African Ecuadorian Music of the Chota River Valley.

When we think of Latin America regions that have large populations of African Americans, Ecuador does not usually come to mind. Yet as much as 25% of the country’s population are African Ecuadorians.  The first African  arrived in Ecuador in the sixteenth century, after which Jesuit missionaries brought in large numbers of African slaves to work on plantations both on the coast and in the central highlands; Indigenous laborers were hard to find in some areas and unwilling to serve as slaves in others.  The most widely accepted view is that African Ecuadorians of the Chota Valley are descendent from slaves held by the Jesuits on their plantations in the highlands.

Afro Americans settled down in the northern shore line, what is now the province of Esmeraldas and also in the Chota Valley.  On a cultural way, we can say that Marimba music comes from the Esmeraldas region, the name is due the use of marimbas among other instruments. Sometimes this music is played in religious ceremonies, as well as in celebrations and parties. It features call and response chanting along with the music. On the other hand, in the Chota valley there is Bomba music.  This music is very different from marimba, having a more prominent Spanish, mestizo and indigenous influence. It can vary from mid tempo to a very fast tempo. It is usually played with guitars, as well with the local instrument called bomba, which is a drum, along with güiro and sometimes bombos and bongos.

The Chota Valley is located in the basin of the Chota River between the provinces of Imbabura and Carchi, in the middle of the Andes mountain range.

  

Overview of the northern part of  Ecuador. 

Chota River Valley. 

From these region, during the 1980s and 1990s, the best-known musicians where the guitarists-composer-singers Germán, Fabián, and Eleuterio Congo and their colleague, Milton Tadeo.  At the beginning of their carrier, they used to play mostly around their home village Carpuela; by the 1990 they were regional celebrities, giving concert in local villages, on the coast, and in nearby Colombia. The Congo brothers are the third generation of composer-performers in their family.  They identify themselves as Grupo Ecuador de los Hermanos Congo y Milton Tadeo (“Euador Ensemble of the Congo Brothers and Milton Tadeo”). Germán plays lead guitar (requinto), Fabián and Milton play the guitar and sing, Eleuterio plays the bomba, the Chota-area double-headed drum held between the knees and played with the hands; and Ermundo plays the güiro (scraper)

Racism, like in the United States, is deeply ingrained in the Ecuadorian society towards the Afro Americans, Specially from the mestizos and criollos population.  Poverty is rampant among this populations as well.
This leads to the definition of mestizo and criollo. Mestizo is used to define a person who is descendant of an native from Europe and a native form the Americas, this term was used in a racist way during the Spanish control. Criollo, on the other hand,  are people descendant from spanish natives who were born in the Americas, is was considered a social class.
Despite this, we can agree that Afro Ecuadorian population is rich in culture, having two main music styles, and also giving some great athletes to the country of Ecuador.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afro-Ecuadorian

Bomba example
another example

Andean Ensemble Phenomena

The Andean Ensemble Phenomena is, "the spread of Andean music and ensembles (playing on traditional Andean instruments) across the world"

In the 1960's, Andean music (Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile) spread across the world, but primarily to the United States and Western Europe. Of these countries, France was mainly influenced. 

The Andean States

"By 1973, when Quilapayún and other Chilean Nueva Canción musicians began relocating to Europe as political refugees of General Augusto Pinochet's right-wing military regime, Andean folkloric-popular music had a well-established market in Europe, particularly in France. This greatly facilitated the subsequent international success of many exiled Chilean musicians, an important factor virtually ignored in the vast literature on the socially conscious Nueva Canción movement."

Many people fled to the United States and Europe because of military stress. The government was reigning down hard on the people and they sought asylum in other countries, away from the boiling turmoil. By moving to the new countries, they were able to bring there new music with them and largely influence the musical scene.

"Contrary to what one might expect, artists from Chile and/or the Andean countries (Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru) did not play a key role in the initial diffusion of Andean music to Europe. Until the 1970s, Andean music folklorists based in Europe hailed mainly from metropolitan Buenos Aires, Argentina, the so-called Paris of South America."

In the beginning, much of the influence came from the "Paris of South America." Over time, more influence came from countries like Chile and Peru, but that was later on the timetable, around the 1970's.

"Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel's "El Condor Pasa" (If I Could) single introduced many North Americans to Los Incas, who accompanied the duo on this 1970 release and, a few years later, toured with Simon as Urubamba. Before these collaborations took place, however, Los Incas - Paris's first Andean folkloric-popular music ensemble - already had garnered recognition in France. By 1970, the group had recorded several albums, appeared on a film soundtrack and played at the famed Olympia theater."

Simon and Garfunkel took these influences and exploited the new traditions they brought. The new influences added a new depth to their music. They were of the top of music charts across the world, not just in the US. With this new depth, also came a new group of people that would listen to their music. With a broader audience, more influence was made. 

"Despite the presence of Peruvian and especially Bolivian musicians in Buenos Aires, by far the best known ensemble that interpreted the music of the Andes in this metropolitan milieu during the 1940s and 1950s was the Argentine group, Los Hermanos Ábalos. This famous ensemble directly influenced Paris's Los Incas."

As stated earlier, the main influence did not come from Peru or Ecuador, but from the southern countries, particularly Argentina. Los Hermanos Ábalos is a prime example of a group from Agentina that made a large influence, particularly in France. They had heavy influence on another group called Los Incas. 

"Los Incas, like Los Hermanos Ábalos and modernist-cosmopolitan modified non-cosmopolitan upper-class urban audiences, folklorists in general, throughout their career rural musical traditions to appeal to middle and using standard folkloric performance practices not typical of Andean indigenous highland communities (e.g., equal temperment tuning versus flexible intonation, clear instrumental timbre instead of dense tone quality, presentational approach rather than participatory ethos)."

Los Incas was much like Los Hermanos Ábalos. They ventured away more from the Adnean indigenous highland style music, by using equal temperment and clear instrumental timbre, but still kept many of the core values associated with Andean music. 

"At this locale, and on widely issued recordings, Los Hermanos Ábalos played Andean genres with a kena, charango, guitar, and bombo drum. This mixed-instrument configuration, later canonized as the preeminent lineup worldwide for Andean folkloric-popular music ensembles (usually known as conjuntos), was novel at the time in Argentina, Chile, and the Andean countries. For Los Hermanos Ábalos's Andean numbers (only part of the group's total repertory), the siblings played their own works, such as "Bailecito Quenero" (Bailecito for the Kena) and "Carnavalito Quebradeño (Carnavalito of the Mountain Pass), and compositions by other authors, including the yaraví "Dos Palomitas" (Two Little Doves) and Ruiz Lavadenz's huayño "Hasta Otro Día" (Until Another Day) (Victor Ábalos, p.c.; Los Grandes del Folklore: Los Hermanos Ábalos 1991)."

The instruments that Los Hermanos Ábalos used with traditional Andean instruments. This led to a large influence in Europe and the United States because of unique instruments. More people had never heard these instruments before and it struck a chord with them, pun intended.

These are all quotes taken directly from the article "La Flûte Indienne: The Early History of Andean Folkloric-Popular Music in France and Its Impact on Nueva Canción" by Fernando Rios. Images were taken from wikipedia articles respectively.

Sanjuán

Sanjuán is a type of music that has been a part of Ecuadorian culture for hundreds of years. When the term sanjuán was first coined it referred to either a song or dance performed at the festival of St. John. In modern times sanjuán is considered more of a genre closely associated with specific rhythms and the instrument which the Cotacachi Quichua call the Imbabura harp or the harp without pedals. This is a diatonic instrument meaning it is typically tuned to one particular scale and is not easily changed to another.

 

The harp has been present in the highlands of Ecuador for hundreds of years, originally brought over from spain by some of the first conquistadors, and then from Europe by missionaries as well. The Imbabura harp descends from 16th and 17th century Spanish harps and has remained unchanged for nearly 200 years and maybe longer.The Imbabura harp is common only to the Imbabura Province and would not be found in other parts of Ecuador where a larger type of harp is more common. The Imbabura harp is made of materials that are provided by their environment and readily available to the makers. It is common practice to play the treble part of the harp with the dominant hand and the bass part with the non-dominant hand.


A type of music closely associated, and often confused with sanjuán is the sanjuanito. Both are believed to have been danced at the winter solstice celebrations Inti Raymi of the Incas which happened to line up on the calendar with the Spanish festival known as St. John. The sanjuán is more traditional and is usually only heard in native Quechua communities. The sanjuanito on the other hand has become more main stream and can be heard all over Ecuador with a vast array of different instrumentations.


Pictures where gathered from the following sites

http://www.visitotavalo.com/?page_id=150&lang=en

http://old.musikochteatermuseet.se/samlingar/detalj.php?l=en&iid=1857&v=2008-06-17%2021:39:05&str=

Information gathered from our text Worlds of Music by Jeff Todd Titon as well as Wikipedia

Children's Wakes

Velorio del Angelito

Background

One of the aspects of Andes culture (which extends to South America in general, and even parts of Spain) that is most foreign to those living in Anglo-American society is that of the festive wake. When a child dies, there is no quiet remembrance after the fact. Instead, a party — sometimes a very wild party — is held. Alcohol is served, and singing and dancing permeate the atmosphere. The child is crowned (a tradition which extends back into antiquity), and sometimes even brought from house to house throughout the community. This may seem macabre, and even of dubious taste, to other Western cultures. For that matter, it may even seem strange to many Westerners that infant mortality is something which occurs often enough to develop its own specific tradition, but that is the reality of life in some rural parts of Central and South America. What is important to know is that behind the festive wake is a strong religious, philosophical, and logical foundation that has been established for centuries.

Within the Northern Andes of Ecuador, the rite is called “wawa velorio,” which is a term that syncretically mixes the Quichua word for “baby” (wawa) with the Spanish word for burial or wake (velorio). The ritual takes on other names in other cultures, such as velorio del angelito or baquiné — the latter being the name given to it by those in the Caribbean. The reason behind the celebration is that according to their interpretation of Catholic doctrine, because a baby is pure and cannot have sinned, he or she automatically goes to heaven as an angel. The Quichua bring their native religion into the mix by referring to their destination as “the Sky,” which has broader connotations in their pre-Catholic society. While other people — ranging from good to the criminal — must go through varying degrees of purgatory, by which they are redeemed and purified in order to enter God’s company, the angelito (little angel) is spared such trials and tribulations simply by their baptism.

Bárbara Martinez writes about the importance of the veloria tradition as a vehicle for the progression of death as a process and as a social phenomenon. Separate from biological death, social death is the acceptance by the community of the loss of the individual who has died. Sometimes it happens before a person dies. In the Quichua communities, they have signs established for when a person is about to pass. In other instances, sometimes if someone does something reprehensible, they have undergone social “death” because everything in their interpersonal relationships has changed. In the case of the velorio del angelito, the death of a child changes the social structure, and the celebration helps soften the blow and ease the transition into the new state.

Art

Various artists have interpreted the festive wake in their works. Even some within the cultures where they occur deride the occasion as simply an excuse to party. A few portray it as chaotic and embarrassingly uninhibited. In "El Velorio" by Francisco Oiler y Cestero, the participants eyes are grotesquely wide-open, and have a glazed-over look to them. Their smiles appear forced and frightened, not at all a product of genuine celebration. People are jumping and drinking (one man bottoms-up with his mug), while a morbid tallow-colored deceased baby lies on the table. Ironically, the living children appear neglected, sitting crying in the corner, isolated from the raucous celebration occurring in the rest of the room.

Meanwhile, some paint an opposite, and just as partial, picture. Gustave Doré depicts a very somber party in his etching, with the mother weeping next to her child. There are musicians playing, but there is no fervor, and no one appears to be celebrating. Part of the difference may be that the celebration he is capturing is occurring in Spain rather than South America.

One more example is Arturo Gordon's interpretation of velorio, which is in a style more akin to impressionism. People's expressions are unclear, and his painting does more to evoke a feeling of home and family than an opinion on the velorio. Gordon's art depicts what is, rather than what he interprets it to be.

Either way, art is interesting in that it is only one person’s impression of the event, not the reality or the typical trends of behavior. In all likelihood, there was an atmosphere of sadness and loss at these celebrations, but on the other hand, the celebration was probably still the overwhelming force that kept people awake from dusk until dawn. Some who may not have been particularly attached to the child or the family may have gotten carried away, but it seems impossible that those close to the child weren’t to some degree just trying to keep a stiff upper lip.

Music

Among the Quichua, harp music is an important element of their rites for a child’s passing. In Worlds of Music, John M. Schecter narrates the evening he followed a Quichua harpist to a wawa velorio. The harpist plays two kinds of pieces of music: one called a vacación, which is wholly instrumental and has a free-flowing feel, and one called a sanjuán. Schecter contrasts the vacación from the sanjuán, another Quichua genre of music which is characterized by a strict meter, and which includes a vocalist (called a golpeador). The sanjuán is played through most of the night as a piece for people to drink and dance to, but the vacación is played at the beginning of the wake and when people gather around the departed child to keep demons and evil spirits at bay.

The sanjuánes which Sergio plays are of light subject matter; they are pop songs. He spends the night shouting to people, encouraging them to dance. In a sense, he is the one keeping the party going all night long. He finally plays a lament for the mother as she says goodbye to her child one last time in the morning. After a cathartic night of passion, it is time for the process of death and grieving to continue. The celebration of their child’s ascension to heaven is complete, and now, at least in a sense, life can go on.

Martinez, Bárbara. “Death as a Process: An Anthropological Perspective.”Ciência & Saúde Coletiva 18, no. 9 (2013): 2681-2689. http://www.scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_abstract&pid=S1413-81232013000900023&lng=en&nrm=iso&tlng=en

Schechter, John M. “Divergent Perspectives on the Velorio del Angelito: Ritual, Imagery, Artistic Condemnation, and Ethnographic Value.” Journal of RItual Studies 8, no. 2 (Summer 1994): 43-84. http://web.b.ebscohost.com/ehost/pdfviewer/pdfviewer?sid=4eff756e-1ed4-44d0-bb9c-095c983d3469%40sessionmgr115&vid=2&hid=128

Schechter, John M. "Latin America/Chile, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru." In Worlds of Music, edited by Jeff Todd Titon, Timothy J. Cooley, David Locke, David P. McAllester, Anne K. Rasmussen, David B. Reck, John M. Schechter, Jonathan P.J. Stock, and R. Anderson Sutton, 415-471. Belmont, CA: Schirmer Cengage Learning, 2009.

Imbabura Harp

Imbabura Harp.

Construction

The shape of the harp closely resembles that of the more commonly seen western harps. The main difference that can be see is the addition of the sound box with three sound holes. The Imbabura harp is closely related 16^th and 17^th century harps. The harp has remained unchanged in its original construction for the past 200 years. The strings that are used consist of steel strings for the upper register and gut strings for the middle and lower range. Gut strings are the intestinal fibers of animals twisted dried and stretched to create strings for the harp.

History.

The idea of the harp was originally brought from Europe with the explorations of the Jesuit Missionaries conquistadors and other explorers. Because the harp has been in Latin America for over 400 years, it is considered by the Quechua to be a “native” instrument. The harp is still used today and is commonly used for cultural ceremonies and dances. 

Imbabura Harp - The sound of the harp can be head here being played in a market area.  

Imbabura Harp - This video is longer and features a harp player talking about his instrument. What can also be seen is the common occurrence of two people playing the harp. One person plays the strings while the other drums on the sound box.