Uccelli [née Pazzini], Carolina Uccellini, Marco

(ii) Contemporary traditional music.

(a) Mexican American and Southwest.

Hispanic traditional music in the southwestern USA clearly derives from Mexican sources, although northern New Mexico and southern Colorado retain more archaic elements of Renaissance Spain, and numerous New Mexicans claim a direct Spanish rather than Mexican ancestry. Mexican Americans (or Chicanos) are present from Texas to California and Colorado, and as a result of migratory movements, Chicano music has spread to areas of the Midwest and the northern plains. The music stems primarily from the Mexican norteño style but also includes several genres of the greater Mexican area. Regional norteño styles developed during the latter part of the 19th century in northern Mexico. Central to that music was the regional ensemble (conjunto) with the diatonic button accordion as the chief melodic instrument and the bajo sexto (12-string bass guitar) and the double bass as harmonic and rhythmic instruments. Out of this ensemble developed, from the mid-1930s, the Texan Mexican conjunto tradition that came to be known generically as musica norteña by Mexican Americans. This tradition has remained associated with the poor, while the orquesta or orquesta texana tradition, developed after World War II, has been more closely associated with the urban, middle-class, more Americanized minority of Texan Mexicans.

Conjunto music took over the polka as its main song-and-dance genre, not so much under the direct influence of German and Czech settlers in Texas, as has been too readily assumed, but as part of the general assimilation of European 19th-century salon dances and the creolization process common to the whole Latin American continent since the late 19th century. The same applies to the growing popularity of the button accordion from the 1890s. At first the two-row button accordion was used, with an emphasis on the bass, especially in polkas, as is evident from the recordings of Narciso Martínez and Santiago Jiménez, the first popular conjunto musicians in the 1930s and 40s. In the 50s the three-row button accordion, tuned in various keys, became the main instrument of the ensemble; from this time little or no attention was paid to the bass and harmonic possibilities of the accordion, since this function was fulfilled by the bajo sexto and the electric bass guitar. The rhythmic accompaniment had also been reinforced with the addition of a drum kit. By 1960 this instrumentation had become standard for the conjunto. The polca became predominantly a vocal genre, performed in a typically Hispanic type of folk polyphony – two voices in parallel 3rds and 6ths, in a fast tempo and with a strongly tonal harmonic support. Quite frequently the accordion and bajo sexto players are also the singers. Polka tempos tended to slow down from the 1930s to the 50s, perhaps as a result of the addition of drums and the changing styles of dancing. Concurrently a more staccato, choppy style of accordion performance developed, which became the trademark of numerous virtuoso players, such as Tony de la Rosa and Flaco Jiménez.

Another aspect of Hispanic traditional music of the Southwest is associated with social dances, found especially in New Mexico. Dances such as the polka (polca), schottische (chotis), waltz (valse), mazurka (mazurca), redowa and cotillion (cutilio) have been retained in the tradition. Since the beginning of the 20th century dance tunes have been performed traditionally by fiddle and guitar. The fiddle-tune tradition remained vigorous until the end of the 1900s. Ex.4 illustrates a polca tune as performed by Melitón Roybal (1898–1971), one of the most accomplished New Mexican folk fiddlers; such a tune very frequently accompanied the performance of the cuadrilla, a dance much like the Anglo-American quadrille.

Among the various folksong types not primarily associated with dance are the décima (which has a ten-line verse), referred to as décima cantada (an older genre) on the Texas-Mexico border, and the corrido, the archetypal ballad genre. In its most generalized form, the corrido follows the literary structure of the copla (octosyllabic quatrains, generally with the rhyme scheme ABCB). Corridos are sung to simple, symmetrical tunes in 3/4 or 6/8, accompanied by a guitar, bajo sexto and often accordion. The melodies frequently have a range of less than an octave: ‘The short range allows the corrido to be sung at the top of the singer’s voice, an essential part of the corrido style’ (Paredes, 1958). Although the essential narrative character of the corrido prevails, there are also non-narrative examples, such as simple love songs or political commentaries. Numerous episodes in the long conflict along the Texas-Mexico border (from about 1848 to 1930) are recounted in Chicano corridos, the epic character of which reflects the long struggle of the Mexican American population for social justice. One of the best examples of the border corrido is Gregorio Cortez, narrating the killing by Cortez of Sheriff Morris on 12 June 1901 in reprisal for the death of his brother at the sheriff’s hand; the corrido recounts Cortez’s heroic escape and final capture and became an important element in the emerging group consciousness of Mexican Americans (see Paredes, 1958). The melody of the Cortez corrido is typical in its anacrusis, isometric and symmetrical structure, and simple harmonic implications (I–IV–V–I) (ex.5). This type of border-conflict corrido appeared up to about 1930, but the tradition of celebrating heroes continued in new corridos, for example, those of the 1960s about John F. Kennedy or those of the 70s about César Chávez and the Chicano movement.

In Hispanic New Mexico and southern Colorado, narrative folksongs of the Spanish romance tradition are quite common and include not only the corrido but the indita (with some influence from southwestern Amerindian music) and the relación (a type of humorous romance). In addition, alabados are the main hymns of the religious brotherhood of the Penitentes or Los Hermanos, sung in a free metre and somewhat reminiscent of plainsong. The New Mexico matachines dance, a pantomime ritual dance-drama of Spanish and Moorish origin, is generally performed on the most important Catholic feasts, in a so-called ‘Spanish’ version, with violin, guitar and rattle accompaniment. There is also a ‘drum’ version performed by Pueblo Indians and a male chorus accompanied by drums and rattles (Romero, 1993). Most significantly, there are also versions with Amerindian dancers accompanied by Hispanic musicians.

Throughout the Southwest from Austin, TX, to San Diego, CA, the tradition of the Mexican danza azteca performed by the famous concheros has taken root as an expression of Mexican American identity. This tradition combines re-created elements of supposedly pre-Columbian Mexican Indian ritual dance with strongly mestizo, Spanish-related, popular religious songs, accompanied by conchas (guitar-like instruments with armadillo shells and usually five courses of double strings). The dance itself is frequently accompanied by drums of the teponaztli and huehuetl Aztec types and by rattles, and the dancers wear reconstructed and reinvented Aztec costumes as well as jingles on their ankles. The conchero groups (also known as corporaciones de danza azteca or danza de la conquista) are syncretic religious groups, combining Christian and Amerindian beliefs and practices. They form a sort of religious army whose weapons are their musical instruments and songs. The fact that they carry an essentially Christian-Catholic message does not contradict the mystic search for and identity with their Amerindian ancestry. Therefore, aside from annual pilgrimages of conchero groups to such Mexican shrines as Chalma and Los Remedios, the danza is frequently performed on 12 October, which for most Hispanic Americans is the ‘día de la raza’ (feast day of the ‘race’, or the new mestizo culture), symbolized by the so-called discovery of the New World by Columbus.