Latin American music, is sometimes 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 former French colonies of Martinique and Guadeloupe are small islands in the Caribbean. ... Tejano is also the name given to Texans of Mexican or Spanish origin. ... Tejano is also the name of Texans of Spanish origin. ... The habanera is a musical style or genre from Cuba, and is one of the oldest mainstays of Cuban music. ... Heitor Villa-Lobos (March 5, 1887 - November 17, 1959) was a Brazilian composer. ...

Music has played an important part in Latin America's turbulent recent history, for example the nueva cancion movement. Nueva canción (Spanish for new song) was a movement in Latin American music that emerged in the mid-1960s, taking root in South America, especially Chile and other Andean countries. ...

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 America consists of the countries of South America and some of North America (including Central America and some the islands of the Caribbean) whose inhabitants mostly speak Romance languages, although Native American languages are also spoken. ... For many people, Spanish music is virtually synonymous with flamenco, an Andalucian-Gitano form of music. ... Portugal is internationally known in the music scene for its traditions of fado, a popular form of music that has undergone numerous mutations in the last half of the 20th century. ...

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. A cultural area is a region (area) with one relatively homogenous human activity or complex of activities (culture). ... Andean music comes from the approximate area inhabited by the Incas prior to European contact. ... Central America is a is dominated by the popular Latin musical trends, including salsa, cumbia, mariachi, reggae, calypso and nueva canción. ... The music of the Caribbean is a diverse grouping of musical genres. ... Central America and the Caribbean The Caribbean Sea is a body of water adjacent to the Atlantic Ocean, south of the Gulf of Mexico. ...

Indigenous Latin music

Very little can be known for sure about music in what is now Latin America prior to the arrival of Europeans. Though there are extremely isolated peoples in the Amazon and elsewhere that have had little contact with Europeans or Africans, Latin music is almost entirely a synthesis of European, African and indigenous elements. The advanced civilizations of the pre-contact era included the Mayan, Aztec and Incan empires. These cultures had well-developed musical institutions that were "reduced to simpler levels and styles through the annihilation or reduction of the ruling classes, and through the introduction of Christianity" (Nettl, p. 166). The name Amazon may refer to several concepts: The legendary Amazons, women renowned in antiquity for their prowess in battle. ... The adjective Mayan refers to a people of what is now parts of Mexico and Central America, their culture, language, and history. ... The Aztecs were a Mesoamerican people of central Mexico in the 14th, 15th and 16th century. ... For other meanings of Inca, see Inca (disambiguation). ...

The ancient Central American civilizations of the Maya and Aztec peoples played instruments including the tlapitzalli (a flute), teponatzli, a log drum, the conch-shell trumpet, various rattles and rasps and the huehuetl, a kettle drum. The earliest written accounts by Spanish colonizers indicate that Aztec music was entirely religious in nature, and was performed by professional musicians; some instruments were considered holy, and thus mistakes made by performers were punished as being possibly offensive to the gods (Stevenson, pp. 14-19). Central America is the region of North America located between the southern border of Mexico and the northwest border of Colombia, in South America. ... This article pertains to the musical instrument. ... A log drum is a type of unpitched percussion instrument that creates is resonance with two toungues that are carved into a hollow box. ... A conch shell A Conch is a sea creature, a mollusk, and more specifically, a marine gastropod. ... A rattle is a percussion musical instrument. ... A rasp is a woodworking tool used for shaping wood. ... Timpani, or kettledrums, are musical instruments in the percussion family. ...

Pictorial representations indicate that ensemble performance was common. Similar instruments were also found among the Incas of South America, who played in addition a wide variety of ocarinas and panpipes. The tuning of panpipes found in Peru has similarities to instruments played in the Pacific islands, leading some scholars to believe in contact between South American and the Oceanic cultures (Nettl, p. 163). A tenor and an alto ten-hole ocarina. ... Pan pipes (also known as the panflute or the syrinx or quills) is an ancient musical instrument based on the principle of the stopped pipe, consisting usually of ten or more pipes of gradually increasing length. ...

Popular Latin music

Argentina

Main articles: Music of Argentina, Tango music, Milonga, Chacarera, Chamamé, Cuarteto Internationally, Argentina is known mostly for the tango, which developed in Buenos Aires and surrounding areas, as well as Montevideo, Uruguay. ... Argentine tango music is traditionally played by an orquesta tipica, which often includes violin, piano, guitar, flute, and especially bandoneon. ... The milonga was a South American style of song that was popular in the 1870s. ... Chacarera is a dance originated in Santiago del Estero Province, Argentina. ...

The tango was perhaps the first of many Latin dance crazes to become popular all around the world. The Gaucho's gave Argentina the Chacarera , Cueca, and Zamba; the Guaraní Chamamé, and African slaves Candombe and Murga. More modern rithms include Argentina's Merengue from Córdoba: El Cuarteto, and the popular Argentine Cumbia. A gaucho is a South American cattle herder, the equivalent to the North American cowboy in Argentina, Uruguay, Paraguay and (with the spelling gaúcho) southern Brazil, and formerly the Falkland Islands. ... The Guarani are primarily a tribal people indigenous in Paraguay, Uruguay and some regions of Argentina, Brazil and Bolivia. ... Candombe is a drum-based musical form of Uruguay. ... A murga group performing on the occasion of the inauguration of president Tabaré Vázquez, Montevideo, March 2005 (Marcello Casal Jr/ABr) Murga is a form of popular musical theatre performed primarily in Montevideo, Uruguay during the Carnival season. ... Merengue is a type of lively, joyful music and dance that comes from the Dominican Republic. ... Cumbia is a Colombian folk dance and dance music. ...

Chile

Main articles: Andean music Andean music comes from the approximate area inhabited by the Incas prior to European contact. ...

The Chilean music of the Andes reflects the spirit of the indigenous people of the Altiplano.Also where nueva cancion originated, and also has many popular cumbia bands The Altiplano (Spanish for high plain), where the Andes are at their widest, is the most extensive area of high plateau on earth outside of Tibet. ... Nueva canción (Spanish for new song) was a movement in Latin American music that emerged in the mid-1960s, taking root in South America, especially Chile and other Andean countries. ... Cumbia is a Colombian folk dance and dance music. ...

Brazil

Main articles: Bossa nova, Música Popular Brasileira, samba Bossa nova is a style of Brazilian music invented in the late 1950s by a group of middle-class students and musicians living in the Copacabana and Ipanema beachside districts of Rio de Janeiro. ... MPB (Música Popular Brasileira) is a specific musical genre of Brazilian popular music that employs sophisticated lyrics, melodies, and harmonies in which the commercial aspect is subordinate to the performers artistic standards. ... Samba is the most famous of the various forms of music arising from the amalgam of African and Portuguese music in Brazil. ...

Brazil is a large and diverse country with a long history of popular musical development, ranging from the early 20th century innovation of samba to the modern Música Popular Brasileira. Bossa nova is internationally well-known.

Cuba

Main articles: Canto nuevo, rumba, nueva trova, habanera, mambo, chachacha The Canto Nuevo or Nueva Canci n is a form of folk music that developed in South America. ... Rumba is both a family of music rhythms and a dance style that originated in Africa and traveled via the slave trade to Cuba and the New World. ... Nueva trova was a movement in Cuban music that emerged in the mid-1960s. ... Habanera is an adjective meaning from Havana (also known as La Habana), Cuba. ... This article is about Mambo dance and musical style. ... For the dance, see Cha-cha-cha (dance). ...

Cuba has produced many of the world's most famous styles of music and a number of renowned musicians in a variety of fields.

Colombia

Main article: Cumbia Cumbia is a Colombian folk dance and dance music. ...

Cumbia is originally a Colombian style of popular music, though it is now also found in other countries, especially Mexico.

Dominican Republic

Main article: Merengue Merengue can mean either: A style of music originating in the Dominican Republic; see merengue (music) A related style of dance; see merengue (dance) See also meringue, a type of dessert. ...

Merengue has been popular in the Dominican Republic for many decades, and is a kind of national symbol.

Martinique and Guadeloupe

Main article: Zouk This is about the type of music; see Zouk (club) for the nightclubs in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. ...

Zouk became a dance craze after spreading from Martinique and Guadeloupe to other islands in the Lesser Antilles, and then the rest of the world. The Lesser Antilles are part of the Antilles, which together with the Greater Antilles form the West Indies. ...

Mexico

Main article: Mariachi Mariachi is a type of musical group, originally from Mexico, consisting of at least two violins, two trumpets, one Spanish guitar, one vihuela (a high-pitched, five-string guitar) and one guitarrón (a small-scaled acoustic bass), but sometimes featuring more than twenty musicians. ...

Mariachi is a kind of popular Mexican music.

Puerto Rico

Main articles: Bomba, plena, reggaeton This article is about the musical style. ... Plena is a traditional form of Puerto Rican music. ... Daddy Yankee, a reggaeton artist. ...

Bomba and plena have been popular in Puerto Rico for a long time, while reggaeton is a relatively recent invention.

Venezuela

Main article: Llanera

Llanera is Venezuelan popular music.

Nueva cancion

Main article: Nueva cancion Nueva canción (Spanish for new song) was a movement in Latin American music that emerged in the mid-1960s, taking root in South America, especially Chile and other Andean countries. ...

Nueva cancion is a kind of folky music found throughout the Andean countries, associated especially with Bolivia and Chile.

Salsa

Main article: Salsa music Salsa music is a diverse and predominantly Caribbean rhythm that is popular in many Latino countries. ...

Salsa is an amalgamation of Latin musical styles, especially Cuban and Puerto Rican, created in the pan-Latin melting pot of New York City in the early 1970s. Alternate meaning: crucible (science) The melting pot is a metaphor for the way in which heterogenous societies develop, in which the ingredients in the pot (iron, tin; people of different backgrounds and religions, etc. ... Events and trends Although in the United States and in many other Western societies the 1970s are often seen as a period of transition between the turbulent 1960s and the more conservative 1980s and 1990s, many of the trends that are associated widely with the Sixties, from the Sexual Revolution...

Tejano music

Main article: Tex-Mex and Tejano Tejano is also the name given to Texans of Mexican or Spanish origin. ...

The Tejano people live in southern Texas in the United States. They are ethnically Mexican, and have their own form of both folk and popular music which is different from both Mexican and American music. State nickname: Lone Star State Other U.S. States Capital Austin Largest city Houston Governor Rick Perry Official languages None. ...

Imported styles

Imported styles of popular music with a distinctively Latin style include Latin jazz, Argentinean rock and Chilean rock, and Cuban and Mexican hip hop, all based of styles from the United States (jazz, rock and roll and hip hop). Music from non-Latin parts of the Caribbean are also popular, especially Jamaican reggae and dub, and Trinidadian calypso music. Latin jazz is the general term given to music that combines rhythms from African and Latin American countries with jazz harmonies from the United States. ... Argentinean rock - Wikipedia /**/ @import /skins/monobook/IE50Fixes. ... Rock and roll is a style of popular African American music, known throughout the world. ... Mexican rap refers to a hip hop movement started in Mexico in the early 1990s with dance-pop act Calo. ... Jazz is a musical art form characterized by blue notes, syncopation, swing, call and response, polyrhythms, and improvisation. ... Rock and roll (also spelled Rock n Roll, especially in its first decade), also called rock, is a form of popular music, usually featuring vocals (often with vocal harmony), electric guitars and a strong back beat; other instruments, such as the saxophone, are common in some styles. ... Hip hop music is a style of popular music. ... Reggae is a style of music developed in Jamaica and is closely linked to the Rastafarian religion, though not universally popular among them. ... Dub is a form of Jamaican music, which developed in the early 1970s. ... The Republic of Trinidad and Tobago is a nation located in the southern Caribbean Sea, off the coast of Venezuela. ... Calypso is a style of Afro-Caribbean music which originated in the British and French colonial islands of the Caribbean at about the start of the 20th century it is an especially integral part of Trinidadian music. ...

References

• Nettl, Bruno. Folk and Traditional Music of the Western Continents. Prentice-Hall, Inc.
• Stevenson, Robert. Music in Mexico (New York: Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1952), cited in Nettl, p. 163.