In my senior year of high school, I took a class about Spanish literature and I fell in love with the subject. After watching Dr. Munarriz’s lecture, I wanted to draw connections between Latin American music and literature. Generally speaking, music and literature in Latin America are similar because they both combine traditions from indigenous groups, Africa, and Europe. This combination arose from exchanges of language (like translations), from variations on European literary movements, and from entirely new literary movements.
To extend blog prompt 8, I tried to find a literary tradition whose history mirrored the evolution of the contradanza and the habanera pattern. The picaresque novel is one such tradition. It began in Spain in 1554 with the novel Lazarillo de Tormes and was influenced by other writings from England and Italy. Soon after, the style was transferred to Latin America through Spain’s colonization. Similarly, the contradanza originated in England and was brought to France, who then brought it to their colonies in the Caribbean.
The picaresque novel is defined by two main characteristics: an episodic structure and a charismatic antihero, usually of a lower social class. As Latin America began to develop its own literary traditions, an important shift happened within the picaresque style. Around the turn of the 18th century, the Latin American picaresque genre started to diverge from its original European form. No longer about Spanish heroes, picaresque novels featured Latin American protagonists. They described colonial society and offered political commentary on the Spanish empire. The contradanza went through a similar transformation. As the dance and its accompanying music took root in the Caribbean, they evolved with the influence of local cultures and became distinct from their European form. Dancers were often of African and indigenous descent, and made the contradanza their own by interpreting it with their unique musical practices.
Looking at the habanera pattern as a “character” within the structure of the contradanza style, the similarities between the contradanza and the picaresque novel become even clearer. While the original picaresque style of writing never reached widespread usage, the archetype of the picaresque hero became ubiquitous. It eventually became a common trope in the United States as well, apparent in novels such as The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain. Similarly, the habanera pattern, in part originating from the contradanza, became ingrained in a multitude of musics all across Latin America. It was also adopted by American jazz musicians in the 20th century, and is now an instantly recognizable rhythmic motif.
While the parallels between music and literature in Latin America are not always this well-aligned, they can explain how the regions of Latin America coincide and differ in culture, and how those cultures came to be. Musical expressions like the contradanza and literary styles like the picaresque genre shed light on the interactions between writing and song, and their evolution throughout the history of Latin America.
Sources
https://larrlasa.org/articles/10.25222/larr.358/
http://estudiosindianos.org/glosario-de-indias/picaresca-y-america/
