieldsof popular and even classical music.

The bandolim stems from the family of luteinstruments and represents a furtherdevelopment of the Neopolitan mandolin inPortugal (where the name was alsoassimilated accordingly). By the eighteenthcentury the bandolim had also found a homein Brazil. The four string pairs of the bandolimare tuned like four violin strings (sol, re, la,mi), and are played with a plectrum. Thebandolim, with its predominantly soloisticfuntion, is played in such European-influenced

musical forms as the polca, xotis, valsa,

maxixe, modinha, fandango and choro. Themost renowned Brazilian virtuoso was JacobBittencourt (Jacob de Bandlim, 1918–1969).Some contemporary bandolim players worthmentioning are Joel Nascimento, Deo Rian,Luperce Miranda and Evandro.

The cavaquinho, too, made the trip fromPortugal to Brazil two hundred years ago.Originally known as the machete, it soonchanged its name to cavaquinho (a colloquialexpression for guitar). It looks like a mini-guitar with four strings that are tuned infourths (re, sol, si, re). It is also played with aplectrum. But what is important, accordingto Waldir Azevedo, is how one holds theplectrum: the strings (and not the plectrum)must be made to vibrate. Manuel Antonio deAlmeida reports that during Whit-Sundayprocessions in the nineteenth century smallgroups of boys would play shepherd’sinstruments, pandeiros, machetes andtamborils in barbershop bands.

The cavaquinho first secured its place withinMPB as an instrument to accompany thelundu. Later it could be heard with differentsongs and dances in urban centers (as withthe bandolim), and today it can also be foundin various ternos and conjuntos all over thecountry. At the end of the last century thecavaquinho and bandolim first took on soloparts as well.


Schreiner, Claus. Música Brasileira: A

History of Popular Music and the People

of Brazil. London: Marion BoyarsPublishers Ltd., 2002. Copyright © ClausSchreiner. Reprinted by permission.

Here is a look at the stringed instruments that are at the base of the Latinsound.

The Strings that Joined the VoyageBy Claus SchreinerTranslated from the German by Mark Weinstein

Gustavo Saiani, guitarist


Bringing itTogether

In ClosingAs I began to learn about Oriente Lopez and his music, I discovered answersto questions I hadn’t quite formulated, and began to trace the dotted lines Ihad imagined between various musical cultures. I continue to ask myself,what exactly is música popular? What is jazz? What is classical music?

Living in New York City, where some of the best Latin jazz in the world has arisen, it iseasy to take for granted the presence of artists like Oriente Lopez, who is known as acomposer, performer, arranger, and producer. The fact that his band members hail fromthe different international stops on Viajes en un mundo nuevo is no coincidence. NewYork City is a major port on the trade route of today’s world-music scene. As a high-schoolstudent I remember being perplexed upon hearing the music of Egberto Gismonti, yet itcontributed to a lifelong search in Brazilian music. Perhaps Oriente Lopez’s music willopen the doors to new sounds, taking you on your own journey.


DescriptionDescribe the piece in as much detail as possible. Describewhat you see and hear. Keep your description as objective as possible.

What instruments do you hear? Are voices used?

Describe the tempo (fast/slow), the dynamics (loud/soft), thepitch (high/low).

How is the sound organized? Is there a solo line? How arethe instruments grouped?

Describe the rhythm.

AnalysisWhat choices did the artist[s] make in creating this work?Examine the elements that make up the work and how theyrelate to one another.

How do the elements of tempo, dynamics, and pitch conveya particular mood, or even a story?

How do the choices of instruments and/or voices shape themusical expression of the work?

If text is used, what ideas are conveyed? How does it relateto the music?

How does the music support the action or create anenvironment or mood?

Speculation/InterpretationUsing the information you have gained through descriptionand analysis, speculate on the possible meanings of thisartwork. Interpretive statements should carry us along thepathway further into the work of art, not away from it.

What ideas might the artist have been trying to convey?

What are some of the issues with which the artist wasconcerned?

What in your own life are you reminded of as you listen tothis work?

What does this work of art mean to you personally?

What other possible meanings might it have?

What might it mean to society in the future?

Developing Teaching IdeasDuring the brainstorming process, the description, analysis,interpretation, and judgment of the work of art is capturedthrough note-taking as the discussion evolves. In reviewingthe notes, the following questions are posed.

Where are the “teachable” ideas?

What aspects of the piece could be explored with youngpeople to help guide them toward an understanding of thework and its meaning to them?

ResponsesBasic to the Institute’s philosophy of aesthetic education is the belief that works of art are inexhaustible: repeatedencounters with the same work yield new insights. Encounters with works of art can change people, causing them to view the artwork and the world in a new way. In addition, artworks do not immediately reveal all that is there to be seen. Perception of artworks can be compared to peeling the layers of an onion—they can be seen on many levels and from many perspectives.

Expanding your response to a work of artUse some of the questions below to guide your viewing of the work of art. As you develop and expand your ownresponse, think about ways in which you might help your students see all there is to be seen and discovered. Whatfurther questions might you develop? How might responding to these questions lead you to asking deeper questionswhich will guide you toward the creation of activities for further exploration, investigation, and research?

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