Latin American music, sometimes simply called Latin music, includes the music of many countries and comes in many varieties, from the simple, rural conjunto music of northern Mexico to the sophisticated habanera of Cuba, from the symphonies of Heitor Villa-Lobos to the simple and moving Andean flute. Music has played an important part in Latin America’s turbulent recent history, for example the nueva canción movement. Latin music is very diverse, with the only truly unifying thread being the use of the Spanish language or, in Brazil, its close cousin the Portuguese language.
Latin America can be divided into several musical areas. Andean music, for example, includes the countries of western South America, typically Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Ecuador, Chile and Venezuela; Central American music includes El Salvador, Belize, Panama, Guatemala, Honduras, and Costa Rica. Caribbean music includes many Spanish and French-speaking islands in the Caribbean Sea, including Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico, Martinique and Guadeloupe, though the Francophone islands are not necessarily considered Latin. Brazil perhaps constitutes its own musical area, both because of its large size and incredible diversity as well as its unique history as a Portuguese colony. Although Spain isn’t a part of Latin America, Spanish music (and Portuguese music) and Latin American music strongly cross-fertilized each other, but Latin music also absorbed influences from English and American music, and particularly, African music.
Characteristics
There are many diverse styles of Latin music which all constitute Afro-American musical traditions, meaning that elements of European, African and indigenous music are fused. In the past, various authors have suggested extreme positions like Latin music being bereft of African influence, or being purely African with no European or indigenous elements, but it is now generally accepted that Latin music is inherently syncretic. Specifically, Spanish song forms, African rhythms and European harmony are major parts of Latin music, as are more modern rock, hip hop, jazz, reggae and R&B[.
The Spanish décima song form, in which there are ten lines of eight syllables each, was the basis for many styles of Latin American song. The African influence is, however, central to Latin music, and is the basis for Cuban rumba, Colombian cumbia and Brazilian samba, among other styles. African musical elements are most prevalent in the religious music of the multifarious syncretic traditions, like Brazilian candomblé and Cuban santeria.
Syncopation, a musical technique in which weak beats are accented instead of strong ones, is a major characteristic of Latin music. The African emphasis on rhythm is also important in Latin music, and is expressed through the primacy given to percussion instrument. The call-and-response song style which is common in Africa, is also found in Latin American; in this style of song, two or more elements respond to each other, musically or lyrically, one at a time. Author Bruno Nettl also cites as essentially African characteristics of Latin music the central position of instrumental music, the importance of improvisation and the «tendency to use a variety of tone colors… especially harsh, throaty singing».
Those African musical techniques that were similar to European techniques were kept in Latin America, while the more dissimilar elements abandoned; in addition, the most specialized aspects of African music, such as polyrhythms, remain a part of Latin music, while the less central aspects of African music, like scale and form, have been replaced by European features. Some elements of African music, most commonly the emphasis on rhythm, have been suggested as having a biological basis, though this is no longer generally accepted among scholars and has been refuted by several studies. Bruno Nettl instead suggests that African techniques were retained because music played a central role in daily life and because African music was «in several ways more complex and more highly developed in Africa than in the Indian and Western folk cultures».
Indigenous music
Very little can be known for sure about music in what is now Latin America prior to the arrival of Europeans. Though there are extremely isolated peoples in the Amazon Basin and elsewhere that have had little contact with Europeans or Africans, Latin music is almost entirely a synthesis of European, African and indigenous elements. The advanced civilizations of the pre-contact era included the Mayan, Aztec and Incan empires. These cultures had well-developed musical institutions that were «reduced to simpler levels and styles through the annihilation or reduction of the ruling classes, and through the introduction of Christianity».
The ancient Central American civilizations of the Maya and Aztec peoples played instruments including the tlapitzalli (a flute), teponatzli, a log drum, the conch-shell trumpet, various rattles and rasps and the huehuetl, a kettle drum. The earliest written accounts by Spanish colonizers indicate that Aztec music was entirely religious in nature, and was performed by professional musicians; some instruments were considered holy, and thus mistakes made by performers were punished as being possibly offensive to the gods.
Pictorial representations indicate that ensemble performance was common. Similar instruments were also found among the Incas of South America, who played in addition a wide variety of ocarinas and panpipes. The tuning of panpipes found in Peru has similarities to instruments played in the Pacific islands, leading some scholars to believe in contact between South American and the Oceanic cultures.
Origins
The arrival of the Spanish and their music heralded the beginning of Latin American music. At the time, parts of Spain and Portugal were controlled by the Moors of North Africa, who tolerated many ethnic groups. These peoples, like the Roma, Jews and Spanish Christians, each had their own styles of music, as did the Moors, that contributed to the early evolution of Latin music. Many Moorish instruments were adopted in Spain, for example, and the North African nasal, high-pitched singing style and frequent use of improvisation also spread to the all the peoples of Iberia, as did the Roma vocal trill that characterizes Roma music. From continental Europe, Spain adopted the French troubadour tradition, which by the 16th century was a major part of Spanish culture. Both ethnic Spaniards and Moors contributed to the troubadour tradition, which spawned the décima song form, which features ten lines of eight syllables each. The décima format remains an important part of Latin music, include in corridos, bolero and vallenato.
Some modern peoples of Latin America are essentially purely African, such as the Garifuna of Central America, and their music reflects their isolation from European influence. However, in general, the African slaves brought to the Americas modified their musical traditions by either adapting African performance style with European songs or vice versa, or simply learning both European song and performance style.
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