Latin
America has produced a variety of genres born at the crossroads
of European folk music, African music and native traditions.
While not as popular as the popular music of the USA (also
born out of the integration of European music and African
music), Latin American genres shares the same characters
that made it a universal koine'.
Tango
During
the "belle epoque" (1890s), the working class
of the "Boca" of Buenos Aires (Argentina) invented
a new rhythm, the tango. Tan-go was the name given to
the drums of the African slaves, and the music was influenced
by both the Cuban habanera and the local milonga. The
choreography originally devised in the brothels to mimick
the obscene and violent relationship between the prostitute,
her pimp and a male rival eventually turned into a dance
and a style of music of a pessimistic mood, permeated
by a fatalistic sense of an unavoidable destiny, a music
of sorrow enhanced by the melancholy sound of the bandoneon.
When lyrics were added, they drew from "lunfardo",
the lingo of the underworld (the term originally meant
"thief"). Tango was embraced enthusiastically
in Europe and landed in the USA in the 1910s. The Viennese
waltz and the Polka had been the first dances to employ
the close contact between a male and a female. The tango
pushed the envelope in an even more erotic direction.
One of the earliest hits of tango was pianist Enrique
Saborido's Yo Soy La Morocha (1906). By that time, tango
had already established itself as a major genre among
young Argentinians. Roberto Firpo is credited as having
set the standard in 1913 for all future tango orchestras:
the rhythm set by syncopated piano figures, the melodies
carried by bandoneon and violin. Firpo's Alma de Bohemio
(1914) and Gerardo Hernan Matos Rodriguez's La Cumparsita
(1916) were among the early international hits. Bandoneon
player Osvaldo Fresedo and violin player Julio de Caro
were among the instrumental stars and composers of the
1920s. From his debut with Mi Noche Triste (1917), the
song that introduced lyrics into the tango, to his untimely
death in 1935, Carlos Gardel was the most charismatic
vocalist, the master of erotic abandon. The tango craze
took New York by storm during World War I. Rudolph Valentino
created an international sensation in a steamy scene of
his film "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse"
(1921). But tango became a more intellectual affair during
the 1930s, when literate songwriters created more poetic
lyrics. Representative musicians of the decade are pianist
Osvaldo Pugliese (Recuerdo) and violinist Elvino Vardaro.
Bandoneon player Anibal Troilo ruled the 1940s. Tango
then became a dogma that allowed very little freedom.
It was only in the 1960s that someone dared question the
dogma.
Argentinian
composer Astor Piazzolla (1921) mixed tango with classical
music to compose works for bandoneon and orchestra, pieces
for bandoneon octets and quintets a tango opera, a tango
oratorio, etc.
Son
Cuba
was the starting point for many of the Latin dances. At
the beginning of the 20th century, Cuba's main music was
the "son", a fusion of Spanish popular music
and the African rhythm rumba (first mentioned in 1928
and probably related to the Santeria religion). Traditionally
played with tres (guitar), contrabass, bongos and claves
(wooden sticks that set the circular rhythm) the son of
Cuba was popularized by the likes of Ignacio Pineiro,
who had an hit with Echale Salsita (1929), and Miguel
Matamores. The danzon, first documented by Miguel Failde
Perez's Las Alturas de Simpson (1879), was a descendant
of the French "contredanse" or contradanza,
and in Cuba's 1920s the danzon became a version of the
son for the upper classes, performed by "charangas"
(flute and violin orchestras, in which the violin provided
the main riff while the flute improvised). Charangas of
the golden age include: Orquesta Neno Gonzalez (1926),
Orquesta Belisario Lopez (1928), Orquesta de Cheo Belen
Puig (1934), Orquesta Aragon (1939), Orquesta America
(1942). In the 1930s, Spanish-Cuban bandleader Xavier
Cugat (who formed the Waldorf-Astoria Orchestra in 1935)
was for Latin music what the Beatles were for rock music:
his orchestra created the commercial version of Latin
music (largely devoid of artistic value but hugely popular)
for the western masses. Also during the 1930s, the dance
academia of Pierre and Doris Lavelle popularized Latin
dancing in Britain (it was Pierre Lavelle who codified
the moves of the rumba in 1955 and the moves of the samba
in 1956). In the 1940s, Arsenio Rodriguez, a virtuoso
of the tres (Cuban guitar), set the standard for the Cuban
conjunto (adding congas, piano and trumpets to the traditional
guitar-based sexteto) and thus spearheaded a kind of son
based on the piano and the congas. For example, Rene'
Alvarez, Arsenio's former singer, formed Conjunto Los
Astros in 1948, with multiple trumpets and piano.
Cuba's
mambo, "invented" (or, better, imported from
Congo) by bassist Israel "Cachao" Lopez and
by his brother pianist Orestes of the Antonio Arcano's
Orquesta Radiofonica with El Danzon Mambo (1937), fused
rumba rhythms with big-band jazz, and was epitomized by
Damazo Perez Prado's Mambo Jumbo (1948). Basically, the
mambo was a danzon for the working class. The chachacha
was a midtempo mambo figure that, after the 1953 recording
of Enrique Jorrin's La Enganadora (1948) and especially
Perez Prado's Cherry Pink And Apple Blossom White (1955),
became a genre of its own, still performed by charangas
(unlike the mambo, that was performed by smaller combos).
The mambo became a USA craze in 1954.
"Salseros"
were the conjunto groups (brass-driven dance bands) of
the 1940s that played a bit of everything. The most celebrated
Cuban vocalist of the era was Beny More, from Yiri Yiri
Bom (1946) to Maracaibo Oriental (1954).
A
fusion of Cuban music and jazz music (or "cubop")
became popular after World War II, influencing some of
the most important jazz musicians (e.g., Dizzy Gillespie).
Puerto Rico pianist Noro Morales was the main practitioner
of the quintet for piano and percussion (Bim Bam Bum,
1942; Oye Negra). Frank "Machito" Grillo's Afro-Cuban
Jazz Suite (1950) was typical of the genre.
The
foundations of post-war Latin music were laid by this
generation. Cuban pianist Jose Curbelo played with Cugat
and raised Ernesto "Tito" Puente, Ray Barretto
and Pablo "Tito" Rodriguez, who raised Eddie
Palmieri. American singer Frank "Machito" Grillo
played with Cugat and Norales, and then raised Puente.
Trinidad's
calypso, first documented by an instrumental recorded
in 1912 by by George "Lovey" Bailey's orchestra,
was another Latin dance to reach beyond Latin America.
Calypso was originally sung in French, but the first recorded
calypso song, Julian Whiterose's Iron Duke in the Land
(1914), was already in English. Starting with the "Railway
Douglas Tent" of Port-of-Spain in 1921, calypso was
originally performed in "tents" (temporary dancehalls)
during the period before carnival: the term stuck, and
came to denote any club playing calypso. Most calypso
records are still released just before or during carnival
season. Hubert "Roaring Lion" Charles (who also
called himself Rafael de Leon) was perhaps the first star,
producing the standards Send Your Children to The Orphan's
Home (1927), Marry An Ugly Woman (1934), Three Cheers
For The Red, White and Blue (1936), Netty Netty (1937)
Mary Anne (1945). Other classics of the early era were
Raymond "Attila The Hun" Quevedo's West Indian
Federation (1933), Women Will Rule the World (1935) and
Calypso Behind The Wall, later covered by Belafonte as
Jump In The Line, Frederick "Wilmoth Houdini"
Hendricks' War Declaration (1934) and He Had It Coming
(1939), covered by Louis Jordan as Stone Cold Dead in
the Market (1946), Neville "Growling Tiger"
Marcano's Money is King (1935), Norman "King Radio"
Span's Matilda (1938), Rupert "Lord Invader"
Grant's Don't Stop the Carnival (1939) and Rum and Coca
Cola (1944), Aldwyn "Lord Kitchener" Roberts'
Tie Tongue Mopsy (1946), Irvin Burgie's Day O and Island
in the Sun, both covered by Belafonte. They all had to
travel to New York in order to record their songs. During
the 1940s, Trinidad's musicians developed the concept
of the steel band, which dramatically changed the sound
of calypso. A 1946 concert in New York, "Calypso
at Midnight", organized by Alan Lomax, and Sam Manning's
revue Caribbean Carnival (1947), the first calypso show
on Broadway, helped establish the genre. But it was in
the 1950s that calypso became a "craze" in the
USA, thanks mainly to Harry Belafonte's Calypso (1956),
one of the first albums to sell over one million copies,
that contained Banana Boat Song (1956). Back in Trinidad,
Francisco "Mighty Sparrow" Slinger released
the first calypso album, Calypso Carnival (1958). Other
Trinidad hits of the 1950s included Carlton "Lord
Blakie" Joseph's Steelband Clash (1954), Slinger
"Mighty Sparrow" Francisco's Jean and Dinah
(1956), Fitzroy "Lord Melody" Alexander's Mama
Look A Boo Boo (1956). Mighty Sparrow (Ten To One Is Murder,
1960; Dan Is The Man, 1963; Melda, 1966) and, to some
extent, Lord Kitchener (The Road, 1963; Rainorama, 1973)
continued to dominate during the 1960s. Songs by new artists
included Mervyn "Mighty Sniper" Hodge's Portrait
of Trinidad (1965) and McCartha "Calypso Rose"
Lewis' Fire In Your Wire (1967), the first major hit by
a female calypso artist.
In
Cuba in 1955, Los Papines fused the violin-based music
of charangas and the trumpet-based music of conjuntos
Eduardo Davidson's La Pachanga (1959), recorded by Orquesta
Sublime, introduced Cuba to a Colombian dance (which was
confusingly called "charanga" in the USA). But,
as Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba (1959), the epicenter
of Latin music moved to other islands and then south.
Charanga and pachanga became brief fads in the USA, while
the "son" left Cuba and migrated to Puerto Rico.
Puerto
Rico had its own tradition of "bomba" and "plena",
to which percussionist Rafael Cortijo, leader of a conjunto
since 1954, had added trumpets and saxophones (El Bombon
De Elena). His conjunto and his husky vocalist Ismael
Rivera (El Nazareno, Quitate de la Via Perico), notorious
for the improvised call-and-response vocals of the "sonero"
tradition, harked back to the African roots of Caribbean
music without any distinction between styles. Both vocally
and rhythmically they created a "sauce" of Caribbean
music. El Gran Combo, formed by pianist Rafael Ithier,
continued Cortijo's mission in a lighter vein, with La
Muerte (1962) and Ojos Chinos (1964).
In
the 1960s, the bomba-son hybrid reached the Puertorican
colony in New York. Here, the son adopted the format of
the big band, as in Jimmy Sabater's Salsa y Bembe (1962)
and vibraphonist Cal Tjader's Salsa del Alma (1964).
The
Cuban expatriates that relocated in New York contributed
greatly to the assimilation of the genre in the American
culture: vocalist Celia Cruz (Burundanaga, 1956; Yerbero
Moderno, 1956), flutist Jose-Antonio Fajardo (La Charanga),
jazzy conguero Ramon "Mongo" Santamaria (Mazacote,
1958; Afro Blue, 1959; Watermelon Man, 1963), violinist
Felix "Pupi" Legarreta, who fused charanga and
jazz on Salsa Nova (1962).
The
evolution of son continued in New York via Dominican flutist
Johnny Pacheco, leader of the quintessential charanga
(featuring singer Pete "El Conde" Rodriguez)
but also the leader of the "Africanization"
of the charanga (arrangements limited to trumpets, piano
and percussion), New York's pianist Charlie Palmieri,
who formed in 1959 the influential charanga Duboney (four
violins and Pacheco on flute), New York's pianist Eddie
Palmieri, who in 1962 pioneered "trombanga",
a sound based on two trombones and a flute (in alternative
to the charanga sound), New York's percussionist Ernesto
"Tito" Puente (Oye Como Va, 1962), New York's
drummer Ray Barretto, who experimented with rhythm'n'blues
and jazz, Puertorican bongo player Roberto Roena (Mi Desengano,
1976). They all crossed over into jazz and rhythm'n'blues.
Notable albums include Puente's Dance Mania (1958), Pablo
"Tito" Rodriguez's West Side Beat (1961), Bobby
Valentin's Ritmo Pa Goza (1966), Eddie Palmieri's Lo Que
Traigo Es Sabroso (1964) and Superimposition (1969), Barretto's
Acid (1967) and The Message (1972), Cortijo's Maquina
de Tiempo (1974). Latin New York also secreted the boogaloo,
a fusion of black soul music and the Cuban mambo, as in
Eddie Palmieri's Ay Qye Rico (1968). New York-born Willie
Colon, originally a trombonist, was the first major Puertorican
star, his orchestra and his singer Hector Lavoe capable
of albums such as El Malo (1967) and El Bueno, El Malo
y El Feo (1975), besides the classics Che Che Cole (1969)
and Gitana (1984).
A
key event in 1967 was the meeting between Puertorican
vocalist Ismael Miranda (then still a teenager) and the
orchestra of New York's pianist Larry Harlow, best documented
on Abran Paso (1970). They revitalized the CUban sound
for the audience of rock music.
Salsa
In 1973 the North-American son was renamed "salsa"
for a tv special (by Izzy Sanabria of Fania Records, the
equivalent of Motown for Latin music). In Puerto Rico
salsa is also known as "guaguanco", a term that
originally referred to a kind of rumba dance. Larry Harlow's
orchestra rediscovered the fusion of charanga violins
and conjunto trumpets (with the addition of electric instruments)
on his milestone recording Salsa (1974) with vocalist
Junior Gonzalez. The 1976 concert "Salsa" organized
in New York by the label Fania launched the fad nation-wide.
In the 1970s, the main centers for salsa were New York,
Miami, and Colombia.
Ruben
Blades, who had become Willie Colon's main composer after
El Cazangero (1975), contaminated salsa with rock'n'roll
and political issues on Siembra (1978), that contains
Pedro Navaja and became the best-selling salsa album of
all times.
In
Venezuela, Angel Canales coined a jazzy trombone-driven
kind of salsa on Angel Canales And Sabor (1976), while
Cuban-born Roberto Torres was the defender of the tradition,
and in New York veterans of Eddie Palmieri's orchestra
formed Libre to play a more aggressive and jazzy kind
of salsa, documented on Con Salsa Con Ritmo (1976).
The
"voice" of salsa was Hector Lavoe', Colon's
vocalist, whose best album was Comedia (1978), featuring
the anthemic El Cantante, written by Blades and arranged
by Colon.
The
new sound of salsa owed to people like ubiquitous Puertorican
trumpeter Luis "Perico" Ortiz and producer Louie
Ramirez, whose album A Different Shade Of Black (1976)
is credited with crossing over to pop music.
Other
notable salsa hits of the 1970s were: Jose "Cheo"
Feliciano's El Raton (1964), the first big hit of salsa
when revived in 1974, Celia Cruz's Quimbara (1974), Enrique
"Papo" Lucas' Acere Ko (1975), Eddie Palmieri's
Vamonos Pal Monte (1976), Lloraras (1975), by Venezuelan
combo Dimension Latina, featuring vocalist Oscar D'Leon,
who later formed Salsa Mayor. But salsa was becoming a
very vague term, as New York's group Tipica 73 proved
on albums such as La Candela (1975), which is really a
mixture of Latin dance rhythms.
New
York's singer Henry Fiol used a traditional Cuban conjunto,
Saoco, to sing the urban songs of Siempre Sere Guajiro
(1976).
In
the 1970s, a new dance was added to the Latin recipe:
the Dominican Republic's merengue, yet another by-product
of the Cuban habanera. The origins of the meringue actually
go back centuries (it was already mentioned in writings
of 1875), and the style can be said to have existed since
at least the 1930s, and popularized by Angel Viloria in
the 1950s. Wilfrido Vargas, whose El Barbarazo (1978)
was considered a watershed event, Johnny Ventura, Cuco
Valoy, Jossie Esteban, July Mateo, Francisco Ulloa were
among the trend-setters of the 1980s.
During
the 1960s, Trinidad coined a mixture of calypso and soul
("soul-calypso") that during the 1970s targeted
the discos. Its was pioneered by Garfield "Lord Shorty"
Blackman's Soul Calypso Music (1973), Winston "Mighty
Shadow" Bailey' Bass Man (1974), Cecil "Maestro"
Hume's Savage (1976), and Aldwyn "Lord Kitchener"
Roberts ' Sugar Bum Bum (1978), the first world-wide hit
of soca. Winston "Mighty Shadow" Bailey's If
I Coulda I Woulda I Shoulda (1979) and Austin "Blue
Boy" Lyons's Soca In The Shaolin Temple (1981) solidified
the genre's appeal to disco-goers.
Calypso
itself was torn between the revolutionary pressure coming
from David Rudder, whose The Hammer (1986) was influenced
by pop and soul, and the conservative attitude of Leroy
"Black Stalin" Calliste, whose Caribbean Man
(1979) harked back to the classics.
Colombia's
Grupo Niche, led by guiro player Jairo Varela, played
big-band multi-vocal salsa on Querer Es Poder (1981).
Samba
Brazil's colonial history is unique in that the dominant
white class showed some tolerance for the black slave
class and the native pagans. The latter's traditions range
from the African-derived voodoo (or, better, Candomble
religion) of Bahia to Rio's Macumba religion. Unlike Mexico
and Peru, where the original cultures were erased by the
Spanish colonizers, Brazil retained them and simply recycled
them into the general "saudade" (melancholy
existentialism) of the Portuguese conquerors. The fundamental
dichotomy of Brazilian music is between Bahia and Rio.
Bahia is the Brazilian equivalent of New Orleans: a melting
pop where African traditions mixed with local and European
concepts. Rio is both the capital of the aristocracy,
where European culture was imported, and the underworld
of the slums, where poor (black and white) immigrants
from the rest of Brazil (including Bahia) lived in miserable
conditions.
In
the last decades of the 19th century, the orchestras of
Rio de Janeiro (basically, woodwinds and horns, with the
clarinet as the soloist) that performed European dance
music (such as waltzes and polkas) were called "choro".
Joaquim Antonio da Silva Calado, the band-leader of Choro
Carioca, revolutionized the style by emphasizing virtuoso
playing and improvisation, and by introducing the cavaquinho
and the violao (a seven-string guitar). After him, the
choro orchestras preferred the flute as the soloist, the
violao as the bass, and cavaquinho as the rhythm. The
great composers of choro were Chiquinha Gonzaga (a female
and a pianist) and Ernesto Nazareth. But the choro ensembles
abhored the African percussion instruments.
The
first appearance of the word "samba" dates from
1838. The "samba" was originally a dance of
African origins, the mesemba, which came from Bahia and
was probably related to the Candomble rituals. It wed
a Brazilian dance, the "maxixe", which was an
evolution of the habanera (a European dance craze created
by Maurice Mouvet in 1912 on the basis of the Cuban habanera)
and of the polka, and soon became a musical genre in its
own. The samba was probably invented by African-Brazilians
in the working-class slums of Rio de Janeiro. The rhythm
of the samba was designed as as to fulfill three roles:
to sing, to dance and to parade (at the carnival). The
first record to be advertised as "samba" was
a song by a black musician, Ernesto "Donga"
dos Santos: Pelo Telefone (1916). Manuel "Duque"
Diniz, a white Brazilian who had opened a maxixe academy
in Paris, spread the samba dance craze to Europe in 1921,
when he invited Os Oito Batutas, a black choro ensemble
led by flutist and composer Pixinguinha ("the Bach
of choro") which included Donga on guitar, on a tour
to Paris. The combo brought the samba to Paris, but also
brought something back to Brazil: trumpet, trombone, saxophone
and banjo were added to the line-up, and the sound became
more "Americanized", adapting to the sound of
big-band jazz. Pixinguinha's Carinhoso (1928) was emblematic
of the new style. A young white musician from the Rio
middle class, Noel Rosa, became famous with the samba
song Com que Roupa? (1930) and started a less "African"
and more song-oriented form of samba. Vincent Youmans'
film Flying Down to Rio (1933) popularized the samba dance
in the USA. The first samba school was founded in 1928
in Rio, and samba schools proliferated in the 1930s. Samba
was the generic name of the music employing a kind of
rhythm, but there were different kinds of samba. Perhaps
the most adventurous and extreme was the batucada. "Batucada"
is both the name for a large samba percussion group, for
a samba jam session, and for an intensely polyrhythmic
style of drumming. A batucada can be played by ensembles
with hundreds of percussionists. In Bahia, bloco afro
and afoxe (two mainly percussive styles) combined to form
samba-reggae. The choro was not dead: in fact, composers
of the 1940s such as Benedito "Canhoto" Lacerda
created most of the choro repertory.
Bossanova
The next major stylistic revolution took place in the
1950s: when white young middle-class intellectuals merged
a gentler, slower form of the samba with jazz music, and
shifted the lead to the guitar, bossanova was born. Thus,
it was a music of the bourgeoisie, not of the working
class. Indeed, bossanova songs left behind the underworld
of samba, where people struggled to make a living, and
shifted to the world of beaches, romance and lazy bohemian
life. And, in fact, bossanova soon became a favorite style
of easy-listening and lounge music.
Antonio
Carlos ("Tom") Jobim began a collaboration with
Vin¡cius de Moraes when he scored the soundtrack
for the other's play, Orfeu da Conceicao (1956), which
included his first standard, Se Todos Fossem Iguais a
Voce. The two released Cancao do Amor Demais (1958), featuring
Eliseth Cardoso on vocals and Joao Gilberto on guitar,
which contained Jobim's Chega de Saudade, the song that
established bossanova in Brazil. Jobim and Morais also
wrote Garota de Ipanema (1962), which turned bossanova
into a world-wide phenomenon.
The
jazz world of the USA welcomed the Brazilian style on
Jazz Samba (1962), a collaboration between guitarist Charlie
Byrd and saxophonist Stan Getz.
Other
notable protagonists of bossanova were Luiz Bonfa` (the
composer of the classic Desafinado, 1957), Jorge Ben (Mais
Que Nada, 1963), Sergio Mendes (the most shameless perpetrator
of Brazilian easy-listening).
Far
more original was the synthesis offered by black guitarist
Djalma "Bola Sete" DeAndrade (3), who blended
samba, jazz, American folk music and European classical
music in the effortless improvisations of The Solo Guitar
(1965), Ocean (1972), Shambhala Moon (1982).
Tropicalia
If bossanova was the reactionary sound of the decade,
"tropicalismo" was the idealistic movement of
the 1960s in Brazil. It introduced foreign elements into
Brazilian music (both jazz and rock) and it replaced the
traditional instruments with modern instruments such as
the electric guitar. The birth date of tropicalismo was
the 1967 festival of the Musica Popular Brasileira (MPB):
Caetano Veloso's Alegria Alegria and Gilberto Gil's Domingo
no Parque defied the conventions of Brazilian music and
were interpreted as a challenge to the dictatorship of
Tropicalismo soon spread to poetry, the visual arts, theater
and cinema, and, in turn, musical tropicalismo absorbed
elements from the other arts. Veloso's and Gil's album
Tropicalia ou Panis et Circensis (1968) became a dividing
line in Brazilian culture. The three queens of Brazilian
pop music were also influential in publicizing the new
generation of songwriters: Gal Costa (a sort of Brazilian
hippy), Maria Bethania (a sort of Brazilian androgynous
husky Edith Piaf) and Elis Regina (perhaps the most gifted).
On
his own, Gilberto Gil concocted a pop-samba-jazz-rock
fusion on Expresso 2222 (1972).
Caetano
Veloso, the most literate and daring of the tropicalista,
expanded the horizons of Brazilian music by turning it
into a highly personal experience. Caetano Veloso (1969)
and Transa (1972) introduced an austere, vulnerable and
introverted voice who was not afraid to experiment with
the sound of the anglosaxon music of the (psychedelic)
era. Muito (1978), the lush, eclectic albums Estrangeiro
(1989) and Livro (1998) were experimental works that continued
to upgrade Veloso's stylistic hybrid.
The
other great poet of the movement, Milton Nascimento, coined
a hybrid style that combined elements of pop, samba and
jazz with progressive-rock arrangements, thus achieving
the abstract soundpainting art of Clube Da Esquina (1972)
and Milagre Dos Peixes (1973).
Egberto
Gismonti, fused European classical music, jazz-rock and
Brazilian choro on albums such as Sonho 70 (1970), Academia
De Dancas (1974), and Dance Das Cabecas (1977).
Brazilian
psychedelic-rock was gloriously represented by Os Mutantes.
The
1990s
The carnival music lambada, best represented by Luiz Caldas,
became famous world-wide thanks to Kaoma's Lambada (1989).
Boukman
Eksperyans popularized both carnival and voodoo music
of Haiti on albums such as Vodou Adjae (1991), Kalfou
Danjare (1992) and Liberte' (1995).
The
most famous Brazilian vocalist, Marisa Monte, was hardly
worthy of her predecessors. Her albums Mais (1991) and
Memorias Cronicas e Declaracoes de Amor (2000) were simply
collections of Brazilian classics watered down for the
international audience.
Vinicius
Cantuaria, influenced by the American new wave, offered
a personal synthesis of "Tropicalia", mellow
jazz and soul music on Sol Na Cara (1997) and Tucuma (1999).
Notable
albums of salsa include Marc Anthony's Todo A Su Tiempo
(1995). In the USA, Cuban-born Gloria Estefan sang salsa
for the discos in the Miami Sound Machine, culminating
with Primitive Love (1985) and Let It Loose (1988). The
sensation of the decade was Tejano vocalist Selena (Quintanilla),
whose album Ven Conmigo (1990) adapted Latin rhythms to
the format of the pop ballad. She began to cross over
to pop with Amor Prohibido (1994), that contains Techno
cumbia.
Rock'n'roll
was never popular in South America. Mexico's Iconoclasta
was the main prog-rock band of the continent, starting
with Iconoclasta (1983), progressing to the suite Reminiscencias
De Un Mundo Sin Futuro, off Reminiscencias (1985), and
to the EP Suite Mexicana (1987).
Sepultura
and its offshoot Soulfly turned Brazil's heavy-metal scene
into one of the most influential.
Latin
American music, is sometimes wrongly called Latin music.
It includes the music of many countries and comes in many
varieties, from the down-home 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. The name Latin America music is prefered
to that of Latin music because the later could in refer
to other romance-speaking countries.
Music
has played an important part in Latin America's turbulent
recent history, for example the nueva cancion movement.
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.
Latin
American can be divided into several musical areas. Andean
music, for example, includes the countries of western
south America, typically Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, Ecuador
and Chile; Central American music includes Belize, Panama,
Guatemala, Honduras, Costa Rica and El Salvador. Caribbean
music includes many Spanish and French-speaking islands
in the Caribbean Sea, including Haiti, the Dominican Republic,
Cuba, Puerto Rico, Martinique and Guadeloupe. 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.
