Theme 5: Regional Responses to Imported Musical Traditions (Part I) MUS 337 Corso Module 5

Regional specializations of music…why? Music of the colonial era: Art Music Cultivated in royal chapels and, thus, written archives remain Popular Music Conveyed through oral tradition and, thus, information comes from narratives Hobsbawn’s concept of “inventing tradition”: Cultural memory through selective reinterpretation What does this mean, and why is it important? Broad category of Mexican folk musics and dances 1500s: Origins of son practices traced to Spanish theater 1766: First documented use of the term, son, in a set of verses from Veracruz Tonadillas escénicas: short popular entertainment used between acts of longer, formal staged dramas Gave way to other later genres of musical theatre, like zarzuela “Vicente T. Mendoza (1984) believed that the best record of the tonadilla lives on in the popular songs of the Mexican nation,” (Sturman, p. 105). “As musicians perform sones, they also reinforce their connections to complex historic legacies, linking modern concerns and contexts to valued past traditions,” (Sturman, p. 104). Indigenous sones: Son divino (sacred) Remember “Son de la Danza de los Mixes” played by the wind band (AE 4.9)? Son profano (secular) Often associated with particular ethnicities, for example the Yaqui in the northern borderlands, or the Zapotec in the south Many used for ritual or ceremonial purposes Mestizo sones Rooted in regional sones, refer to sones played by modern mariachis From Veracruz, from the southern regions of that gulf coast state, and the northern region of the state of Tabasco “Jarocho” used to be a derogatory term for rural people from the region. Dates to colonial period and is one of most celebrated forms of son Sheehy says in 1940s, harpist Andrés Huesca changed the style by moving from the small arpa jarocha to a large harp in order to play faster. AE 5.14: “Sones de mariachi” (1940) composed by Blas Galindo and performed in the video by OFUNAM (National Autonomous University of Mexico's Philharmonic Orchestra) What do you hear? What do you see? What does this performance represent?