Academic literature on the topic 'Latin American Folk songs'

Considered as the universal language, music has been historically a means of communication and personal expression about the inner and outer world of its creator, it is present in almost every social activity of human beings as in the habitual religious celebration of Christmas across the largely Catholic countries. Therefore, the present paper will provide a descriptive text analysis of ten traditional Latin American Christmas folk songs on the base of the transitivity system informed by the Hallidayan Systemic Functional Linguistics theory. To reach this goal, both a quantitative and qualitative research method approach was applied. Findings indicated that among the six analyzed transitivity process types, the material processes (32%) dominate the construal of the musical pieces, followed by the mental (23%), behavioral (18%), and relational realizations (13%) whereas the verbal and existential processes are relatively low all together representing an overall frequency of 14%. This reveals the singers’ attempt to represent the Christmas season as a nostalgic time leap, an immediate enjoyment, and a rewarding exchange.

Abstract This essay explores the sense of dual tonicity evident in a set of interrelated Spanish and Latin American music genres. These genres include seventeenth-century Spanish keyboard and vihuela fandangos, and diverse folk genres of the Hispanic Caribbean Basin, including the Venezuelan galerón and the Cuban punto, zapateo, and guajira. Songs in these genres oscillate between apparent “tonic” and “dominant” chords, yet conclude on the latter chord and bear internal features that render such terminology inapplicable. Rather, such ostinatos should be understood as oscillating in a pendular fashion between two tonal centers of relatively equal stability. The ambiguous tonicity is related to the Moorish-influenced modal harmony of flamenco and Andalusian folk music; it can also be seen to have informed the modern Cuban son and the music of twentieth-century Cuban composer Amadeo Roldán.

The considerations and arguments of this article were developed based on the information printed in Diário de Notícias, a newspaper from Salvador, Bahia, in Brazil, which states that Agnes Blake Poor was the first North-American woman to translate Brazilian literature into English. Poor edited the anthology Pan-American Poems (1918) that brought a collection of Latin-American poems in English translation. Brazil is represented by Gonçalves Dias, Bruno Seabra, the Portuguese Francisco Manuel de Nascimento, and a gypsy folk-song. Using the theoretical and methodological tools from Descriptive Translation Studies, the objective of this article is to analyse the political and literary dimensions in which the anthology was published in the United States and compare the source and target poems to pinpoint the translational norms. The results show that the governmental translation project was aimed to foster Pan-Americanism and to unite the Americas during war time, which was key to determine the choice of the poems and the translation norms.

Background. Choral work of American composers of the second half of the XX century is characterized by new qualities that have appeared because of not only musical but also non-musical factors generated by the system of cultural, historical and social conditions. Despite of a serious amount of scientific literature on the history of American music, the choral layer of American music remains partially unexplored, especially, in Ukrainian musical science, that bespeaks the science and practical novelty of the research results. The purpose of this study is to discover and to analyze the peculiarities of the historical formation and identity of American choral art of the second half of the twentieth century using the the works of famous American artists as examples. The research methodology is based on theoretical, historical and analytical methods, generalization and specification. Results. The general picture of the development of American composers’ practice in the genre of choral music is characterized by genre and style diversity. In our research we present portraits of iconic figures of American choral music in the period under consideration. So, the choral works of William Dawson (1899–1990), one of the most famous African-American composers, are characterized by the richness of the choral texture, intense sonority and demonstration of his great understanding of the vocal potential of the choir. Dawson was remembered, especially, for the numerous arrangements of spirituals, which do not lose their popularity. Aaron Copland (1899–1990), which was called “the Dean of American Composers”, was one of the founder of American music “classical” style, whose name associated with the America image in music. Despite the fact that the composer tends to atonalism, impressionism, jazz, constantly uses in his choral opuses sharp dissonant sounds and timbre contrasts, his choral works associated with folk traditions, written in a style that the composer himself called “vernacular”, which is characterized by a clearer and more melodic language. Among Copland’s famous choral works are “At The River”, “Four Motets”, “In the Beginning”, “Lark”, “The Promise of Living”; “Stomp Your Foot” (from “The Tender Land”), “Simple Gifts”, “Zion’s Walls” and others. Dominick Argento’s (1927–2019) style is close to the style of an Italian composer G. C. Menotti. Argento’s musical style, first of all, distinguishes the dominance of melody, so he is a leading composer in the genre of lyrical opera. Argento’s choral works are distinguished by a variety of performers’ stuff: from a cappella choral pieces – “A Nation of Cowslips”, “Easter Day” for mixed choir – to large-scale works accompanied by various instruments: “Apollo in Cambridge”, “Odi et Amo”, “Jonah and the Whale”, “Peter Quince at the Clavier”, “Te Deum”, “Tria Carmina Paschalia”, “Walden Pond”. For the choir and percussion, Argento created “Odi et Amo” (“I Hate and I Love”), 1981, based on the texts of the ancient Roman poet Catullus, which testifies to the sophistication of the composer’s literary taste and his skill in reproducing complex psychological states. The most famous from Argento’s spiritual compositions is “Te Deum” (1988), where the Latin text is combined with medieval English folk poetry, was recorded and nominated for a Grammy Award. Among the works of Samuel Barber’s (1910–1981) vocal and choral music were dominating. His cantata “Prayers of Kierkegaard”, based on the lyrics of four prayers by this Danish philosopher and theologian, for solo soprano, mixed choir and symphony orchestra is an example of an eclectic trend. Chapter I “Thou Who art unchangeable” traces the imitation of a traditional Gregorian male choral singing a cappella. Chapter II “Lord Jesus Christ, Who suffered all lifelong” for solo soprano accompanied by oboe solo is an example of minimalism. Chapter III “Father in Heaven, well we know that it is Thou” reflects the traditions of Russian choral writing. William Schumann (1910–1992) stands among the most honorable and prominent American composers. In 1943, he received the first Pulitzer Prize for Music for Cantata No 2 “A Free Song”, based on lyrics from the poems by Walt Whitman. In his choral works, Schumann emphasized the lyrics of American poetry. Norman Luboff (1917–1987), the founder and conductor of one of the leading American choirs in the 1950–1970s, is one of the great American musicians who dared to dedicate most of their lives to the popular media cultures of the time. Holiday albums of Christmas Songs with the Norman Luboff Choir have been bestselling for many years. In 1961, Norman Luboff Choir received the Grammy Award for Best Performance by a Chorus. Luboff’s productive work on folk song arrangements, which helped to preserve these popular melodies from generation to generation, is considered to be his main heritage. The choral work by Leonard Bernstein (1918–1990) – a great musician – composer, pianist, brilliant conductor – is represented by such works as “Chichester Psalms”, “Hashkiveinu”, “Kaddish” Symphony No 3)”,”The Lark (French & Latin Choruses)”, “Make Our Garden Grow (from Candide)”, “Mass”. “Chichester Psalms”, where the choir sings lyrics in Hebrew, became Bernstein’s most famous choral work and one of the most successfully performed choral masterpieces in America. An equally popular composition by Bernstein is “Mass: A Theater Piece for Singers, Players, and Dancers”, which was dedicated to the memory of John F. Kennedy, the stage drama written in the style of a musical about American youth in searching of the Lord. More than 200 singers, actors, dancers, musicians of two orchestras, three choirs are involved in the performance of “Mass”: a four-part mixed “street” choir, a four-part mixed academic choir and a two-part boys’ choir. The eclecticism of the music in the “Mass” shows the versatility of the composer’s work. The composer skillfully mixes Latin texts with English poetry, Broadway musical with rock, jazz and avant-garde music. Choral cycles by Conrad Susa (1935–2013), whose entire creative life was focused on vocal and dramatic music, are written along a story line or related thematically. Bright examples of his work are “Landscapes and Silly Songs” and “Hymns for the Amusement of Children”; the last cycle is an fascinating staging of Christopher Smart’s poetry (the18 century). The composer’s music is based on a synthesis of tonal basis, baroque counterpoint, polyphony and many modern techniques and idioms drawn from popular music. The cycle “Songs of Innocence and of Experience”, created by a composer and a pianist William Bolcom (b. 1938) on the similar-titled poems by W. Blake, represents musical styles from romantic to modern, from country to rock. More than 200 vocalists take part in the performance of this work, in academic choruses (mixed, children’s choirs) and as soloists; as well as country, rock and folk singers, and the orchestral musicians. This composition successfully synthesizes an impressive range of musical styles: reggae, classical music, western, rock, opera and other styles. Morten Lauridsen (b. 1943) was named “American Choral Master” by the National Endowment for the Arts (2006). The musical language of Lauridsen’s compositions is very diverse: in his Latin sacred works, such as “Lux Aeterna” and “Motets”, he often refers to Gregorian chant, polyphonic techniques of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and mixes them with modern sound. Lauridsen’s “Lux Aeterna” is a striking example of the organic synthesis of the old and the new traditions, or more precisely, the presentation of the old in a new way. At the same time, his other compositions, such as “Madrigali” and “Cuatro Canciones”, are chromatic or atonal, addressing us to the technique of the Renaissance and the style of postmodernism. Conclusions. Analysis of the choral work of American composers proves the idea of moving the meaningful centers of professional choral music, the gradual disappearance of the contrast, which had previously existed between consumer audiences, the convergence of positions of “third direction” music and professional choral music. In the context of globalization of society and media culture, genre and stylistic content, spiritual meanings of choral works gradually tend to acquire new features such as interaction of ancient and modern musical systems, traditional and new, modified folklore and pop. There is a tendency to use pop instruments or some stylistic components of jazz, such as rhythm and intonation formula, in choral compositions. Innovative processes, metamorphosis and transformations in modern American choral music reveal its integration specificity, which is defined by meta-language, which is formed basing on interaction and dialogue of different types of thinking and musical systems, expansion of the musical sound environment, enrichment of acoustic possibilities of choral music, globalization intentions. Thus, the actualization of new cultural dominants and the synthesis of various stylistic origins determine the specificity of American choral music.

Recent years have provoked an increasing interest in button accordion arts of Ukraine therefore a great demand for button accordion performance based on song and dance genre features is to be of great importance. Our research work deals with the embodiment of the song and dance genres features in academic button accordion art. The above-mentioned phenomenon has led to the appropriate systematization of their transformations in the musicological viewpoint therefore is stated to be very novel. This systematization is revealed from stylization to various arrangements, further transcriptions, fantasies, paraphrases, works on the theme of other artists that is to create the genre-style transformation. The aim of the research is to determine the genre-style methods of composers’ work for button accordion on the basis of song and dance genre. Present scientific research scope led to the solution of the following tasks: the disclosure of methods of author’s song and dance originals processing, identifying the specifics of drama and means of musical expression, justifying the popularity of works in the domestic musical performance. The following methods are used: analytical, comparative-historical and structural-functional. Summing up the results, it can be concluded that stylizations of dance and song genre are stated to be a great component of button accordion art. The use of European modeling samples (gavotte, mazurka and musette) contributed to the button accordion performance leading to sound production sophistication, high refinement of the sound palette and dynamic nuance, which enriched the artistic means of expressiveness, contributed to the evolution of interpretive experience. In the arrangements and transcriptions (by other authors) of Latin American dance genres there was an enrichment of rhythmic intonation structures and timbre palette of the instrument that lead to great popularity among performers and listeners by the interaction of academic art and genres belonging to the ‘third layer’. Among the opuses created in the genre-style transformation of songs and dances, the re-intonation of the original musical compositions received high artistic results. The use of modern means of button accordion expression, construction of new musical forms, application of elements of musical polystylistics, modification of genres are aimed at multifaceted reproduction of the figurative content of the original source, giving it a new artistic value and concert life. In the musical works of button accordion composers, the direction of song and dance genres features continuously enriches the quantitative and qualitative musical literature, so the prospects for further scientific research are relevant and promising.

Politics and identity go together in Brazilian heavy metal. Headbangers often experience accusations regarding their less-than-Latin-American identity for enjoying a foreign musical style more than their own native styles. Even though this is partially true, Brazilian heavy metal engages national and musical identity in at least two different ways. The first is through the denial of any connection to Brazilian culture and its roots by accepting this anglophone genre. The second is through the transformation of the musical genre itself, thanks to the influence of Brazilian folk music. Based on these changes, we intend to describe how Sepultura laid down the roots that eventually flourished in the music of Arandu Arakuaa, a band associated with a movement known as the ‘Insurgency of Native Metal’, which describes itself as a union of Brazilian metal bands that write and perform songs about their country. We will also delve into how Sepultura, a highly regarded group often added as part of the ‘big five’ of thrash metal, used this influence to pave the way for other Brazilian bands, specifically Arandu Arakuaa, encouraging them to explore further possibilities regarding transculturation. Thus, in this article we intend to contemplate transculturation as a theoretical concept and as a tool to understand Brazilian heavy metal within its contradictions and core beliefs.

American composer Ruth Crawford Seeger grew into the role of music educator as a consummate musician with a deep interest in connecting children to their American musical heritage. This article examines the contributions of Ruth Crawford Seeger to American music education, principally through examination of primary and secondary sources and review of her published works. While historical in some of its methodological procedures, it is even more so a biographical study of a composer who was consumed with a passion to preserve and transmit American heritage music to children. Her life in music as pianist, music intellectual, and composer notwithstanding, this research draws attention to her work in the selection, transcription, and placement of songs from the vast collections of the Lomax family into published works for use with children in schools. The authors examine the legacy of Ruth Crawford Seeger as an educator, with particular emphasis on the manner in which music of the people was masterfully transcribed from recordings and prepared for children and their teachers in schools and preschools.

Ruth Crawford Seeger (1901–1953), an American experimental composer active in the 1920s and 1930s, devoted the second half of her career to transcribing, arranging, performing, teaching, and writing about American folk music. Many works from Crawford Seeger's collections for children, including “Nineteen American Folk Songs” and “American Folk Songs for Children,” are widely sung and recorded, but her monumental efforts to publish them often remain unacknowledged. This article underscores the link between her work in American traditional music and Bruce Springsteen's best-selling 2006 album “We Shall Overcome: The Seeger Sessions” in order to give Crawford Seeger due credit for her contributions. By examining her prose writings and song settings, this article illuminates aspects of her thinking about American traditional music and elements of her unusual and striking arrangements, which were deeply informed by her modernist ear.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2005.
The entire dissertation/thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file (which also appears in the research.pdf); a non-technical general description, or public abstract, appears in the public.pdf file. Title from title screen of research.pdf file viewed on (July 10, 2006) Includes bibliographical references.

This essay presents a collection of Peruvian and other South American folk songs adapted for teaching violoncello technique with the goal of providing students with a more culturally diverse method which equally develops the left hand and right hand technique. Peruvian and other South American children learn the violoncello with European or American method books based on European folk songs. The repertoire of traditional methods usually lacks music familiar to pupils from Peruvian and other South American cultures. Written in foreign languages, the texts often exclude Spanish translation. Peruvians, especially children, are not necessarily familiar with folk music from Europe; neither are they fluent in foreign languages. Unless the teacher is familiar with the method's philosophy and is multi-lingual, a vast amount of information is lost, causing slow, and sometimes incorrect, learning. As a consequence, Peruvian music students are at a disadvantage compared to American and European music students. The core of this project consists of the collection of folk tunes arranged for violoncello and piano. The included preparatory exercises will help the student prepare for the technical challenges presented in each piece, and the original recordings of the songs' arrangements will serve as a reference for students and teachers. The purpose of this essay is not to create a new teaching philosophy, but to provide Peruvian and other South American students with a more familiar learning repertoire, drawing on the most effective methodology of three popular violoncello methods. Nonetheless, anyone interested in learning the violoncello with a multicultural repertoire can benefit from this collection.

This essay introduces readers to the music of the Venezuelan composer Modesta Bor (1926-1998) and provides a resource for interpretation of her art songs for voice and piano. Bor was an important composer in Venezuela with a successful career in composition, pedagogy, and conducting. However, she is not widely known outside of Venezuela and scholarship on her art song is limited. This study seeks to fill that void by examining Bor’s twenty-nine published art songs for solo voice and piano. These works include the song cycles/collections Tres canciones infantiles para voz y piano, Canciones infantiles, Primer ciclo de romanzas para contralto y piano, Segundo ciclo de romanzas para contralto y piano, Tríptico sobre poesía cubana, and Tres canciones para mezzo-soprano y piano, as well as nine ungrouped songs. Bor’s art songs are notable for her imitation of Venezuelan folk and popular music in the vein of Figurative Nationalism, her sophisticated harmonic language, and neoclassical techniques such as ostinato and motivic variation. This essay aims to help performers begin to understand the allusions to the national music of Venezuela. Her music elevates the llanero, the common rural laborer, and comments on the social issues of her people. This essay provides a brief history of Venezuelan music, a biography of Bor, and brief biographies of the poets used. It also contributes original poetic and musical analyses of her art songs, exploring the areas of form, melody, rhythm, and harmony. Venezuelan Spanish and the lyric diction appropriate for Bor’s songs are discussed. Poetic translations, word-for-word translations, and International Phonetic Alphabet transliterations are included for all of the poetry used.

In post-apartheid South Africa there has been a strong emphasis on teaching traditional music in the schools. Previously the music was greatly influenced by Western European and English systems. New standards were developed in the Arts and Culture Curriculum 2005. The purpose of this study was to explore how children in South Africa could be taught African American singing games, their perception and preferences, and how these songs would meet the new standards. A qualitative study was conducted with 69 Xhosa children in grades five and six at Good Shepherd Primary School in Grahamstown, South Africa. The learners were introduced to three African American singing games of which they had no prior knowledge. The songs were taught in the South African traditional manner; i.e., singing and moving simultaneously. Interviews were subsequently conducted with 47 learners and 5 families. The primary school teachers also provided information informally. The learners related their knowledge of African American singing games compared to their traditional Xhosa singing games and other music. They recognized a relationship between African American slavery and the apartheid era. A learner's preference of song was directly related to his previous experience with a Xhosa children's song or traditional music used for rites and rituals. Interviews with the teachers and parents were very positive indicators that the African American singing games should be included in the curriculum. Parents remembered and sang Freedom Songs and they indicated the need for their children to learn about other African cultures. The outcome of this study may provide South African teachers with materials to introduce African American folk music as an applicable source of multicultural music with African origins. The study suggests successful ways in which we teach multicultural music.

The author investigates the voice in diverse genres and styles, documenting and interpreting vocal performance through a contextual analysis of specifically chosen repertoire. This repertoire is drawn from collaboration with two musical groups, the Renaissance Players and Coda and from the author's artistic direction and presentation of four diverse recitals: American Songs, Italian Baroque, American Folk and Theatre and Nostalgia. Each recital is treated as a separate case study, in which the process of selecting, rehearsing and performing the repertoire is closely examined. Recordings and selected examples of scores are included to illustrate the findings. The discussion concludes with a synthesis of context and process within the framework of a global perspective celebrating diversity.
Master of Arts (Hons)

Thesis advisor: Dwayne E. Carpenter
The thesis offers an introduction to curanderismo and a critical analysis of the legacy of nineteenth century curandera and folk saint Teresita Urrea. The daughter of an indigenous servant in rural Mexico, Teresita ultimately became an icon of powerful social influence, a political threat to the Mexican dictatorship, a harsh critic of formalized medicine, and an enemy of the Catholic Church. Her legacy, however, is nuanced by her complex and, at times, contradictory life
Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences
Discipline: Romance Languages and Literature
Discipline: College Honors Program

The massive success of Latin American folk music in Europe during the 70s ran parallel to the contemporary Spanish-American literary boom. Especially, Andean music could suggest a kind of musical indigenismo, which actively contributed to the creation of a persistent Andean cultural imaginary on that side of the Ocean. This work aims at outlining, through a dialogue with the documents and the testimonies of the local reception, some specific characteristics of the diffusion of Andean music in Italy. This coincided with the diffusion of the New Chilean Song, after the military coup in 1973, generating an ambiguous overlap between the two musical areas.

Protest songs have sustained strikers on picket lines, memorialized disasters, galvanized support for unions, sparked folk revivals, and established Appalachia in the national consciousness as a site of labor struggle. In Coal Dust on the Fiddle (1943), a collection of songs from the bituminous coal mines, George Korson explains that the folk songs of immigrant miners, traditional ballads of the Southern Appalachians, and African American spirituals combined in music that documented and commemorated life in the mines....

While working on his studies of suppressed erotic folk song, Legman wrote a series of studies on the historical and bibliographic problems of studying erotica in an era of censorship. These appeared in The Horn Book (1963) to praise from American and English folklorists. Legman continued to try to compile the definitive work on censored folk song in English, now collaborating with journalist Ed Cray. After several years of sharing materials and ideas, Cray published his own book based in part on their joint labors, and Legman was forced to put his ballad project aside. These years also saw the end of his marriage to Beverley Keith, the birth of his daughter Ariëla, and his unsuccessful attempt to return to the United States in 1964 as a visiting scholar and lecturer. Also, in 1964-65, Legman was able to observe the San Francisco counterculture and the Berkeley free speech movement and wrote up his harshly negative conclusions in his pamphlet The Fake Revolt (1967).

This chapter discusses the history of African American Music. Many of the roots of black American music lie in Africa more than four hundred years ago at the start of the slave trade. It is essential to realize that the importance given to music and dance in Africa was reflected among black people in America in the songs they sang, in their dancing, and at their folk gatherings. As such, every aspect of jazz, blues, and gospel music is African to some degree. Work songs and the related prison songs are precursors of the blues. One can assume that primitive forms of pre-blues appeared around 1885, mostly in the Deep South and predominantly in the state of Mississippi. However, it was several more years before the famous AAB twelve-bar structure appeared, and when it did, one of its leading practitioners was Charley Patton.

The phenomenon of creating new lyrics for folk songs provides an interesting combination between the two fields of linguistics and ethnomusicology (or performing arts) and is highly applicable for life in Vietnam. This research aims at the meaning of choosing folk melodies to express language and to express an ideological content. Based on the thesis of linguistic anthropology, considering language to be a reflection of the human being, this study considers the choice of the way language is transmitted as part of that reflection. To conduct this study, we will look at the Voice of Vietnam Radio. From the material found, the number, content, purpose, context analysis and frequency of creating new lyrics for folk songs were broadcast during the history of anti-American war to teh preent date. The results of the study indicate that language has a number of ways of expressing each of its strengths and cultural and social meanings. This research refers to an innovation in the use of familiar folk melodies to express and promote language content in Vietnam that has been applied effectively in the mass media.