Nabokov, Nicolas [Nikolay]

II. Art music

The first important composers in a classical vein came with the flourishing of the salon tradition in the larger cities towards the end of the 1800s. Waltzes and other European dance-related forms typify the works of this time. Touring zarzuela companies were also highly influential. Composers with some classical training devoted much of their effort towards funeral marches and church-related musical forms. Small music schools that promoted the European art music tradition were founded around the turn of the century in the major cities; the first documentation of Nicaraguan compositions for wind and brass ensembles dates from this period. Pablo Vega Raudes (1850–1919), from Masaya, conducted several bands and a chamber orchestra, and founded the nation's first school of music in León. The two most significant composers from this period are José de la Cruz Mena (1874–1907) from León and Vega Raudes's son Alejandro Vega Matus (1875–1937) from Masaya. Like his contemporaries, Mena adopted a European academic style that harked back to Haydn for his more classically oriented works, principally several short masses. Most of his works were a type of erudite popular song. Vega Matus led the most celebrated dance and orchestral band of his time, a vehicle for the many foxtrots, one-steps, paso dobles and other songs that make up most of his output. Vega Matus also composed many sacred works and short pieces for chamber orchestra. His son, Ramiro Vega Jiménez, directed both his father's ensemble and the prestigious Band of the National Guard. He wrote masses, operettas, overtures and other pieces scored primarily for band. Fernando Luna Jiménez (1853–1936), first violinist in the Orquesta Vega Matus, wrote several masses, requiems, chamber works, nocturnes, as well as the celebrated overture La cabaña de Lepha, and the first symphonic work based on Nicaraguan folk material, El Toro Huaco op.8.

A more developed attempt at a nationalist use of folk materials, as well as the first composition of extended works for full orchestra, was initiated by Nicaragua's best-known composer, Luis Abraham Delgadillo (1887–1961). He was a pianist and primarily composed piano pieces and short symphonic works, many of them programmatic in nature. Juan Manuel Mena Moreno (1917–89), founder and director for many years of the Nicaraguan National Choir, remains the nation's most accomplished composer of vocal works in the classical idiom. There has been a dearth of new compositions in the classical idiom in the late 20th century, an outcome of the unfortunate status of performing ensembles in the country. During the early 1980s, scores for the film industry, now defunct, were a new outlet for compositions. Notable among the dozen or so examples of incidental film music is that of the director of the Orquesta de Cámera in the 1980s, Pablo Buitrago, particularly his score for the short film El Centerfielder.

The Managua-based Orquesta de Cámera Nicaragüense and the Camerata Bach are the only organizations dedicated to classical music performances. Some semi-classical works are included in the repertory of the Nicaraguan National Choir. The Banda Filarmónica de Managua at times continues the tradition of outdoor concerts, originally established by the pioneering Banda de los Supremos Poderes as early as the 1930s. Most of the nation's small clubs that feature local popular musicians, including New Song performers, are located in Managua.

The bulk of musical education takes place on a private basis and is not found within an institutional framework. Governmental initiative during the Sandinista period (1979–90) established the various Centros Populares de Cultura. Renamed Casas de Cultura after 1990, they continue to play a key role in the country's smaller cities and towns, serving as a locus for a variety of cultural activities, including musical instruction. Music education in primary and secondary schools suffers from a severe shortage of instruments and teachers. There is no musical instruction at any of the nation's universities. The Escuela de Música in Managua only offers instruction to university entry level.

Nicaragua

III. Traditional and popular musics

1. Caribbean Coast.

2. Pacific Coast.

Nicaragua, §III: Traditional and popular musics

1. Caribbean Coast.

Historically, the Caribbean Coast has had little contact with western Nicaragua and its primary economic and cultural relationship with the outside has been with the greater Caribbean basin. Spanish control was never fully exercised and English influence has been strong. There are six distinct ethnic groups among the estimated current population of 470,000. Positioned along a continuum that runs from Amerindian to African they are: Sumu, Rama, Miskitu, Garífuna and Creole and mestizo; the latter are relative newcomers to the area. In addition, all groups have varying degrees of European mixture, especially Creoles. Mestizos currently constitute approximately two-thirds of the total population and their musical practices from the Pacific Coast have had increasing impact upon previously established groups.

(i) Sumu.

The estimated population of 10,000 Sumu currently inhabit tributary headwaters of main rivers on the Caribbean Coast in Nicaragua (part of the northernmost group is also found in Honduras). The Sumu are the most isolated indigenous group within the nation's borders. Once related to the Miskitu, the Sumu share many instruments and musical nomenclature with them. One example is the lungku (or luñku), a musical bow made from a thin and flexible wooden branch from 50 to 80 cm long and a cord from the dried fibre. Played exclusively by women among the Sumu, the player places the bow in the mouth to act as a resonator and plucks the string with the right hand. Compositions tend to imitate the sounds of animals and are highly individual in nature. Another important shared instrument is the bra-tara or bara, a large bamboo flute of up to 2 metres. It is played exclusively by the sukya, or shaman, who blows through a mouthpiece formed from birdskin and beeswax during curative rituals, producing a loud, roaring sound from two to four holes along the length of the flute.

Group singing plays an important part in the Sumu life-cycle and daily activities, especially choruses formed by women of a given community. The most important ceremony among the Sumu is the funerary ritual, called sau for a woman's death and sikro for a man's. Rattles made from round or egg-shaped gourds are principally played by women during the sau. The more elaborate sikro ceremony, exclusively male, lasts several days. During the first night the sukya sings to invoke the spirit of the deceased. The spirit's arrival along a thread attached from the grave to the deceased's house is announced with the sound produced from a type of bullroarer, made from spinning a pole with an attached bamboo strip. The ritual proceeds to dancing accompanied by bara reed flutes, the short fifes called una, and pantañ/panatañ cedar drums. A pantañ is an upright, hourglass drum hollowed from a solid block of mahogany or cedar wood, and used only in this ceremony. The drumhead can be made from a variety of animal skins, including deer, tapir, or even toad or iguana.

The Sumu also use a single-note flute made from the femoral bones of deer, tapir or other large animals used in hunting to lure the agouti. As revealed in its name, the durum was originally introduced through contact with the English. It is played with sticks, not hands, and is the most widely used membranophone. Perhaps the previous existence of the lungku led to the popularity of the yusap, or trumpet, also originally introduced by Europeans.

(ii) Rama.

The Rama have been reduced to a community of less than 700. They have suffered significant deculturation, including language loss. There are no published studies on their musical practices.

(iii) Miskitu.

The Miskitu population totals approximately 170,000, of which 120,000 reside within the borders of Nicaragua and 50,000 in Honduras, together with a scattering of families in Managua, Nicaragua and along the coast in north-eastern Costa Rica. Contemporary Miskitu identify themselves and are considered by outsiders as essentially of Amerindian descent but in the last five centuries they have mixed extensively with Europeans and Africans.

The principal secular form of music is called kitarlawana (from kitar and lawana, song) or tiun. Tiun are songs composed by men and their lyrical content centres on a woman. Most often the sentiments expressed are ones of love, longing and desire, but a range of emotions can be represented, including strong negative feelings. The songs can be accompanied by one or more kitars and/or guitars. The kitar (from ‘guitar’) is a handmade plucked wooden lute. Its strings were once made from catgut but nowadays are purchased commercially. Although the pegbox is designed for six strings, the kitar used by young people to accompany their tiun customarily has fewer strings. Additional percussion instruments accompany tiun: kritas (scrapers) and aras napats (horses' jawbones). The strong impact of centuries of European contact and an intensive European missionary presence are clearly evident in the melodic design and full use of functional harmony. Tiun melodies are sung solo or harmonized in an approximate pattern of parallel 3rds and 6ths. Vocal style can vary from a forceful production that borders on shouting to a relaxed, often plaintive style where the singer cracks his voice at the end of phrases. Tonality is overwhelmingly major. Metres can be 3/4 or 4/4 at a moderate to slow tempo. Dotted rhythmic accompaniment is pervasive.

The Miskitu funerary ritual, sikru, was probably once identical to the Sumu sau and sikro, but transformed over time from the Miskitu's increased outside contact. The sikru has suffered from repression by Moravian Christian missionaries. For example, the kungbi is a large drum probably resulting from contact with the population of African descent on the coast. It measures 40 to 50 cm in diameter, is one to one and a half metres in length and is made from the hollowed-out section of a yulo (mahogany) log. The drum is laid upon the ground and the player sits astride it, beating the deerskin head with his hands to accompany the singer who sits immediately behind him. The kungbi has traditionally been used in the sikru ritual. The influence of the Moravians, who have attacked the drum as demonic, has diminished its ritual presence and resulted in the kungbi being used above all for secular entertainment.

The sikru ceremony contains women's laments around the body of the deceased and at burial. The dance of the sukia, or shaman, is accompanied by one or more kitars, drita (rasps), insuba (rattles) and arasnapats (jawbones). At the same time, younger men perform their own tiun, accompanied by the same instrumentation. Contemporary ritual celebrations have also incorporated portable radios and record players, thereby combining popular music forms with traditional music.

(iv) Garífuna.

The current estimated population of 2000 Garífuna, or black Caribs, are descendants from the mixed Carib and African people exiled from St Vincent to the island of Roatán, Honduras, in 1797. Nicaraguan Garífuna migrated from Honduras and Belize during the later half of the 19th century. Nicaraguan Garífuna are relatively acculturated to mestizo and Creole culture compared to the larger communities in Honduras and Belize. Salient among the musical practices of the Nicaraguan Garífuna is the curative walagallo ritual (Suco Campos, 1987). The music and dance of this ceremony closely parallels similar ones among other Garífuna on the Caribbean Coast. Studies of Garífuna music have been on these larger Garífuna populations north of Nicaragua in Belize and Guatemala.

(v) Creole.

The Creole population on the Caribbean Coast, totalling approximately 40,000, is concentrated primarily in urban areas. Creoles arrived in two migrations, one over several centuries as slaves and escaped slaves of the English, and a more recent migration primarily from Jamaica since the late 1800s. In contrast to mestizos, Creoles are overwhelmingly Moravian Protestants and speak a creole English. There are no published studies on Creole music beyond occasional reporting on annual festivities in the national press.

Moravian hymnody remains a central musical outlet in the Creole community. West Indian influence is reflected in the most common musical form, usually referred to as mento, which clearly resembles Jamaican mento. These songs are characterized by duple metre, moderate tempo, major tonality, syncopated rhythmic accompaniment, open vocal style and a basic structure of alternating verse and chorus. The instrumentation reflects the Creoles' common cultural links with other parts of the English-speaking Caribbean: banjo, asses’ jaw, washpan (wash tub) bass, scraper, guitar and, more recently, accordion. Claves, bongos and congas are also occasionally added. Lyrics typically describe an actual local event, frequently laced with satire.

The maypole, roughly similar to the English version, is performed in conjunction with other festivities to celebrate the earth's fertility. These celebrations close with another traditional dance, the tulu lulu (or tulululu), accompanied by the song of the same name. Maypole dance style was transformed into a sensual, popular dance form that became nationally popular in the 1970s and especially the 1980s under its Spanish name palo de mayo. Strongly influenced by modern soca (see Trinidad and tobago), palo de mayo conserves much of the acoustic mento-based style, such as lyrics, basic melodies, chordal patterns and other musical elements, but it transforms the earlier style by increasing tempos and substituting the banjo, wash-tub bass and accordion with a popular music instrumentation of trap drums, horn sections and electric instruments, including electric bass, organ and/or synthesizer. Reggae music also has a following on the Caribbean Coast, where it is often called ‘Rasta’.

Nicaragua, §III: Traditional and popular musics

2. Pacific Coast.

The Spanish musical stylistic foundation of Nicaragua's folk and popular music is clearly evident throughout the Pacific Coast, notable by a marked preponderance of 3/4 and 6/8 metres and the characteristic harmonization of melodic lines in 3rds. The six-string Spanish guitar is by far the most popular and widely distributed instrument. One or more guitars accompany lyrical songs, sung solo or in duet, throughout the region.

The Pacific Coast can be roughly divided into two demographic areas, the mountainous northern and central regions and the populous southern zone.

(i) Northern regions.

Duo guitar instrumental pieces have been cultivated in Nuera Segovia and neighbouring northern regions more than in other parts of the country. The mazurka segoviana is the most popular form for these instrumental guitar duos. Performed in triple metre at a slow tempo, this music and associated dance were introduced into the northern coffee-producing regions by Central European immigrants in the late 19th century. Instrumental ensembles centred around a violín de talalate (named after the soft, white talalate wood famed for ease of carving into the appropriate shape) and one or more guitars perform a variety of musical genres, including mazurkas. The musical style of the violín de talalate, similar to the region's vocal aesthetic, emphasizes glissandos in the melodic ornamentation and favours a thin, sometimes raspy sound. The quijongo monochord, of African origin, has been limited to the zone close to the Honduran border and at the present time is practically extinct.

Approximately 20 romances can be found throughout the Pacific Coast that closely retain the original Spanish melodic and lyrical form, though most exist with more than one variation. Romances in Nicaragua roughly adhere to the standard form of four octosyllabic lines per stanza and range from four to 12 stanzas in length. The Nicaraguan corrido, sometimes referred to as the corrido nacional, developed following the basic form as the Spanish romance. Both romances and corridos are frequently identified by other names, such as versos, historias, coplas and canciones. All types of romances and corridos are overwhelmingly in a major key, with a small melodic range and typical descending melodic ending leading to the tonic. A number of corridos can be dated to the first half of the 19th century. Some of the best-known corridos stem from the military and political struggle of Augusto C. Sandino in the northern regions (1928–33). Corridos about Sandino survived the repression of successive Somoza family-controlled governments and a few regained national prominence with the triumph of the Sandinista Revolution in 1979. In these songs, the impact of the Mexican revolutionary corrido is clearly evident in both lyric content and musical material, including several borrowed melodies.

(ii) Southern region.

Small vertical flutes and double-headed drums, sometimes played by one musician in pipe and tabor fashion, accompany many of the dances performed at annual patron saint's day celebrations. Although this drum and flute instrumentation may originate from similar Spanish folk traditions, the musical content at this time is clearly of local origin.

In the low-lying coastal plains on the Pacific Coast, the sones (song forms) of the traditional repertory of the marimba de arco (marimba with a bowed wooden arc) accompany the most widespread folkdance. The diatonic, 22-keyed marimba de arco is the most distinctive instrument in the lowland region and the only one of African origin. It is always played solo. The musician sits within the arc and the frame rests on his knees. He is flanked with a metal-stringed guitar and smaller four-string guitarrilla to form the common trio instrumentation. Pieces considered música folklórica, i.e. the repertory for accompanying the traditional dance, are marked by major tonality and either ABAB or ABABA structure. The rhythmic feel of the ensemble often clouds the distinction between 6/8 metre and 3/4. In Nicaragua, unlike other Central American countries, cumbias and other popular dance forms are also performed by marimba de arco trios for entertainment.

European brass and wind instruments used in military bands gradually became adopted by larger sectors of the population, eventually forming the contemporary bandas de chichero that are omnipresent in the lowland Pacific Coast zone. During rodeos and religious festival processions, bandas de chicheros perform sones de toro, or cacho, dance and bullfight songs whose origin may vary from folksongs of anonymous authorship to military marches or adaptations of popular songs.

Cantos a la Purísima, alabanza praise-songs to the Virgin, are sung from door to door during the Christmas season. Most sones de pascua, or villancicos, began as written compositions for bandas, though many are now passed on in oral tradition.

Any direct connection these traditional musics may have had with Spanish forms, e.g. the derivation of sones de toro from Spanish bullfight music, has disappeared as a distinctive national musical style and repertory have developed. Nicaraguan versions of Mexican mariachis and trios date from their arrival via records and films in the 1930s and remain popular.

(iii) Popular music.

Throughout the Pacific Coast the canción ranchera (folk and popular song genre) and other central and northern Mexican forms have become deeply rooted. The son nica (from nicaragüense), popular since the 1940s, was deliberately created as a Nicaraguan antidote to continued Mexican musical influence. Important performing composers in this style include Camilo Zapata (b 1917), credited as the originator of the son nica, Víctor Manuel Leiva (b 1925), Jorge Isaac Carvallo (b 1927) and Otto de la Rocha (b 1936). The rise in importance of Latin American New Song in Central America, sometimes dubbed volcanto (from combining volcán, volcano, and canto, song), has paralleled the nation's political upheavals beginning in the mid-1970s. Carvallo's ‘Campesino’ was the first recorded protest song (1964), but Carlos Mejía Godoy (b 1943) first established political song as an important genre. The musical style of his younger brother, Luis Enrique Mejía Godoy (b 1945), typifies that of other younger volcanto musicians in his use of electric instrumentation and eclectic array of continental musical influences.

Nicaragua

BIBLIOGRAPHY

and other resources

GEWM, ii (‘Miskitu’, ‘Nicaragua’; T.M. Scruggs)

D.G. Brinton: The Güegüence: a Comedy Ballet in the Nahuatl-Spanish Dialect of Nicaragua (Philadelphia, 1883/R)

C.N. Bell: Tangweera: Life and Adventures among Gentle Savages (London, 1899/R)

S.K. Lothrop: Pottery of Costa Rica and Nicaragua, i (New York, 1926)

E. Conzemius: Ethnographical Survey of the Miskito and Sumu Indians of Honduras and Nicaragua (Washington DC, 1932)

R. de Belausteguigoitia: Con Sandino en Nicaragua: la hora de la paz (Madrid, 1934/R)

R. d’Harcourt: ‘Sifflets et ocarinas du Nicaragua et du Mexique’, Journal de la Société des américanistes de Paris, new ser. xxxiii (1941), 165–74

E. Mejía Sánchez: Romances y corridos nicaragüenses (Mexico City, 1946/R)

L.A. Delgadillo: ‘La música indígena y colonial en Nicaragua’, Revista de estudios musicales, i/3 (1949–50), 43–60

R. d'Harcourt: ‘Ocarinas du Nicaragua’, Journal de la Société des américanistes, new ser., xl (1951), 241–4

D. Stone: ‘Synthesis of Lower Central American Ethnohistory’, Handbook of Middle American Indians, iv: Archaeological Frontiers and External Connections, ed. G.F. Ekholm and G.R. Willey (Austin, 1966), 209–33

E. Peña Hernández: Folklore de Nicaragua (Masaya, 1968, 2/1986)

M.W. Helms: Asang: Adaptations to Culture Contact in a Miskito Community (Gainesville, FL, 1971)

D. Stone: Arquelogía de la América Central (Guatemala City, 1976)

T. Agerkop: ‘Música e los Miskitos de Honduras’, Folklore americano, no.23 (1977), 7–37

S. Cardenal Argüello: disc notes, Nicaragua: música y canto Banco de America BALD 011 to 019 (1977, 1992)

G. Fernandez de Oviedo y Valdés: Centroamérica en los cronistas de Indias: Oviedo (Managua, 1977)

P.A. Cuadra and F. Pérez Estrada: Muestrario el folklore nicaragüense (Managua, 1978)

R. Velásquez and T. Agerkop: Miskitos – Honduras (Caracas, 1979)

Boletín nicaragüense de bibliografía y documentación [Managua], no.48 (1982)

R. Pring-Mill: ‘The Uses of Revolutionary Song: a Nicaraguan Assessment’, Popular Music, vi (1987), 179–90

I. Suco Campos: La música en el complejo cultural del wallagallo en Nicaragua (Havana, 1987)

R. Velásquez: Chamanismo: mito y religión en cuatro naciones étnicas de América aborigen (Caracas, 1987)

G. Grossmann: La Costa Atlántica de Nicaragua (Managua, 1988)

R. Velásquez: ‘Instrumentos musicales pertenecientes a la cultura Miskita’, Organología del folklore hondureño, ed. J. Muñoz Tábora (Tegucigalpa, 1988), 105–24

D. Craven: The New Concept of Art and Popular Culture in Nicaragua since the Revolution in 1979 (Lewiston, NY, 1989)

T.M. Scruggs: Review of ¡Nicaragua presente! Music from Nicaragua Libre, coll. J. McCutcheon, Rounder Records 4020/4021 (1989), LAMR, xii (1991), 84–96

F.W. Lange and others: The Archaeology of Pacific Nicaragua (Albuquerque, 1992)

T.M. Scruggs: ‘Central America: Marimba and Other Musics of Central America’, Music in Latin American Culture: Regional Traditions, ed. J.M. Schlechter (New York, 1999), 80–125

T.M. Scruggs: ‘“Let's Enjoy as Nicaraguans”: the Use of Music in the Construction of a Nicaraguan National Consciousness’, EthM, xliii (1999), 297–321

recordings

Nicaragua: música y canto, coll. S. Cardenal Argüello Banco de America BALD 011 to 019 (1977, 1992) [incl. notes by S. Cardenal Argüello]

Guitarra Armada, perf. C. and L.E. Mejía Godoy, Indica S.A. [Costa Rica] MC-1147 (1979); reissued on ENIGRAC MC-015 and MC-1147 (1980); Rounder Records 4022 (1988)

La misa campesina, perf. C. Mejía Godoy and El Taller de Sonido Popular, ENGIRAC NCLP-5012 (1980)

Music of the Miskito Indians of Honduras and Nicaragua, coll. D.B. Stiffler, Folkways 4237 (1981)

Amando en tiempo de guerra/Loving in Times of War, perf. L.E. Mejía Godoy and Mancotal, Redwood Records 8805 (1988)

Nicaraguan Folk Music from Masaya, coll. T.M. Scruggs, Flying Fish 474 (1988) [incl. notes by T.M. Scruggs]

¡Nicaragua presente! Music from Nicaragua Libre, coll. J. McCutcheon, Rounder Records 4020/4021 (1989) [incl. notes by J. McCutcheon]

Black History/Black Culture, perf. Soul Vibrations, Aural Tradition ATRCD 118 (1991)

‘Nicaragua’, The JVC/Smithsonian Folkways Video Anthology of Music and Dance of the Americas, ed. T. Fuji’i (Washington, DC, 1995)