Historically, we Americans have described our culture as a melting pot – a place where many people from unique cultures came together to create a new society. We’ve thought about our culture as set apart. We’ve believed we had a special mission in the world. We’ve seen the incredible 1 + 1 equals 10 kind of synergy that was possible due to the contributions brought by the peoples, faiths, world views and problem-solving behaviors our immigrants brought. The melting pot imagines the creation of a new culture coming out of the crucible of common, American nation-building experience, as if all the waves of immigration our country has experienced served as an intense heat to create a stronger alloy. America’s rich musical legacy is an example of this synergy.
In earlier episodes, I’ve described the origins of country, jazz, blues, and rock and roll, and how these genres are excellent examples of this process. Rock, blues, jazz, gospel and R&B came out of the African American musical tradition, while folk and country chiefly grew out of our Western European cultural heritage.
Our country started on the Atlantic coast, settled by Western Europeans. We’ve followed the evolution of American Song through a historic filter, considering mostly the Anglo – and then the African-rooted genres first.
Today, we shift focus to consider another important cultural vein, brought here by the Spanish, and rising out of the American west and Southwest as well as New York City – and obviously all of Central and South America, Cuba and Puerto Rico.
A few things have struck me as I’ve been putting my thoughts together for these next few episodes. Of course, the first thing is that – just like in earlier genres that we’ve talked about – the music we hear today has gone through a long journey of changes. Second, like jazz and the blues, the music often gives voice to the frustrations and struggles Latin Americans have experienced while hacking and carving out their own rightful place in an America that was – at best, indifferent to their chances for success, and – at worst – doing everything it could to send them packing.
In the next two episodes, we’ll explore the origins of Latin music, – not just in the United States, but on a wider level, across most of the New World. I’m so excited to share this journey with you!
Every song has an opening, so let’s start at the top.
In Spain, there used to be a custom when people visited someone’s home for dinner. Guests always bring something to contribute to the meal. It could be fish, or shrimp, or rice, or whatever. Arriving at the door, they would hand over the food and say ‘es pa’ ella’ – ‘it’s for her’ and eventually the food made it’s way into the paella stew that was being prepared in the kitchen. Latin music is like this.
When the Spanish conquistadores and missionaries first came to the New World, they discovered a land that was home to millions of Native Americans, with their own music traditions. The Mayans, Aztecs, and Incas who inhabited the lands now known as Central and South America, had a rich musical tradition based on percussion and wind instruments, especially flutes. You can still hear the echoes of it in traditional Latin music, like this example:
The Spanish also brought the Muslim/ Arabic influences in their music to the New World, like this piece from Andalucia, this is Arabic music from the Spanish region of Andalusia – it’s their culture’s classical music. You’ll hear it across Southern Spain and Northern Africa - Ageria, Morocco, Tunisia, and a little bit from Libya.
This piece, called Flor de un Dia is fascinating because it combines the Spanish, Arabic, and Native American influences together. Talk about world music!
In our episodes about gospel music and the blues, we talked a bit about how when the African slaves were brought to America, they brought their drumming with them. In America, slave owners suppressed it, since they were afraid that the drumming could be used to communicate messages of revolt among the slaves. The Spanish also imported African slaves to the lands they were colonizing, but in this case, it was not suppressed. Africans provided the single most recognizable element in Latin music, and, in time, their influence gave rise to genres like samba, salsa, merengue, bachata, and timba. One thing I really find interesting, is that, despite the massive differences in cultures, West African and European music actually blended easily together because they had similar scale systems and harmonies. The African influences are strongest in Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haiti, Brazil and the small countries of northeast South
America. Afro-Cuban rumba, Brazilian samba, Jamaican reggae, and Colombian cumbia music are secular forms. The Spanish missionaries basically bolted Catholicism onto the Native American and African belief systems and in these countries you’ll find religions like Yoruban, Macumba, Candomble, Santeria and Vodun where African-originated drumming and dance are important to worship. There are large communities that practice these religions in Brazil, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Haiti, as well as in New York City, Los Angeles, Miami and other American cities with large Latin populations.
The Native Americans also made music an everyday part of their lives – especially in the ceremonial and functional aspects. Song, dance and playing instruments were used to insure a good harvest, and seek protection from their gods against natural disasters, assure fertility of land and people, heal sickness, generate success in war and hunting, mark life's passages, maintain tradition and in some cases provide recreation.
The Mayans and Incas actually had what we would call orchestras of wind and percussion instruments and there’s research to support the idea that – at the height of each of these cultures - music was at least as advanced as what was found in Europe and Asia. Their instruments were formed from locally available materials like hollow reeds and clay for flutes, hardwood trees and animal skin for drums, gourds and seeds for rattles and seashells for trumpets. Everyone used voices for singing and chanting.
As any California grade school student can tell you, the Spanish presence in North America started in the early 1500s, and like they’d done in Central and South America, the Spanish sent missionaries to pacify the Natives there. The first mission was built in San Diego, using basically Native American slave labor. European church music – mostly Gregorian chant (plainsong) – was on California’s Top 20 list every week.
These missions had libraries, used to educate the Native Americans and provide training in manual labor – and these libraries collected European instruments which they taught the Native Americans to play. There were organs, (barrel, reed and pipe), as well as strings (violins, violoncellos, contrabass), woodwinds (piccolos, flutes, oboes, clarinets), brass (trumpets and horns) and percussion instruments. A few diaries from early mission visitors talk about the quality of the music that could be heard in these places. Starting in the 1760’s, Spain’s king Carlos III realized he should block Russian expansion into the New World, and a trail of missions – spaced along the coast, about one day’s walk away from each other began to expand up the California coast, and the mission music expanded with it.
It wasn’t all church music and masses, either. Irish, French, and English secular songs also played important parts in daily mission life. There were dance tunes and folk songs that the Spanish taught the Native Americans, and again based on early travelers’ diaries, we even have stories about Indians performing the Marseilles and other non-Spanish patriotic and secular songs. Native Americans regularly played for the many fiestas in the towns that sprang up around the presidios (or forts) and missions. In 19th Century California, most people had a degree of musical training. It was the rule, and not the exception. Mostly, people were taught at home, by another family member.
In California, the Spaniards and Mexicans performed folk music on reed organs, small pianos, and guitars, during fiestas and weddings. Charles Lummis – a West Coast version of Adam Lomax – assembled a large library of field recordings on wax cylinders in the first decades of the 20th century. Here’s an example.
Lummis, along with a number of other very prominent Southern Californians, formed the Southwest Society and the. Archaelogical Institute of America.
These organizations were committed to educating people about America’s archaeology, history, and people. Being one of the first audiophiles in history, in 1903, Lummis successfully applied for grant money to record Southwestern Native American music. Between 1904 and 1905, Lummis recorded at least 300 different Spanish-language songs, and 160 Native American cylinders. A large collection of these cylinders is still housed in two locations around L.A., the Braun Research Library, Southwest Museum and El Alisal, in the Highland Park area of L.A. Besides spearheading the grant, Lummis also served as recording engineer, and contracted several composers to actually transcribe the recordings. Pena Hueca, played and sung by Lummis.
One of the precursors to Latin popular music was the corrido, narrative Mexican folk songs.
Historically, these Corridos were the main informational and educational outlet. There were corridos about bandits, for instance – like "Corrido de Leandro Rivera" who went on Wild-Wild West crime spree back in the days when Texas was still a Republic. There were political songs, like "Corrido de las Elecciones de Brownsville," that told the story about how an outlaw was lynched. Corridos gave rise to other forms of music such as Tejano (literally "Texas music") which combined the waltzes and polkas that German and Polish immigrants brought with them as they immigrated into North America and Spanish-language songs that originated south of the border and were passed down through generations of Mexicans.
Singer Lydia Mendoza (1916–2007) was the first interpreter of rural popular Tejano and border music to become a star through her many recordings.
The Grammy award-winning Tejano singer Selena Quintanilla Perez (1971-1995), best known as Selena, achieved international fame at the time of her murder in April 1995.
A contemporary heir to the corrido tradition is El Vez, an old school punk rocker and Mexican American Elvis impersonator who takes classic Elvis Presley songs and turns them into revolutionary political music.
Every corrido has five identifying elements.
1) the title of the corrido,
2) the introduction of the main characters,
3) the narration of what happens in the corrido,
4) the overall purpose or message,
5) the farewell or transition out of the corrido.
The three-chord progressions, basic melodies and the rhythmic way the lyrics fit the music, provide a musical context that permits singers of corridos to interpret them in many different ways. a pretty wide approach to how singers and musicians interpret these songs. In one example, the Corrido del Bracero the lyrics include:
Alla en Matamoros cruce la frontera, I crossed the border there in Matamoros,
Por falta de modo, cruce ilegal For lack of any other means, I crossed illegally
Senores les cuento, como ando sufriendo Gentlemen, I am telling you about how I am suffering
Que me han dado ganas de volver pa’tras How they are making me want to go on back14
Corridos became a form that allowed the Mexican people to document the memories of significant persons and events.
After the Mexican and American war, the United States annexed land that had previously belonged to Mexica, including Texas, California, Nevada, Utah, and Arizon, Colorado and New Mexico. This period was ideal for birthing an expressive culture that drew inspiration from the conflict and tensions. The lyrics of corridos served as a literature of the Mexican
people, very much like some popular songs still do. These songs had a high value in Mexican culture, but were ignored by the powers that be because the values and sentiments expressed in those songs ran contrary. The songs spread organically, carried to different cities and regions by traveling troubadors.
One example is the corrido, Lavaplatos. It’s about the adventures of a poor Mexican who immigrates to the U.S. in search of a glamorous life in Hollywood but is eventually disappointed. Lyrics include:
Sonaba en mi juventud ser una estrella I dreamed in my youth of being a movie star
de cine, y un día de tantos me vine and one of those days I came to
a visitor Hollywood. visit Hollywood.
Un día muy desesperado por tanta One day very desperate because of so much
revolución, revolution,
me pase para este lado I came over to this side
sin pagar la inmigración without paying the immigration.
The corridista states that he had dreams of being a movie star which motivated his decision to
leave Mexico for a life of supposed “glamour” in the United States.
The corridista of Lavaplatos works in a warehouse, as an agricultural worker and lastly as a
dishwasher. His work history was similar to those of many recently arrived Mexican immigrants
who were immediately confined to work intensive and low paying jobs in the United States.
Adios sueños de mi vida Goodbye dreams of my life,
adios estrellas del cine, goodbye movie stars,
vuelvo a mi patria querida I return to my beloved country
más pobre de lo que vine. poorer than when I arrived.24
We’ll return to this topic, about corridos, in our next episode.
If you’ve enjoyed taking a look at a side of American music that hasn’t had as much exposure, I think you’re going to love the next two episodes that continue the narrative. Looking ahead, we’ll look at some of the ways this music has been used to unite people around important causes, we’ll hear music from different regions, and we’ll see how it’s all come together to be a major force in American culture today. If you’re interested in learning more about the topics discussed today, please visit AmericanSongPodcast.facebook.com for a complete set of links to all the resources we used in our research.
I’ve been your host, Joe Hines, and I’ll see you back here again soon!