Enero de 1989.

Lado A. Nanas peninsulares. (25:18) // Lado B. Arrorró canario y arrullos americanos. (27:08)The proposal is to outline our Hispanic identity through the PROJECTION OF SPANISH SONGS, analyzing comparatively the parallelism that exists between the two shores. And as it has always been said that traditional knowledge comes to us with our mother's milk, we have dedicated the first two chapters of this album to lullabies, whether they are called "nanas", "arrorró" or "cantigas de ninar". LA CANCIÓN DE CUNA is nourished by Hispanic folklore and at the same time enriches it, creating a highly lyrical genre. On the other hand, with the lullabies migrated to the New World this very Spanish need of the word "to keep the child pending of the mother's lips" -as García Lorca detected in his famous essay on "Children's Lullabies"-, and not always to express pleasant things while sleep comes, "but it enters him fully in the crude reality and infiltrates him with the dramatism of the world".

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Febrero de 1989.

Lado A. Rondas infantiles peninsulares. (25:43) // Lado B. Rondas infantiles iberoamericanas.

The children's rondas, the coplas de corro or coplas for jumping rope, the cabalistic letrillas to "rule" or draw positions and places at the beginning of games with penalties, in short, all this vast traditional and folkloric repertoire that has almost disappeared from the courtyards and neighborhood squares, is preserved in the peninsular schools thanks to the functional work given by educators, especially priests and sisters of religious schools. It is mainly to them that we owe the transculturation of this rich vein from Spain to America. Thus, old and new romances, transformed into children's rondas, as well as Christmas carols and aguinaldos, have become first class pedagogical material. Had it not been for those hard-working kindergarten teachers and those patient elementary school teachers, the rondas would have disappeared, and with them that quota of tender drama, ingenuous choreography and fresh musicality.

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Marzo de 1989.

Lado A. La canción enamorada I. (25:36) // Lado B. La canción enamorada II (26:16)

The origins of the song in love go back to the 14th century, in whose early years Guilhem Molinier compiled the Leys d'Amors. Until then, women were sung as a place to be conquered for temporary enjoyment. According to Carlos Alvar in the introduction to his anthology on "Poetry of Troubadours, Trouvéres and Minnesinger", there was total incompatibility between love and marriage, since only the married lady had legal entity in the Middle Ages: "The maiden cannot possess vassals and, therefore, neither lovers, according to the conception of courtly love". This principle makes the relationship between troubadour and lady as secret as possible, because both the honor of the lady and the life of the poet are in danger. With courtly love comes a transfer of feudal lexicon, whereby the poet treats his lady as a vassal, calling her "my lord" and "my master". The "boom" of the love song in Latin America is quite late, since it crystallizes in the bolero - romantic genre par excellence - since the first decades of the present century. From the emergence of the Old Cuban Trova, created by José "Pepe" Sánchez in the second half of the 19th century, to the emergence of the New Cuban Trova, from the sixties of the present century, there is a brilliant period led by Cuba and Mexico first and Argentina and Brazil later, which we can well qualify as the "Golden Century of the Ibero-American Song in Love"

Abril de 1989.

Lado A. La canción amorosa I (25:24) // Lado B. La canción amorosa II (27:18)

In the previous chapters, dedicated to the Song in Love, we have seen how the norms established from the top in certain hierarchical societies, focus on everything that constitutes ceremonial and etiquette: birth, marriage, funerals and war events are framed in a great apparatus of formalities and solemnity. The love courtship takes the form of an elaborate game, where poetry, music and song are fundamentally involved. The present disc, entirely dedicated to the LOVE SONG, should not require further commentary as it is an extension of the already treated Song in Love, except to specify that now it is not only about the couple and their love request, but that, starting from the being abstracted in his intimate and deep Self, we launch ourselves after the song to Love as source of life, as infinite force, as irrepressible desire and as the only power capable of claiming eternity.

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Mayo de 1989.

Lado A. Pregones callejeros (27:00) // Lado B. El pregón teatralizado (25:00)

The old types are slowly but inexorably becoming extinct, they are being lost from sight, and there are many people today who are unaware of their cultural background and ancestral customs. Not only foreigners, but even people born in this or that city, ignore the transformations that certain things have undergone. These pregones -prehistoria publicitaria I would call them-, have from their birth a melody that triumphs of the time and some verses that prevent their total oblivion. Recreated by musicians and poets, compiled and analyzed by researchers, always taken up by the people, the pregones are linked to cultural identity. And from its popular roots, the pregón rises to the demands of bel canto, but without making concessions.

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Junio de 1989

Lado A. Raíces de la música afrohispánica (27:28) // La Habanera, orígenes y proyección (27:40)

It can be well assured today that the cabildos of Africans date back to the 14th century, more than a hundred years before the discovery of America. "Of the Afro-Cuban cabildos, as well as of their foremen, there are undoubted and very old historical antecedents in Seville, as we see in the chronicles of Ortíz de Zúñiga (1474), who refers to the dances and parties of the African slaves in the Andalusian capital during the reign of Don Enrique III (that is, 1390), and to the institution of a mayoral among them as chief and judge of all, with whom the authorities understood each other" (Fernando Ortíz Fernández: Orbita de Fernando Ortiz. Havana, Havana, Cuba, 1474). (Fernando Ortíz Fernández: Orbita de Fernando Ortiz. Havana, 1973). The European contradanza (born among the Normans), is brought to Cuba by the French towards the end of the VXIII century. From it was born the Creole contradanza as a Cuban dance genre, within the so-called "cuadro" pieces. As time went by, it lost its collective aspect, becoming a dance of couples. The well-known Cuban dance is nothing more than this same musical phenomenon. The later Cuban danzón has its immediate antecedent in the Cuban dance. Towards the second half of the 19th century, the Creole dance loses its choreography and begins to be a singable genre, thus the Habanera was born.

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Julio de 1989.

Lado A. La canción danzaria: los tangos. (27:30) // La canción danzaria: la rumba (26:48)

In his comprehensive essay entitled Afro-American Black Music, (Bs.As., 1978) its author, John Sotrm Roberts, writes: "... the Spanish taste for double or triple meter in the same piece of music, shared by many African groups, facilitated the adoption and retention of the African polyrhythmic approach of double and triple together..." (p. 62) There is a rhythmic pattern widespread in the black music of the Americas. It is the basic rhythm of Cuban habanera, Argentine tango, Dominican merengue and many Trinidadian calipsos. Oneyda Alvarenga says it is widely used in Brazilian music. Storm Roberts also finds it in Puerto Rican dance and notes that it is "very similar to the rhythm of the Andalusian tango of Spain".

The word "rumba" comes from Spain, but not from the dance. It is a reference to the word used to describe the women of the so-called "happy life", and so it was said: "mujeres de rumbo", "mulatas de rumbo". From the beginning, the rumba was marked by the most absolute prejudice due to its very humble origin and the choreography, which is a ritual pantomime of the sexual act.... When the dance ceased to have an initiatory religious content and became "the rumba", it did not become a frivolous manifestation. It was and is, a party that Man gives himself.

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Agosto de 1989

Lado A. Zarzuelas de la otra orilla I. (27:30) // Lado B. Zarzuelas de la otra orilla II. (27:00)

Zarzuela is a dramatic-musical genre in one or several acts, with alternative sequences of spoken and sung parts. This genre, characteristically Spanish and related to French comic opera, Viennese and Italian operettas and Anglo-Saxon musical comedy, dates back to the seventeenth century in its origins, reaching its peak in nineteenth-century Spain. Under that influence, already in the present century, the zarzuela arises on the other side of the Atlantic, standing out for its autochthonous contributions the Cuban zarzuela. The Teatro Martí, the Teatro Alhambra and the Teatro Regina, just to mention a few stages where Gonzalo Roig, Eliseo Grenet, Rodrigo Prats, Amadeo Roldán and the prolific Ernesto Lecuona premiered their works, keep the history of this Cuban zarzuela, also heir to the Cuban buffo theater, founded by Francisco Covarrubias and developed by Jorge Anckerman.

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Septiembre de 1989

Lado A. Ensalmos y conjuros (27:30) // Lado B. El Diablo en nuestro Cancionero (27:10)

Ensalmo is understood as the superstitious way of healing with prayers and empirical remedies. The shamanic chant of the natives of the New World is an expression of a sacred nature, whose function is to invoke the assistance of the mystical powers of their protective manes: animals and plants. Conjure is understood as the action and effect of conjuring demons, as well as to say against them the prayers and exorcisms arranged by the Catholic Church. Before man was born the Devil, and his history is so ancient that it is not even recorded in Genesis; we know it by oral tradition and the books of Sacred History. In Christianity, the Devil is a being originally good and extraordinarily beautiful, called Luzbel and created by God; an angel who then falls into disgrace by an act of pride, condemning himself and becoming the enemy of universal salvation. Thus, Luzbel becomes Lucifer or Satan.

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Octubre de 1989

Lado A. La canción religiosa (26:34) // La canción religiosa (continuación) (26:37)

The oldest edition of religious music known in the New World was printed in Mexico in 1556, it is an "Ordinarium Missae" that testified to the diffusion of Gregorian chant and the needs of a means of evolution. Fray Pedro de Gante founded shortly before his death in 1572, the first center of musical diffusion, the "Schola Cantorum" of Texcoco. As in the Viceroyalty of New Spain, a period of true splendor for religious music in South America began in the middle of the 16th century. The archives of the cathedrals and chapels of Quito, Cuzco, Potosí and Lima tell of a rich artistic past and bear witness to the musicians who served as chapel masters there. The evangelization of the Indians under the encomienda regime, as well as the catechization of the enslaved blacks, was based on a songbook and the popularity of the autos sacramentales. In Afro-American cultures, it is not possible to speak of religious song without making special reference to the role played by women in the transmission of the oral tradition.

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Octubre de 1989

Lado A. Misas folklóricas y criollas. (26:00) // Lado B. Misas comunitarias. (26:25)

The Misa Flamenca is an Andalusian glossary for the Spanish Mass composed by Fernández de Latorre and José Torregrosa in 1966. The "Misa Flamenca" completes the trilogy that began this genre with the "Misa Luba" by Father Guido Haazen, in 1962, to continue with the Argentinean "Misa Criolla" by Ariel Ramirez, in 1964. This process is directly related to the recommendations of the Second Vatican Council on the need to adapt the Liturgy and sacred art to the idiosyncrasy of the different peoples. This phenomenon of liturgical folklorization produced in Latin America a sequel of Creole and folkloric Masses, while in Spain regional Masses proliferated in the seventies. The Community Masses are the fruit of the post-conciliar process, since its conclusions were applied in Latin America by the Medellin Conference. And because in this new way of doing theology the Christian base communities are the protagonists of the "option for the poor", the liturgical adaptations of these ecclesial communities, such as the "Nicaraguan Peasant Mass" or the "Mass of the Quilombos", have been called "Community Masses".

Noviembre de 1989

Lado A. La Canción Social I. (26:50) // Lado B. La Canción Social II. (27:24)

The two sides are entirely dedicated to a fundamental aspect of the so-called Nueva Canción Iberoamericana, which is THE SOCIAL SONG. But we are not going to theorize about this phenomenon that gained strength in the sixties. We are just going to offer you a brief selection of themes that will be preceded by poems in the voice of their own authors.