Koorn_1977_Intro+Guabina+Torbellino_in Folk music of the Colombian Andes

78-939 KOORN, Dirk, 1943FOLK MUSIC OF THE COLOMBIAN ANDES. University of Washington, Ph.D., 1977 Music

Unive iv ersit rs ity y M icr ic rofilm il m s In fe m e fio n e l, AnnArbor, Michigan48ioe

©

Copy Copyri righ ght t by

DIRK KOORN

197?

FOLK MUSIC OF THE THE COLOMBIAN ANDES

by

DISK KOORN

A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements requirements for the degree of

Doctor of Philosophy

University of Washington 1977

Approved by (Chairpersoh-of Supervisory Committee) Program Authorised to Offer Degree Date

Mu sic

Aug us t

3, 1977

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TABLE OF CONTENTS CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION Notes for Chapter One

1 11

CHAPTER TOO

PHYSICAL AND CULTURAL SETTING Physical Setting The People and their History Occasions for the Performance of the Music Notes for Chapter Two

12

CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

13 16

20

27

METHOD AND TECHNIQUE Notes for Chapter Three

28

INSTRUMENTS Notes for Chapter Four

ko

THE POETRY History The Copla Metric Analysis How to Read Spanish-Language Poetry Notes for Chapter Five

55 55

39 5k

66

79 81 85

THE BAMBUCO History and Origins Rhythm Form Accompaniment Choreography Notes for Chapter Six

87 91 9k 123

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE PASILLQ Notes for Chapter Seven

139 1??

CHAPTER EIGHT

THE DANZA Notes for Chapter Eight

1?8 200

CHAPTER NINE

THE GUABINA VELENA Origin and Distribution Accompanying Instruments Instrumental Accompaniment Form Melodies The Coplas Notes for Chapter Nine

201 20k 208 209 212

128

131 137

216

223 22?

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CHAPTER TEN

THE TORBELLINO

Notes for Chapter Ten

229 26l

CHAPTER ELEVEN

THE SUNG COPLAS Notes for Chapter Eleven

262 273

CHAPTER TWELVE

SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION Notes for Chapter Twelve

2?^ 286

BIBLIOGRAPHY Books and Articles Recordings APPENDIX I

APPENDIX II

28? 28? 29i

MAPS Location of the Department of Santander in the Republic of Colombia Location of the villages of the Region of Velez in the Department of Santander

293

LIST OF MAJOR INFORMANTS

295

VITA

293 29^

297

iil


LIST OF TABLES

Table 1

Measurements of the guitar, tiple, requlnto, and b

Table 2

a

n

d

o

l

a

Tuning of the guitar, tiple, requinto, and b a n d o l a i B a t e d s i i i a i e ii * i i i * i a * a ( t * a *o t a o i t i t a a i l i a i

Table 3

^7

^9

Organization of folk-music forms into eight continue o

»279


CHAPTER ONE INTRODUCTION In recent years the concept of "folklore," and "folk music," has had to be modified and adjusted to be in accord with the reality of the modem world. No longer can one expect the system of trans mission of popular knowledge to be the same today, in a world of rapid communication and increased literacy, as it was at the beginning of the centuryj similarly, one can not expect that it was the same at the beginning of the century as at the time of the conquest of the New World,

Changes take place more rapidly now, due to the mass

communication media, than ever before, and it. would be naive to expect tradition and traditional values to be exempt from these changes, Polk items are usually defined by common consent among investigators as having certain characteristic features that distinguish them from other cultural items. They must be popular, traditional, anonymous, functional, nonr-systematic, collective, spontaneous, permanent, regional, and transmitted by oral, not written, tradition.*

While

these features certainly characterize folk items, one must also recognize that many items that do not meet all teristics of folklore function as if they did.

t's defining

charac

Today, for instance,

many songs that function as folk songs may not be anonymous, or may not be transmitted orally in the traditional way. In Colombia today, as in many parts of Latin America, a given

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song may be learned, by some people from their parents, by others from the radio, by still others from a combination of radio and singing, and so forth#

Likewise, there is every possible gradation between

the "pure" folk singer who might sing his songs on the radio occasionally and the professional popular singer heard regularly on records, radio, or television.

It is meaningless, then, to attempt

to draw a definite line between "folk" and "non-folk" rather than speak of varying degrees along a continuum between these two opposing poles# In this study I shall examine the current situation of a number of traditional folk music forms of the Colombian Andesj many of them may be considered traditional folk music only if one alters the usual guidelines as stated above and accepts the transmission of the tradition by other than purely oral means# At the same time, one must recognize that the condition of anonymity is relative, for all songs, stories, and other folk items must have an author originally} whether the author is known or not by the singers of the song, reciters of the story, or other carriers of the tradition, does not alter that fact#

Furthermore,

in many cases, anonymity is no more than the concealing or the loss of the author's name under the force of popularity and collective suppression#^ While folk music may be perfectly distinguishable from commercial music in the "pure" forms, they are also both merely sections of a continuum that includes a large gray area between them in which the distinction is by no means so clear#

In Colombia, folk, popular, and

commercial music merge in what is called muslca tfpica ("typical music"),


based on the folk music of the Andean region and polished up by professional arrangers and performers in the recording studios, and then fed back to the people in its new, slick form.

The mass media

are so pervasive that most people hear this newly processed music as being the true folk music of the country, learn their music from the radio rather than in a more traditional way, and sing it as if it were in fact a pure, uninterrupted, folk music tradition. The actual situation of the folk music of the Colombian Andes is, then, that much of the "typical music" blends with the truly folk music, and the distinction is not at all clear in the minds of the people themselves.

Nonetheless, there are a few forms that have

maintained a certain degree of folk purity due to lack of commercial interest in them. These are the guabina velena and the torbellino of the region of Velez, two closely related forms that will go at one extreme of the continuum extending from purely folk music on one end to the more commercial "typical music" on the other,

Closely related to

these two is the form variously called guabina, torbellino, or sung coplas — I use the final term, "sung coplas," here to distinguish it from the others— which is next in line along the continuum between the torbellino and the bambuco, for it is sometimes recorded on commercial records and heard on the radio.

But it is still largely transmitted in

the traditional way by oral tradition and is therefore close to the folk end of the continuum. Approaching the other end of the continuum, next to the sung coplas, is the bambuco. a form strongly rooted in the folk tradition, perhaps the oldest folk music form in Colombia, but today more often

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f

4

heard in its commercial version on the radio than in its purely folk version among the campesinos (peasants)# The campesinos themselves today tend to learn the barabucos they know from the radio rather than composing their own or singing older ones learned from oral tradition# Many of the older ones that were once a part of the true folk music are today transmitted over the radio in arrangements for professional musicians; the campesinos learn them this way, and thus the radio has replaced another means of transmission while still fulfilling the same function once carried by pure oral tradition#

Nevertheless, enough

campesinos still are carriers of the bambuco tradition, composing and singing their own bambucos, that one cannot say that it has gone completely to the commercial side, but rather the tendency is in that direction# On the far end of the scale away from the pure folk music there are two more recent forms of "typical music," both imported from other countries and creolized in Colombia.

One of these is the pasillo,

imported to Colombia in the early 19th century as the popular European waltz; the other is the danza, which came to Colombia from Europe, but by way of Cuba where it was already creolized in the form of the contradanza, and finally took on its Colombian identity as the danza after further creolization#

Both of these forms, the pasillo and

the danza, originated, then, not among the peasant culture of Colombia as did the other folk music forms, but among the landholding bourgeoisie.

Instead of ascending the social ladder from

the rural countryside to the professional recording studios, they descended from the elegant 19th-century salons to the level of the


common man,

Their origins are completely different from those of the

bambuco, torbellino, or guabina, and today one witnesses this class distinction in the difference between the elegant, lyric poetry of the pasillo and the simple rustic coplas of the guabina.

The musical

differences reflect the same distinction® The music of Colombia is commonly divided by regionss the Andean region, the plains, the Pacific Coast, and the Atlantic Coast,

The

indigenous musics found in the jungle region to the south and in smaller pockets throughout the country are classified apart. Each of the four regions has a particular generic type of music such that all the music of the region is said to be of the same genus.

In the Andean

region, where the research for this study was carried out, the genus 3

is "bambuco,”

The species of this genus include the musical forms

torbellino, guabina, pasillo, danza, rajalena, and sanjuanero, as well as the bambuco itself.

Musically they all have something in

common that distinguishes them from the musics of the coastal regions, the plains, or-the jungle regions.

For the purposes of this paper I

have divided these species into two groups according to whether they are a closed form, or an open, cyclical form. If The closed forms— the bambuco, pasillo, and the danza — are usually characterized by a binary form in which there is often a key change for the second part.

Instrumental introductions and interludes

always separate the two parts, and both parts repeat.

The open, or

cyclical, forms are principally improvisational forms, and consist entirely of a harmonic and rhythmic pattern that repeats over and over for as long as is necessary.

These forms— the guabina velena, torbellino,

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and the sung coplas— closely resemble each other In the steady alternation between a measure of the tonic and a measure of the dominant, often passing through the subdominant before the dominant9 They, unlike the non-improvisatlonal forms, have no song names, no fixed melody, and no definite length.

The texts are always free

coplas, instead of the generally longer lyric poems of the other forms, and, whether improvised or not, are of no particular theme, A further relationship mites the species within each group. This is what might be called thesocial status of these While the pasillo and the danza,

various forms.

and to a lesserdegree certain

bambucos, are suitable for upper- and middle-class dances and serenatas in Bogota, the guabina velena, torbellino, sung coplas, and certain bambucos are definitely musical forms of the rural, campesino classes.

The bambuco bridges the gap between the two social levels,

and is, in fact, the predominant form of Colombian Andean music. The relative positions of all these forms on the continuum correspond to their positions on the social ladder as well.

These relationships

will be examined in more detail in the chapters on each of the forms# With the exception of the danza, historically as well as musically different from the rest, all of these forms of the Colombian Andes are rhythmically similar.

Basically, theyare in a moderate

3/tf rhythm with cross rhythm of 6/8 such that it is not always entirely certain whether a particular rhythm is duple or triple. Much of this music may be transcribed in either 3 A or 6/8 or, preferably, in both, but by tradition it is always notated in 3A» Subtle differences in accompaniment and melodic rhythmic patterns

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7

serve to distinguish one form from another,. Particularly troublesome are the guabina, torbellino, and sung coplas, which are so similar to each other that even the names are sometimes interchangeable.

The

other forms, while very similar to each other, are more readily distinguishable, One other aspect to be examined in this study is the question of origin of the music,

Colombian music, like the Colombian people,

is often said to be a mixture of Spanish, African, and indigenous influences.

This should be an easy enough notion to dispel considering

that there is no one Colombian race or ethnic type, nor is there just one Colombian music type.

The coastal regions, for instance, have a

strong Afro-American culture with little, if any, indigenous influence? similarly, the jungle regions have a strong indigenous culture with no African influence.

The Andean region is culturally Hispanic with

virtually no indigenous or African elements.

This is not to say that

it is pure Spanish, for it is not, nor that it is, as Gilbert Chase 5

has suggested ",,,an Indigenous influence upon a Hispanic foundation,” It is not so simple as that.

Just as the indigenous tribes were largely either displaced, wiped out, or assimilated into the dominant Spanish culture, so too, the music brought by the Spaniards to the Colombian Andes all but obliterated the indigenous music except for a few pockets where the indigenous culture has managed to survive.

Even in the few places where

the native music has survived it has probably not done so uninfluenced by Spanish music.

The strong religious proselytism and musical

infiltration of the Spanish colonization were too powerful to allow


8

any indigenous cultural elements to remain untouched. To look for what elements in the music are of native origin and what elements are of Spanish origin, as is often done, is to miss the point.

The predominant music of this area is of Spanish origin?

the fact that it is not the same as music in Spain does not indicate that the differences are due to indigenous influence, but that the music has evolved in a different way after the breakoff point due to entirely new local factors at work upon the foundation of Spanish music.

It

is therefore more significant to look at how the new environment and conditions of life modified the Spanish musical forms brought over during the period of the conquest. The discovery and colonization of the New World coincided with Spain's artistic and intellectual peak, the almost two centuries known as the Siglo de pro (1^92-1681)® The first part of this period, up to around 15^5» is the Renaissance, a period of adventurous exploration due to a new intellectual curiosity and gusto in living,

Spain at

this time rose to her greatest power both in Europe and abroad.

In

the newly conquered lands across the sea Spain reproduced herself culturally, imposing by force, if necessary, her culture and language on the native population.

In some places this culture existed side by

side with an indigenous culture? in others, such as in the Colombian Andes, the indigenous culture was either wiped out or assimilated by the dominant culture.

While the Spain that reproduces herself in the

New World after the founding of the first permanent Spanish settlement in 1^93 was the Spain of the Catholic sovereigns (Fernando and Isabel) and Carlos V, the foundations for the culture of the Hispanic New

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World were laid in Spain prior to, as well as throughout, the Colonial Period. New conditions, different life style, climate, and many other factors with which the colonizers had to deal, plus the contact with another culture, in spite of how much that culture may have been suppressed, all contributed to the formation of a new musical product, to be known as "Creole music,"— -music of peninsular origin transformed by the American milieu.

By the 17th century Creole music was well

established in the Americas and its influence was even crossing the Atlantic to be felt in Spain* Today, the musical culture of the Colombian Andes is of a definite Hispanic heritage (quite in contrast to that of the Andean region of Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador), yet it is distinctly Colombian, not Spanish. All of the roots of the music may be traced back to Spain, yet none of the folk music forms themselves may be*

This

phenomenon is most readily seen in the poetry used in Colombian folk music, in which it is fairly simple to trace the various poetic forms back to their origins in Spain while the poetry itself is definitely not Spanish but Colombian, or Latin American.

After the conquest the

long tradition of Spanish lyric and popular poetry is transplanted in the New World, where it continues to evolve on its own.

Some examples

of this evolution are examined in the chapter on the poetry.

The

Spanish roots are readily identifiable even though the poetry itself is Creole, It is largely through the poetry, in fact, that the music in this study is examined, for there is an intimate relationship in

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10

Spanishr-languag® song between the poetry on one hand and the melody and rhythm on the other.

In Colombia this relationship is not found

in music of African or indigenous origin, but only in the Hispanic music of the Andean region. Melodic rhythm is controlled by the rhythm of a verse of poetry to which the melody is set, and musical forms are largely controlled by poetic forms.

Many musical forms carry

the same names as the poetic forms to which they are set, such as villancico, seguidilla, romance or corrido, and decima.

The poetry

used in Colombian folk music will be examined in terms of its origins in Spanish lyric and popular poetry and then the various musical forms will be explained largely in relation to the rhythm and form of this poetry, taking different historical factors into consideration. In this way the folk music of a particular portion of the Colombian Andes will be examined in three different ways*

from

the point of view of its traditionality as a folk item, rejecting absolute values in favor of a flexible scale, or continuum, of most traditional to least traditional; from the point of view of the musical relations between the forms themselves; and finally, as a Creole music with Spanish roots, modified by social and historic circumstances, and with its own evolution.


ii

NOTES FOR CHAPTER ONE 1 Darfo Guevara, "En torno a una reconsideracion del concepto cientifico de folklore," in Teorfas del folklore en America Latina (Caracas* Biblioteca INIDEF 1, 1975)t P« 90. 2 Guevara, "En torno a una reconsideracion...," p. 92. 3 Guillermo Abadia, Com-pendio general de folklore colombiano (Bogota* Instituto Colombiano de Cultura, 1970), p. 83. The sanjuanero and rajalena are also closed forms but not included in this study because they are found in the Departments of Tolima and Huila, and not in the region I investigated, 5 Gilbert Chase, The Music of Spain. 2nd revised edition (New York* Dover Publications, 195977 P» 2^3» 6 Chase, Music of Spain, p. 266.


CHAPTER NINE THE GUABINA VELENA. In the region of Velez, Santander, there is a musical form, the guabina, that may be the purest folk form in Colombia,

It has

the least commercial influence of the musical forms of the Colombian Andes,

There are no commercial recordings of the guabina velena as

there are of the other musical forms of the

region, and the

only time of the year when the radio stations present guabina ensembles is during the guabina festival in August every year in Velez,

The

only singers of it are campesinos and villagers from Velez, for there is no commercial interest in the form nor professional singers of it. Unlike all the other forms of folk music of the Colombian Andes, the guabina has never spread geographically from its native region, which seems unusual in an age of rapid and wide-spread communications. In order to keep the guabina from dying out, there is an effort in the village of Velez to preserve it in its purest folkloric form. Paradoxically, this effort, while certainly well intentioned, may actually be helping to put the guabina

prematurely to rest insteadof

allowing it to survive as a folkloric expression.

If it were left

alone it would evolve naturally, as do all folk forms, but the effort in Velez is to keep the guabina frozen at

one particular point in its

evolutionary development. The Folklore Committee of Velez, which organizes the guabina festival every year, has made up rules for the competition that they

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202

believe will keep the guabina "pure" and free from modernizing influences. Contestants must wear the typical costume of the region, which is easy enough for men, but presents a problem and considerable cost for women since it is an elaborate dress seldom worn by anyone except to participate in the festival.

The cost of the dress

eliminates the poorer campesinos from participation.

Others may be

eliminated because they have not prepared their performance in the specified way.

Thus only those who can afford the typical dress, and have

learned the rules well, have a chance of competing and winning a prize, On the other hand, if there were no festival in Velez the guabina could disappear little by little owing to the lack of interest among younger people, the influence of the radio, which in the villages of Santander mainly broadcasts Mexican music, and for lack of commercial opportunities.

Already it has all but disappeared in

the fields where it was traditionally sung during harvests? today the campesino carries a transistor radio with him in the fields. If the guabina manages to survive it will be at least partly due to the efforts of the Folklore Committee, which has worked so hard to preserve the typical customs and traditions of Velez.

But, if the

guabina survives only in the guabina festival in Velez, and disappears in the campo and villages where it was bom, it will cease to exist as a living folk expression of the people.

Nevertheless, in spite

of the dangers to its existence, the guabina continues to be alive and well (at least as of.1975)» perhaps evolving, and still an integral part of the folklore of Santander. Since there are recordings of the guabina only from the last few


203

years, many of them of bad quality, it is difficult to say how it was sung, say, fifty years ago.

According to some older informants, it no

longer is sung like before.

But it is hard to know exactly what might

be different today.

The opinion that the guabina in not like it used

to be may well be based on nostalgia, hardly an objective source of information.

The structure of the copla has not changed, nor have

the instruments, so whatever change there may be must be in the melodies, rhythms, voice quality, or tempos.

If the melodies have changed, it

may be that the musicians have more (or less) technique than before, which means that they would be able to play more ornaments on their instruments, more notes in the melodies, and gradually change the melodies in that way.

That would amount to a natural evolution, and

the tradition would remain intact.

In the same way, the rhythm may

have evolved naturally without the tradition itself having been affected. There is no way one can be sure about the memory of an informant telling about how the guabina used to be.

Lacking recordings or

transcriptions of older guabinas one can only speak with any certainty of the current tradition.

Little has been written about the guabina,

and that little bit is largely based on hypotheses.

Theories about

the origin of the guabina are based on the flimsiest of evidence, and writings about the melodies, rhythms or form are almost nonexistent. This chapter will briefly examine what has been written about the origins of the guabina and look at some of the characteristics of the form as it exists today.


Origin and Distribution

Some of the theories of the origin of the guabina are based on coplas#

One, for instance, claims that the guabina was b o m in

Antioquia (a neighboring department of Santander to the west of the Magdalena River)j Cantando a todo pecho la guabina cancion sabrosa, dejativa y rudaj ruda cual las montanas antioquehas . donde tiene su imperio y fue su cuna# 3 Singing out loud the guabina a delicious, lazy, and coarse song; as rough as the mountains of Antioquia where it has its empire, and had its crib# Another source, dated 1926, confirms that the guabina was well known in Antioquia#

Antonio Jose Restrepo, in El Cancionero de

Antioquia, says, "The octosyllabic line is the only meter accepted, except for the famous air of the guabina, in which it is necessary to use the seguidilla, of seven and five syllables, suppressing the last three lines although certain talented singers with a trained ear permit themselves to sing the guabina, without getting lost, that is, without getting out of tune, the entire seguidilla or other larger verse 2 forms#” Later, Restrepo gives 95 seguidillas "which are sung

3 especially with the very popular Antioquian air called the guabina#"^ Some of the couplets in Restrepo's collection indicate that the guabina was not considered appropriate for ladiest Donde bailen guabina No baile, madre, Ni vuste ni sus hijas Ni mi comadre#

Where the guabina is danced Don't dance mother, Neither you nor your daughters Nor my godmother#


205

This may have been the reason for its disappearance in Antioquia# At least until 1926, when Restrepo wrote his book, the guabina was popular, but now it no longer exists there.

Guillermo Abadfa claims

that the guabina disappeared from Antioquia at the time when there was a reaction of the bourgeoisie against the popular music of the people, like the guabina, to replace it with Colombian versions of European music#

In this way the pasillo and the danza became fashionable in

the salons of the high society.

The guabina was considered vulgar and

inappropriate for high-class ladies.

k

Unless it still exists in the memory of some old campesino somewhere in Antioquia, perhaps with a different name, the guabina has disappeared from Antioquia without leaving a single melody.

Only the few coplas

left by Restrepo and a few references indicate it did exist there once, but there are no descriptions of it. Many writers have said that the guabina from Antioquia was the same as the one in Santander, having originated in Antioquia and apread to Santander, disappearing where it originated.

While this may be the case, it seems unlikely#

After all,

there are other guabinas, notably the ones from Huila and Tolima, which have little to do with the one from Santander even though they have the same n of the name.

a claim of relationship cannot be based on the evidence The guabina from Antioquia may have been something

entirely different from the guabina from Santander. The musicologist and historian Andres Pardo Tovar is of the same opinion, but is confusing when he says that one must not confuse the guabina velena with the extinct guavina from Antioquia.

5

Nowhere else

does one see a difference in spelling to distinguish between two guabinas# Even in Velez, the people indiscriminately write either guabina or


guavina,

In any case, there is reason to believe that there was once

a guabina in Antioquia, but not that it was the original guabina that spread out to other regions of Colombia and then died in Antioquia, The fact that the guabina is so firmly rooted in Santander may indicate that it originated there.

The people of the neighboring

Department of Boyaca, however, claim the guabina for themselves.

But

since the area of Boyaca where the guabina is sung borders on Santander near Velez, and since the divisions between d epartments are political rather than cultural, it is not at all odd that the guabina should exist in two departments.

Generally, however, Velez is considered the

capital of the guabina, and as one moves away from Velez the guabina gradually disappears, whether north into the Department of Santander or south into Boyaca, Some people believe that the guabina is just as much a mixture as the peop le ,

Some of the accompanying instruments are of European origirr

(the tiples and requintos), while others are of indigenous origin (various idio phones), and the melodies also have the modal character of indigenous melodies.

Others, including Andre s Pardo Tovar,^ believe

the origin of the guabina is to be found in plain chant.

They point

out the many similarities between the twos the guabina is the only musical form in Colombia that is sung a ca ppe lla , with the instruments playing only when the singers do not sing? it has an almost free rhythm; the melodies are all in the dorian mode; the total range of the voice is usually less than a sixth, and never larger than a seventh; melodies as cend and descend in scale passages w ith very few skips, and never are there two consecutive skips in the same direction;

all

melodies end in the same way and always on the supertonic (E in the key

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20? of D). Example 53 Is a typical guabina melody illustrating these characteristics«

7 Example 53• Guabina melody#

Guabinas may also be written with bar lines, but that would imply an accentuation that is not there#

The tempo Is around J =80, but it

varies widely within a given melody.

The melody is syllabic with 32

notes corresponding to the 32 syllables of the copla,

A syllable may

extend over two notes only if it is the last syllable of a verso agudoe Example 53 begins and ends on E with a rise to A, but it is a little more common to start on A.or B and slowly descend to E# The contour of the melody, its modal character, and the practice of singing it a cappella could indicate an origin in plain chant# theory seems well founded.

The

At the time Velez was founded, in 1539» it

was common for the priests to teach the music for the Mass to their congregations#

Ecclesiastical music was taught to the Indians in

the process of Christianizing them#

If the people sang the same music

every time they went to Mass, they might possibly continue humming the melodies while they were working in the fields#

Not knowing Latin they '

may have added words in Spanish more appropriate to working in the fields, such as the familiar copla, little by little changing the melodies but maintaining basically the same style as the music they sang in the Mass, and over a period of some ^00 years the melodies in the hands of the people may have evolved into the guabina velena of today®


208

Given the historical, geographical, and cultural circumstances of the region, it is easy to believe this theory of the evolution of the guabina from the l6th century ecclesiastical music that the people learned from the priests. Accompanying Instruments When the campesino is working in the fields he carries no instrument because his hands are occupied with his work.

He sings

his coplas to entertain himself while he works but without accompaniment. This is the way the guabina is mostly sung, and many people will sing like this when they have no instruments or do not know how to play one. On other occasions, at home or at a fiesta, for example, it is understood that the guabina is accompanied by instruments. The most important instruments are.two tiples, or, lacking tiples, two guitars. For the guabina festival in Velez guitars are not permitted because they are not considered typical of the region by the Folklore Committee, But out in the campo sometimes there is no tiple on hand and the musicians will use whatever instruments are available.

Instead of a tiple a

requinto, at one time more common than a tiple, may be used. Today it is seldom seen, although it is still considered a typical instrument of both Santander and Boyaca, The accompaniment of the guabina is complete with the two tiples and it is not necessary to use other instruments.

Nevertheless,

there are a number of optional instruments that may accompany the guabina, but always together with the tiples.

These are the

quiribillos, guacharaca, ehucho, carraca, zambumbia, and tambourine. They may be used in any combination, or any of them alone, but the

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CHAPTER TEN THE TORBELLINO The closest musical relative of the guabina velena is the torbellino of the same region, the South of Santander and the bordering part of Boyaca,

The torbellino may be considered the instrumental counter

part to the sung guabina.

The same ensemble, conjunto guabinero, performs

both the vocal guabina with its instrumental interludes, and the instrumental torbellino, which on rare occasion may have vocal interludes* In the annual guabina festival in Velez each competing ensemble is required to perform one guabina and one torbellino, each of which carries equal weight in the competition.

Every ensemble that can

perform a guabina, then, can also perform a torbellino, even though they may not be able to perform anything else. Many people from outside the region of Velez confuse the two

until the voices come in

identify the guabina, due to so many similarities between that make them sound alike at first.

to

the two forms

But there are also significant

differences, to be examined in this chapter* All of the torbellinos in this

chapter were recorded in

Velez,

Santander, in August 1973 and August 197^» during the guabina festival* For the residents of Velez this is the main occasion for playing and dancing the torbellino*

Out of some 38 recordings of torbellinos,

17 were selected for transcription as being representative of the tradition— more than that would have been redundante The musical examples used in this chapter were selected from those 17 transcriptions.

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During two years of research in Colombia I seldom witnessed, the per formance of a torbellino outside of a staged setting of some kind, either during a festival or on stage as performed by. professional folk dance groups.

Nevertheless, it is a purer folk form than the

bambuco and is deeply rooted in the traditions of the campesinos. Unlike the bambuco, whose tradition largely revolves around a certain class of urban professional musicians in Bogota, the torbellino is definitely of the peasant class in the rural areas of Boyaca and Santander,^

Like the guabina, there are few, if any, commercial recordings

of this type of torbellino, they are almost never heard on the radio, and when they are it is usually on a small local station during a festival and broadcast live.

The lack of commercial interest in the

torbellino, and the guabina, is one of the factors limiting its spread to other regions of Colombia.

Whereas the bambuco and pasillo

are abundantly available on commercial records and heard frequently on the radio, allowing them to be spread to all regions of the country, and even to other countries, the torbellino and guabina have never been nationally broadcast on the same scale as the bambuco and have not spread outside of their area of origin. There is a commercial torbellino and one must be careful not to confuse it with the traditional folk torbellino of the region of Velez.

The commercial torbellino, not one of the moot popular forms

by any standard, resembles the folk torbellino only in the most superficial ways.

Normally it is played on a guitar and tiple rather

than two tiples, and is sung rather than being completely instrumental. Also it may introduce other chords than the tonic, subdominant, and

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231

dominant seventh, and even change keys.

It may he sectional like the

bambuco or other popular songs. None of this is typical of the folk torbellino* The word "torbellino" in Colombia does not refer to any one specific rhythm or musical form. Descriptions by various authors are so vague as to be worthless, often leaving the reader confused about what the torbellino is. Normally the literature does not indicate that there are several things in Colombia called "torbellino," and the authors describe it as if it were a single musical form, Abadfa, for instance, says that the torbellino is melancholy and monotonous and 2 notably slow, while Perdomo Escobar, on the other hand, refers to the 3 torbellino as being "very agitated, a kind of extra-rapid pasilloe These two extremes are not really wrong but merely refer to two different kinds of torbellino while giving the impression that the authors are not aware that there is more than one kind.

This study

concerns itself exclusively with the torbellino from the region of Velez, Both the torbellino and the guabina are circular, continuous forms with no fixed length nor definite internal form.

Something like

a chaconne, they consist of a constantly repeating two-measure figure played on the accompanying instruments while the melody instrument, normally a tiple, plays an improvised melody over this ostinato background.

In this sense the torbellino and guabina are identical!

the ostinato background consists of two beats of a tonic chord, one of a subdominant, and three of a dominant seventh.

But, in the case of

the guabina, the instruments stop after short sections and the voices come in a catrpella. In the case of the torbellino, however, once the

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232 solo instrument comes in it continues to the end without stopping* Both forms are "basically simple backgrounds appropiate for accompanying an improvisations coplas for the guabina, instrumental improvisation for the torbellino* Lacking a strictly defined form, the torbellino relies not upon a melody that conforms to a formal arrangement, but rather on a melody apparently improvised over a repeating harmonic pattern* This makes phrases and sections of variable length.

There are no

internal divisions within a torbellino as there are within a bambuco or pasillo, for instance, nor even the starting and stopping charac teristic of a guabina.

The soloist may extend passages, phrases, or

melodic figures for as long as he likes.

He may drop out for a measure

or two if he wants and come back in when he wants.

The repeated melodic

figures and pedal point passages, common in torbellino melodies, ofte n seem to be techniques to allow the soloist a moment of repose in the improvisation to think about how he will continue. The only signal necessary between soloist and accompaniment is the signal to end.

This is accomplished by an ending melodic formula

plus a mutual understanding on just about how long the torbellino should be (normally between 1,5 to 2,5 minutes, but an y one ensemble usually plays the same length torbellino always).

The accompanying instru

mentalists are normally familiar enough with the soloist, and perhaps /

/

his "improvisation," to know when it is over and listen for the ending formula.

Nevertheless, I have witnessed occasions on which the

accompanists have missed the signal and played a few notes afte r the soloist was finished, but this is rare.


233 The ending formulae consist of a two-measure pattern ending on the dominant, usually a pause of one beat, then one strum of the dominant seventh chord and then the tonic. (Example

71)

are transposed into the key of

The various formulae

D

for sake of comparison

as have all the musical examples in this chapter.

As in the case of

the guabina, the key of D is by far the most common for torbellinos. Example

71«

Torbellino ending formulae.

Gj

A7

harmonics 8va — -- - — * ft

- & r -

*

1

S *— 3

Is f

j

. .

n

r

n

I

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The last of these is the only one that ends directly on the dominant instead of a strum of the tonic chord,

While many people

believe this is most typical of the torbellino, it is in fact not very common.

In all cases the melody does come to rest on the dominant,

but most players will finish the piece by a strum of the tonic. In all the transcriptions of tiple melodies presented here the octave doubling caused by the middle string of the second, third, and fourth courses, which is tuned an octave lower than the outer strings, has been ignored.

The jumping back and forth of octaves as either

an inner or outer string is played is overlooked in order to give a better idea of the shape of the melodic line. While there is no sectional form to these melodies, there is a melodic shape in the form of an arch, which the melodies generally

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Koorn_1977_Intro+Guabina+Torbellino_in Folk music of the Colombian Andes

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