Música Conectada
La idea de
desplazamiento trae distintas connotaciones. Es un
término que funciona con la idea de música como moviento en
el tiempo y en el espacio. En danza puede funcionar como un
cambio de posición corporal dependiendo de puntos espaciales
de referencia. En las telecomunicaciones, se puede
asimilar como un cambio geográfico y demográfico virtual.
Políticamente y en nuestro país, este mismo concepto
responde a un desplazamiento forzado por causa de
incongruencias ideológicas que hacen que campesinos y
civiles con una ideología política ajena a una corriente
violenta, se vean en la obligación de dejar todo lo que han
trabajado y las tierras en donde han crecido.
Bajo la dirección del
Dr. Ron Mazurek, Phd. en Composición musical de New York
University y con la colaboración del Departamento de Artes
de la Pontificia Univesidad Javeriana, se desarrollará una
obra multimedia, partiendo de una reflexión en torno al
desplazamiento. La obra va a ser desarrollada a lo largo del
resto de este año para ser estrenada en Marzo de 2006.
Contará con la participación de músicos, artistas,
bailarines e ingenieros. La segunda fase de la obra consiste
en realizar un desplazamiento musical y virtual entre la
Universidad de Nueva York y la Universidad Javeriana a
través del internet y en tiempo real. Gestos, movimientos,
sonidos y diferentes acciones, seran varios de los elementos
interactivos entre artistas situados en Nueva York y en
Bogotá.
Este tipo de trabajos
interactivos y a larga distancia, se han venido
desarrollando en Europa y Estados Unidos a lo largo de la
historia de las comunicaciones. El departamento de música
del Steindardt School of Education de la Universidad de
Nueva York, presentó en año 2002 la obra multimedia “ Songs
of Sorrow, Songs of Hope “, dedicada a las víctimas del
ataque terrorista del 11 de Septiembre en la ciudad de Nueva
York. Se desarrolló vía Internet 2 entre la Universidad de
Nueva York y la Universidad de California. Con el
soporte Internet 2, es posible transmitir datos con un peso
de 80 Ghz en tiempo real; el sonido puede ser reproducido en
surround sound y alta definción y la imagen con una gran
resolución.
Gilberto Martinez
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Excerpt from,
Popular Music of the Non-Western World: An
Introductory Survey by Peter Manuel.
New York, Oxford University Press 1988. Pages 50 -
53
Music of Colombia
Of all Latin American
countries, Colombia has perhaps the most diverse
musical heritage, to which people of Indian,
African and European descent have each made
significant contributions. Despite a considerable
amount of miscegenation, Colombian society has
always been relatively fragmented along class,
racial, and regional lines. This poor integration
has been manifested in a history of violence, as
well as in the persistence of musical diversity.
Since the advent of the mass media, modern Colombian
popular musics have reflected, on the one hand, a
degree of enhanced national cohesion subsequent to
the cessation of civil wars, and, on the other, the
vicissitudes of the drug trade which has come to
dominate social and economic life in much of the
northern and central regions.
The most important
Colombian popular genre, and that which has won the
largest international audience, is the cumbia.
The traditional cumbia has been until
recently the most popular dance of the Atlantic
coastal region. In its folk form it is played
(generally without vocals) by one of two ensembles
consisting of drums and either duct flutes (gaita)
or a simple can clarinet (pito). In the
accompanying dance, which is performed at night,
women circle around the musicians, holding candles
in their hands, while the men dance in a more
assertive fashion around the women. Cumbia
is assumed to be primarily of black or mulatto
origin, as is reflected in the African origins of
the word cumbia and of the drums. However,
the zamba communities (of mixed Indian and
black descent) are also believed to have contributed
to cumbia’s evolutions and more specifically,
to the use of the gaita.*
Cumbia
appears to have evolved in the nineteenth century,
for descriptions of similar dances date from this
period.* By the mid-twentieth century a more
popular, commercial variety of the cumbia has
come into vogue, incorporating vocal couplets and
refrains, and played by a dance band using horns,
bass, and Cuban-style rhythm section. The modern
pop cumbia preserves the simple quadratic
meter of its predecessor and retains the rhythmic
ostinato that most clearly identifies the genre
[a long, short
short, long short short rhythm]
In the traditional
ensemble this pattern might be played on the guachos
rattle; in the modern cumbia it would be
rendered on guiro and/or clave, and it could be beat
with a stick on the side of the timbales. The bass
generally moves in the pattern of a half-note
followed by two quarter notes (although as in the
Dominican meringue, Cuban-style anticipated bass is
frequently employed); the piano completes the
classic cumbia format with a chord on the
second beat of each bar.
The harmony of the
cumbia is simple, although more varied than,
for example, that of the Dominican meringue. Its
tempo is moderate, and the modern choreography –
performed ballroom-style – is relatively accessible,
which may explain its popularity among Central
Americans and Mexicans less skilled in the virtuoso
Cuban dance styles.
Cumbia has
become essential to the repertoires of Tex-Mex
conjuntos, and it is frequently performed by
salsa bands in areas such as Los Angeles where
Central Americans and Mexicans (as well as
Colombians) congregate. Puerto Rican and Cuban
audiences, however, take little interest in
cumbia.
The earliest
references to vallenato date from the
beginning of the twentieth century, when it appears
to have emerged in the northeastern rural regions of
Magdalena, Cesar, and Guajira, which continue to be
its strongholds. From its inception the
vallenato audience appears to have been
tri-racial, although Indian musical elements are not
clearly manifest. Vallenato originated as a
recreational song of the cattle-ranching cowboy
culture, disparaged as crude and rustic by the
bourgeoisie by cherished by its own audience as a
favorite entertainment at cockfights, taverns, and
parties. Although the vallenato
traditionally accompanies a couple dance, its texts
have always been regarded as important vehicles for
social commentary.*
The traditional
vallenato ensemble consists of an accordion, a
stick rasp called guacharaca, and a small,
two-headed drum, the caja (lit., “box”). This
ensemble thus closely resembles the accordion-guiro-tambora
format of the Dominican meringue, which
according to Otero, was an important formative
influence on vallenato.*
The word
vallenato properly denotes the aforementioned
ensemble, a musician therein, and, in a generic
sense, the music performed by such a group. The
vallenato repertoire, however, comprises a
number of distinct genres. These include cumbia,
son, the obscure puya and tambora,
and most importantly, paseo and meringue.
Despite the alleged influence of the Dominican music
on the vallenato, the Colombian meringue
bears little or no relation to its Caribbean
namesake. While the latter is in duple time, the
vallenato meringue is in triple meter; in the
modern ensemble the bass plays in ¾ while the
accordion and caja articulate figures in
6/8. The Colombian paseo, in quadratic
meter, is believed to derive from the paseo
introduction to the classic Dominican meringue. The
paseo’s rhythm may resemble that of the
cumbia, although more syncopated bass patterns
may also be employed. The formal structure is
irregular but generally alternates verses with
simple refrains sung in parallel thirds. Harmonies
are simple, often alternating between tonic and
dominant.
In the 1940’s Julio
Torres, Guillermo Buitrago, and others popularized a
more commercial vallenato that came to be
widely disseminated through radio and records. The
new vallenato generally incorporated electric
bass, percussion instruments like the cowbell and
the tumbadora drum. In other stylistic
aspects it came under the influence of Mexican
norteno and Tex-Mex music.
The development of
commercial vallenato in recent decades
mirrors the profound changes in Colombian society
and economy during this period. On one level, the
spread of the mass media and capitalist relations
into rural life is reflected in the extent to which
vallenato has become a major concern for the
record companies. The annual vallenato
competition at Valledupar, for example, is financed
and allegedly rigged by record companies to promote
their chosen stars. Another equally tangible
illustration of vallenato’s contemporaneity
is the subject matter of its texts. While a large
percentage concern sentimental love, many other
social ills; leftist content is not uncommon.
Conversely, a number of texts are paeans to local
magnates of the marijuana and cocaine trade, who are
known to bestow lavish gifts on singers who praise
them.
Modern vallenato,
indeed, reflects the degree to which the illegal
drug trade has corrupted and disintegrated Colombian
society in the northern coast regions. Since the
1960’s , the marijuana and cocaine boom has
subjected the populace to the lawless violent
influence of the drug Mafiosi, whose domination over
social, political, and economic life the civil
authorities are unable or unwilling to challenge.
While injecting large amounts of cash into the
region, the drug trade has inflated prices, promoted
violent crime, exacerbated machismo and
prostitution, and increased dependency on the
vicissitudes of North American drum demand.
Vallenato has, in its own way, flourished under the
patronage of the drug runners, largely at the
expense of cumbia and other traditional musics. A
local musician reported:
Cumbia, for
example, was once heard everywhere. But when the
mafia
Arrived, they
brought their brash corrupted vallenato music to
replace
It. Today that’s
all you hear on the street.*
Just
as many traditional vellenato singers were kept as
employees of ranch owners, so are several
contemporary composers and vocalists maintained as
virtual praise-singers by potentates of the drug
industry. Other performers sing of the drug runners
as folk heroes, or they lament the lives ruined by
the volatile and often ferocious drug trade. The
cocaine boom of the seventies, in general, is
intimately connected with what has been described as
a contemporary vallenato-mania, helping to transform
a rustic and ingenuous folk music into a thriving
and boisterous adjunct to fiercely competitive and
often corrupt drug and record industries.
__________________________
*For footnote references,
please find this text on reserve: Ender Hall,
room E-124.
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