Venezuelan merengue
Encyclopedia
Venezuela
Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...
are from scores of “dance merengue” of the second-half of the 19th century . As a dance craze
Dance Craze
Dance Craze is a 1981 British documentary film about the English 2 Tone music genre.The film was directed by Joe Massot, who originally wanted to do a film only about the band Madness, who he met during their first US tour. Massot later changed his plans to include the whole 2 Tone movement...
, merengue acquired popularity in Caracas
Caracas
Caracas , officially Santiago de León de Caracas, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela; natives or residents are known as Caraquenians in English . It is located in the northern part of the country, following the contours of the narrow Caracas Valley on the Venezuelan coastal mountain range...
during the 1920s. It is important to distinguish this form from the vastly more popular Dominican Merengue
Merengue (dance)
Merengue El camino1ro de Secundaria-In popular culture:* Merengue was mentioned as a song performed between Babs and Charlie in the song by Steely Dan....
. Although they share the same name, the rhythms have very little in common, except the fact that they were commonly written for partner dancing
Partner dance
Partner dances are dances whose basic choreography involves coordinated dancing of two partners, as opposed to individuals dancing alone or individually in a non-coordinated manner, and as opposed to groups of people dancing simultaneously in a coordinated manner.In the year 1023 the German poet...
.
History
The origins of the word are controversial. For some people, the word merengue comes from the French word “meringue”, a confection made from whipped egg whites. However, this concoction is called suspiro in Venezuela. There is a stronger link to a Haitian popular dance with that name. Another theory links the name to African words like “muserengue” or “tamtam mouringue”.In Caracas
Caracas
Caracas , officially Santiago de León de Caracas, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela; natives or residents are known as Caraquenians in English . It is located in the northern part of the country, following the contours of the narrow Caracas Valley on the Venezuelan coastal mountain range...
, the term merengue rucaneao designated a way of dancing with couples holding and often featuring exaggerated hip movements (which added to the craze and subsequent controversy). Dances were paid affairs, with popular prices being “a locha” (12.5 cents) or “a medio” (25 cents) in dance halls known then as mabiles. Live accompaniment consisted of four solo instruments: trumpet
Trumpet
The trumpet is the musical instrument with the highest register in the brass family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BCE. They are played by blowing air through closed lips, producing a "buzzing" sound which starts a standing wave vibration in the air...
, trombone
Trombone
The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass family. Like all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player’s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate...
, saxophone
Saxophone
The saxophone is a conical-bore transposing musical instrument that is a member of the woodwind family. Saxophones are usually made of brass and played with a single-reed mouthpiece similar to that of the clarinet. The saxophone was invented by the Belgian instrument maker Adolphe Sax in 1846...
and clarinet
Clarinet
The clarinet is a musical instrument of woodwind type. The name derives from adding the suffix -et to the Italian word clarino , as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet. The instrument has an approximately cylindrical bore, and uses a single reed...
and rhythm instruments such as the cuatro
Cuatro (instrument)
The cuatro is any of several Latin American instruments of the guitar or lute family. The cuatro is smaller than a guitar. Cuatro means four in Spanish, although current instruments may have more than four strings....
, bass
Bass (instrument)
Bass describes musical instruments that produce tones in the low-pitched range. They belong to different families of instruments and can cover a wide range of musical roles...
and percussion (which, depending on the size of the ensemble, could be as simple as a scraper, or incorporate maracas
Maracás
Maracás is a town and municipality in the state of Bahia in the North-East region of Brazil.-References:...
and even a snare drum
Snare drum
The snare drum or side drum is a melodic percussion instrument with strands of snares made of curled metal wire, metal cable, plastic cable, or gut cords stretched across the drumhead, typically the bottom. Pipe and tabor and some military snare drums often have a second set of snares on the bottom...
) . Travelling groups known as cañoneros walked around the neighborhoods staging impromptu performances for tips. The name "cañoneros" comes from their marketing approach, which included firing a carbide charge from a blank cannon made of a thick hollowed-out bamboo cane.
Rhythmic structure
The most frequently used option is to designate a 2/4 rhythm. The first half of the bar is written as an eighth-note triplet
Tuplet
In music a tuplet is "any rhythm that involves dividing the beat into a different number of equal subdivisions from that usually permitted by the...
. The second half of the bar is written as two eighth notes. The unique swing in the second half is what gives Venezuelan merengue its lilt.
Another approach is to notate the Venezuelan merengue as 5/8. This is the way that traditional musicians used to prefer it as the notation is less busy, but it assumes familiarity with the unique swing of Venezuelan merengue.
Fredy Reyna
Fredy Reyna
Fredy Reyna was a Venezuelan musician, arranger and performer, regarded as the undisputed master of the Venezuelan cuatro, which he elevated to the level of a concert instrument, and one of his country's most important cultural figures in the 20th century.- Early life :Fredy Reyna was born in...
proposed a third way in his cuatro method, Alfa Beta Cuatro, which consists of a 1/5 bar. It has not been widely adopted.
Regardless of notation, the juxtaposition of 3 against 2
Polyrhythm
Polyrhythm is the simultaneous sounding of two or more independent rhythms.Polyrhythm in general is a nonspecific term for the simultaneous occurrence of two or more conflicting rhythms, of which cross-rhythm is a specific and definable subset.—Novotney Polyrhythms can be distinguished from...
is a very common theme that pervades Venezuelan music and is found in most of its forms, from joropo
Joropo
The Joropo is a musical style resembling the waltz, and an accompanying dance, having African and European influences originated in Venezuela and performed in Colombia and Venezuela. It's a fundamental genre belonging to its typical music or música criolla...
, to the myriad of Afro-Venezuelan drumming patterns.
Venezuelan Merengue today
Venezuelan merengue isn't quite the popular phenomenon that it was in the 1920s, but it still a popular dance, especially in Caracas. Several "nostalgia" groups attempt to preserve the form by performing it exclusively (often dressing in historic garb): Los Antaños del Stadium, Cañón Contigo, Los CañonerosLos Cañoneros
The group Los Cañoneros was created on November 20, 1982, is a popular Venezuelan cañonero group, as soon as several of their members participated in the play “La Verdadera Historia de Alma Llanera”, acclimated in 1926 with this sort of venezuelan merengue, and cañonero music.The first performance...
, Cuarteto Caraquita. Modern ensembles which incorporate Venezuelan merengues in their repertoire include: Grupo Raíces, El Cuarteto, Beto Valderrama, Henry Rubio.
Formal musicians' contributions
Despite, or perhaps because its popular origins, Merengue was embraced wholeheartedly by the vast majority of Venezuela's Nationalistic classical composers. Pianist-composer Teresa CarreñoTeresa Carreño
María Teresa Carreño García de Sena was a Venezuelan pianist, singer, composer, and conductor.Born into a musical family, she was at first taught by her father, then by Mathias, Louis Moreau Gottschalk and Anton Rubinstein and her talent was recognized at an early age...
wrote several merengues, and incorporated the form as an interlude in some of her pieces (for example, in her piece entitled Un Bal en Rêve). Pianist-composer Moisés Moleiro
Moisés Moleiro
Moisés Moleiro was a pianist and composer. Moleiro had only three months of tuition at the age of six with Manuel Martí Sansón. In 1924, he began four years of music studies in Caracas under the renowned piano teacher Don Salvador Llamozas. In 1927 Moleiro graduated as a pianist. His first...
also wrote and performed merengues in his classical repertoire, as did Evencio Castellanos
Evencio Castellanos
Evencio Castellanos Yumar , was a Venezuelan pianist and classical musician.Being born at the town of Cúa, Miranda state, son of Pablo Castellanos and Matilde Yumar, from young age starts his musical formation along with his father who was organist and kapellmeister at the Nuestra Señora del...
. Saxophonist-composer Daniel Milano Mayora penned quite a few merengues, both for popular interpretation as well as virtuoso solo piano pieces. Guitarist-composer Antonio Lauro
Antonio Lauro
Antonio Lauro was a Venezuelan musician, considered to be one of the foremost South American composers for the Guitar in the 20th century.- Biography :Antonio Lauro was born in Ciudad Bolívar, Venezuela...
wrote what is believed to be the first piece in the form for solo classical guitar, simply entitled Merengue (1945). Rodrigo Riera
Rodrigo Riera
Rodrigo Riera , was a Venezuelan guitarist and composer. He wrote a vital and important body of works for the guitar, inspired by and dedicated to the rich music legacy of his region in the Lara state in Western Venezuela, displaying a loving nationalism that led him to be associated with the work...
composed his first merengue for solo guitar, entitled Merengue Venezolano in the 1950s. Later, he wrote many other merengues. Singer Jesús Sevillano included several merengues in his repertoire, during the height of his singing career.
Contemporary Venezuelan formal musicians continue to cultivate and preserve the form. Jhibaro Rodriguez' (Maracay
Maracay
Maracay is a city in north-central Venezuela, near the Caribbean coast, and is the capital and most important city of the state of Aragua. Most of it falls under the jurisdiction of the Girardot Municipality. The population as per the 2001 census was 750,000...
, 1971) arrangement of La Zapoara for solo guitar and León Zapata's (Caracas
Caracas
Caracas , officially Santiago de León de Caracas, is the capital and largest city of Venezuela; natives or residents are known as Caraquenians in English . It is located in the northern part of the country, following the contours of the narrow Caracas Valley on the Venezuelan coastal mountain range...
, 1955) composition entitled El Guaro are examples of Merengues written or arranged in the latter half of the 20th century.
Venezuelan Merengue Outside of Venezuela
Outside of Venezuela, Merengue simply did not catch on. Even on its heyday very few composers and bandleaders dedicated any effort to this form, maybe because of the difficult rhythm. Trinidadian Lionel BelascoLionel Belasco
Lionel Belasco was a prominent pianist, composer and bandleader, best known for his calypso recordings. According to various sources, he was born either in Barbados or in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago; he grew up in Trinidad, the son of an Afro-Caribbean mother and a Sephardic Jewish father...
composed, performed and recorded some Venezuelan Merengues and Waltzes between the 1910s and the 1930s. Venezuelan composer Aldemaro Romero
Aldemaro Romero
Aldemaro Romero was a Venezuelan pianist, composer, arranger and orchestral conductor. He was born in Valencia, Carabobo State.-Biography:...
had a shot in the 1950s with an international release
Dinner in Caracas
Dinner in Caracas is the name of a 33-RPM LP album by Venezuelan composer/arranger/conductor Aldemaro Romero, released in 1955, under contract with RCA Victor....
that included several merengues, but didn't go very far in the charts. More recently, Paquito D'Rivera
Paquito D'Rivera
Paquito D'Rivera is a Cuban alto saxophonist, clarinetist and soprano saxophonist. The winner of multiple Grammys and other awards, D'Rivera has lived in the United States since the early 1980s. He has worked in a variety of contexts, but is perhaps best known for playing Latin...
wrote a Merengue, again, simply titled Merengue Venezolano.
Perhaps the best hope for the preservation of the form lies in the labor of active musicians that continue to compose, perform and teach merengue in other countries. Guitarist Aquiles Báez, multi-instrumentalist and educator Jackeline Rago, Canadian-based Ensemble Çavana, and the aforementioned Barradas and Gurrufío all are active practitioners of Venezuelan music worldwide.
Famous Venezuelan Merengues
- Chupa tu Mamey
- Criollísima
- Chucho y Ceferina
- Un heladero con clase
- El Chivo
- San Juan to'lo tiene
- La Zapoara
- Barlovento
- Prestame tu máquina
- El Norte es una quimera
- Carmen la que contaba 16 años
- Negra la quiero
- La pelota de Carey
- El Cumaco De San Juan
- Compae Pancho