From Scarlatti to “Guantanamera”: Dual Tonicity in Spanish and Latin American Musics

Abstract

This essay explores the sense of dual tonicity evident in a set of interrelated Spanish and Latin American music genres. These genres include seventeenth-century Spanish keyboard and vihuela fandangos, and diverse folk genres of the Hispanic Caribbean Basin, including the Venezuelan galerón and the Cuban punto, zapateo, and guajira. Songs in these genres oscillate between apparent “tonic” and “dominant” chords, yet conclude on the latter chord and bear internal features that render such terminology inapplicable. Rather, such ostinatos should be understood as oscillating in a pendular fashion between two tonal centers of relatively equal stability. The ambiguous tonicity is related to the Moorish-influenced modal harmony of flamenco and Andalusian folk music; it can also be seen to have informed the modern Cuban son and the music of twentieth-century Cuban composer Amadeo Roldán.

The Guajira between Cuba and Spain: A Study in Continuity and Change

“…Mixolydian modality and modal harmony, in which both melody and chordal ostinatos cadence on sol (here, G); the harmonic cadences are typically described by musicologists as "on the dominant," but (as I have argued elsewhere) are better seen as reflecting a dual tonicity in which do and sol chords (here, C and G) oscillate with relatively equal weight 2 (see Manuel 2002).…”

“…Also worthy of mention are the guajira-inspired pieces by composer Amadeo Roldán, such as his "Guajira vueltabajera" of 1928 for cello and piano, which exploits, in a sort of Debussy/Golliwog modernist manner, some of the genre's distinctive features. In another essay (Manuel 2002), I discuss Roldán's adaptation of Mixolydian tonality; also noteworthy is how the cello and piano playfully toss back and forth fragments in 6/8 and 3/4 tempi. 21.…”

A cultural semantics of string arrangement for recorded Popular music: A model for analysis and practice

“…There is a precedent for soloists in historical instances of Jazz violin because most Big Bands did not use string sections (Lieberman, 2004, p. 84 (Denning, 2015, pp. 201-206;Manuel, 2002, p. 314: Manuel, 1989. They often feature non-Western scales, harmonic minor scales, and frequently prioritize intervallic relationships that are different from those typically used in CPE harmonic language (Cooke, 1992, p. 238;Lieberman, 2004, pp.…”