Caribbean Music. diverse assortment of musical manners and traditions from the islands of the Caribbean Sea. It ranges from traditional common people genres. such as the Puerto Rican aguinaldo and Jamaican mento. to modern-day popular parlances such as salsa and reggae. Caribbean music encompasses the music of the English-speaking Caribbean ( once the British West Indies ) . the Latino Caribbean ( chiefly Cuba. Puerto Rico. and the Dominican Republic ) . and the Gallic Caribbean ( chiefly Haiti. Martinique. and Guadeloupe ) . Music of mainland states surrounding the Caribbean Sea is sometimes classified as Caribbean as good. These parts include the state of Guyana. the former Dutch settlement Suriname. and coastal parts of Mexico. Central America. Columbia. and Venezuela. See besides Latin American Music.
In many respects. the diverseness of Caribbean music is more pronounced than its integrity. although some generalisations about common traits can be made. Most sorts of music in the part combine characteristics originally derived from Africa with characteristics derived from the West ; this synthesis started with European colonisation and the importing of African slaves and continues into the present. Such music manners are sometimes described as Creole. or more by and large as syncretistic. bespeaking a blend of African-derived and Western-derived elements to bring forth new. distinctively Caribbean entities. The African influence constitutes a stylistic common denominator throughout most sorts of Caribbean music. attesting itself in the signifier of lively syncopes ( rhythms stressing upbeats ) . call-and-response vocal formats. and ostinatos ( repeated musical phrases ) . which are frequently based on simple chords.
Most Caribbean music may be grouped into common people. classical. or commercially popular classs. Some common people manners are derived chiefly from African music and be given to be dominated by percussion instruments and call-and-response vocals. This class includes the Cuban traditional rhumba. Puerto Rican bomba. and music associated with Afro-Caribbean faiths such as Haitian Vodun and Cuban Santeria. Other sorts of common people music reflect more European lineage. including Puerto Rican jibaro music and Cuban punto. Both manners employ a verse signifier derived from Spanish music and characteristic guitars or guitarlike instruments. In a distinguishable class are the musical patterns associated with cultural East Indians. the posterities of apprenticed labourers who immigrated from India to the Caribbean during the colonial period. Indo-Caribbeans. who constitute the largest cultural group in Trinidad and Guyana. have their ain rich musical heritage. including traditional common people vocals and modern dad manners such as Indian relish.
In 19th-century Cuba and Puerto Rico. officially trained composers came to make distinctively local signifiers of light classical music. The most outstanding manners in this class are the Cuban contradanza ( besides known outside Cuba as the habanera ) ; the danzon. a lighter. more rhythmic Cuban manner ; and the danza. a related manner from Puerto Rico. In the early twentieth century. Cuba produced several distinguished classical composers. including Ernesto Lecuona. Alejandro Garcia Caturla. and Amadeo Roldan. The best-known signifiers of Caribbean music are the modern popular genres. In the Latino Caribbean. the most outstanding of these manners come from Cuba. They include the boy. the most popular manner of Cuban dance music ; the chachacha . a medium-tempo dance signifier ; the bolero. a languid. romantic manner ; and the mambo. a preponderantly instrumental big-band manner ( see Wind: The Big-Band Era ) . Since the mid-1960s. the genre known as salsa. by and large performed by Puerto Ricans and other Latinos. has flourished internationally as an updated version of the Cuban boy and related manners.
Since the 1970s. the merengue. a fast-paced dance music. has become widely popular. particularly in Puerto Rico. New York City. and its fatherland. the Dominican Republic. Possibly the most internationally celebrated manner of Caribbean music is reggae. which emerged in the late sixtiess in Jamaica as a local reinterpretation of American rhythm-and-blues music. Its widespread popularity. particularly in the United States and urban centres in Africa. stems from its infective beat. the glare of such performing artists as Jamaican vocalist Bob Marley. and the compelling nature of its calls for societal justness. Calypso. a manner of music from Trinidad. and soca. a igniter. dance-oriented discrepancy of fairy-slipper. hold besides achieved some international fame. Both manners help pull 1000s of tourers to Trinidad each twelvemonth for the carnival season. The Gallic Caribbean has besides produced its ain syncretistic musical manners. notably compas. the popular music of Haiti. and zouk. a danceable manner from Guadeloupe and Martinique that incorporates elements of funk music.
Caribbean music history begins with the Native Americans who inhabited the islands before the reaching of Europeans. Spanish histories describe some of the musical patterns of the autochthonal peoples. including a ceremonial known as areito. in which participants sang and danced in circles around an ensemble playing slit-drums ( made from hollowed logs ) . rattlings. and other percussion instruments. By 1600. nevertheless. most Native Americans of the Caribbean had perished. along with their music and civilization. Subsequent Caribbean music emerged as merchandises of the interactions between African slaves and European colonists. Scholars draw differentiations between colonist settlements. such as Cuba and Puerto Rico. and plantation settlements. such as those in the British West Indies.
The colonist settlements attracted big Numberss of Europeans and hosted lively Creole music civilizations. And with their big free black populations and comparatively late on-going imports of slaves. the colonist settlements tended to let for the saving and continued verve of neo-African music patterns. In the nineteenth century. the local middle class in these settlements cultivated lively. chauvinistic Creole music civilizations. embracing such genres as the habanera and danzon. In the British plantation settlements. cultural repression appears to hold been more terrible. and the slave trade ended earlier. so that neo-African traditions declined. At the same clip. Creole businessperson music failed to germinate in plantation settlements because of the little figure of European occupants. In the twentieth century. the coming of the mass media—particularly record player records and wireless broadcasts—stimulated the outgrowth of commercial popular dance music manners. frequently at the disbursal of traditional common people music. While these new dad manners were influenced by and. to some extent. were in competition with popular music from the United States. they however flourished by uniting North American music with local traditions.
By the 1920s. the Cuban boy. Trinidadian fairy-slipper. Dominican merengue. and Haitian meringue were booming every bit clearly local dad parlances. The Cuban-derived bolero became popular throughout much of Latin America by the fortiess. In the 1950s the big-band format was adapted from American wind to the Cuban mambo. the Dominican merengue. and the Puerto Rican plena. another typical Creole manner. By the sixtiess. smaller ensembles became more common as amplifiers and electric instruments became widely available and bandleaders sought to avoid the high cost of keeping large sets. During this period. communities of Caribbean immigrants in North American metropoliss came to play important functions in making and distributing Caribbean popular music. In peculiar. New York City emerged as a dynamic centre for the production and ingestion of Latin and West Indian popular music.
In the sixtiess and 1970s. salsa emerged as a extremely popular reinterpretation of Cuban dance music. while Jamaican reggae took the universe by storm. Leading performing artists of both genres. including salsa vocalist Ruben Blades and reggae singer Bob Marley. promoted a sense of socio-political idealism. optimism. and activism. However by the 1990s. the dominant Latin music genres in the part were the more sentimental. unpolitical salsa romantica and the by and large blithe merengue. Similarly. the 1970s manner of “roots reggae. ” or “foundation reggae. ” gave manner in the 1980s to a new manner called dance-hall. which featured self-praise. titillating. or topical wordss rapped in a semimelodic manner over drive. insistent beat. During the 1990s. a new coevals of gifted performing artists emerged from the Caribbean. including Jamaican dance-hall creative person Buju Banton and Dominican vocalist Juan Luis Guerra.
