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Güiro Players
The güiro () is a percussion instrument consisting of an open-ended, hollow gourd with parallel notches cut in one side. It is played by rubbing a stick or tines (see photo) along the notches to produce a ratchet (instrument), ratchet sound. The güiro is commonly used in Cuban, Puerto Rican, and other forms of Latin American music, and plays a key role in the typical rhythm section of important genres like Son (music), son, trova and salsa music, salsa. Playing the güiro usually requires both long and short sounds, made by scraping up and down in long or short strokes. The güiro, like the maracas, is often played by a singer. It is closely related to the Cuban guayo, Dominican güira, and Haitian graj which are made of metal. Other instruments similar to the güiro are the Colombian guacharaca, the Brazilian reco-reco, the Cabo Verdean ferrinho, the Jawbone (instrument), quijada (cow jawbone) and the frottoir (French) or fwotwa (French Creole) (Washboard (musical instrument) ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Musical Instrument Museum (Phoenix)
The Musical Instrument Museum (MIM) is located in Phoenix, Arizona. Opened in April 2010, it is the largest museum of its type in the world. The collection of over 15,000 musical instruments and associated objects includes examples from nearly 200 countries and territories, representing every inhabited continent. Some larger countries such as the United States, Mexico, India, China, and Brazil have multiple displays with subsections for different types of ethnic, Folk music, folk, and tribal music. Overview The Museum was founded by Bob Ulrich, Robert J. Ulrich, former CEO and chairman of Target Corporation. A collector of African art and a world museum enthusiast, Ulrich and his friend Marc Felix originated the idea after a visit to the Musical Instrument Museum (Brussels), Musical Instrument Museum in Brussels, Belgium. The design of the museum benefited as well from the consultation of the Cité de la Musique#Musée de la Musique, Musée de la Musique in Paris modernised in 1 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Güira
The güira () is a percussion instrument from the Dominican Republic used in merengue, bachata, and to a lesser extent, other genres such as cumbia. It is made of a metal sheet (commonly steel) and played with a stiff brush, thus being similar to the Haitian graj (a perforated metal cylinder scraped with a stick) and the Cuban guayo (metal scraper) and güiro (gourd scraper). Güira, guayo and güiro all have a function akin to that of the indigenous native maracas or the trap-kit's hi-hat, namely providing a complementary beat. Performers on the güira are referred to as ''güireros'' and in merengue típico ensembles they often co-lead percussion sections along with tambora-playing ''tamboreros'', due to the significance of their African-derived interlocking rhythms in providing a basic musical foundation for dance. Usage The güira is most often found in merengue típico where it serves as one of multiple percussion instruments, most usually interlocking with the rhy ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Plena
Plena is a genre of music and dance native to Puerto Rico. Origins The plena genre originated in Barrio San Antón, Ponce, Puerto Rico, around 1900. It was influenced by the bomba style of music. Originally, sung texts were not associated with the plena, which was rendered by guitar, accordion and pandero, but eventually, in 1907, singing was added. Plena was often called the ''periodico cantado'' or "sung newspaper" for the lower classes because it spread messages among people, similar to the corridos in Mexico. History The plena was a result of the mixing of the culturally diverse popular class, where their workplace, neighborhood, and life experiences met to create an expressive, satirical style of music. It became a way for the working class to gain empowerment through parody. Due to originating in the lower social class, it was regarded by the upper class as "a menace to public order and private property" and was for many years associated with people of ''la vida alegre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jíbaro (Puerto Rico)
Jíbaro () is a word used in Puerto Rico to refer to the countryside people who farm the land in a traditional way. The jíbaro is a self-subsistence farmer, and an iconic reflection of the Puerto Rican people. Traditional jíbaros were also farmer-salesmen who would grow enough crops to sell in the towns near their farms to purchase the bare necessities for their families, such as clothing. In contemporary times, both white-collar and blue-collar Puerto Ricans are identifying themselves as jíbaros in a proud connection with their Puerto Rican history and culture in general. Historical context As early as 1820, Miguel Cabrera identified many of the jíbaros' ideas and characteristics in his set of poems known as '' The Jibaro's Verses''. Then, some 80 years later, in his 1898 book ''Cuba and Porto Rico'', Robert Thomas Hill listed jíbaros as one of four socio-economic classes he perceived existed in Puerto Rico at the time: "The native people, as a whole, may be divided ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Danzón
Danzón is the official genre and dance of Cuba.Urfé, Odilio 1965. ''El danzón''. La Habana. It is also an active musical form in USA and Puerto Rico. Written in time, the danzón is a slow, formal partner dance, requiring set footwork around syncopated beats, and incorporating elegant pauses while the couples stand listening to virtuoso instrumental passages, as characteristically played by a charanga or típica ensemble. The danzón evolved from the Cuban contradanza, or habanera ( 'Havana-dance'). The contradanza, which had English and French roots in the country dance and contredanse, was probably introduced to Cuba by the Spanish, who ruled the island for almost four centuries (1511–1898), contributing many thousands of immigrants. It may also have been partially seeded during the short-lived British occupation of Havana in 1762. Haitian refugees fleeing the island's revolution of 1791–1804 brought the French-Haitian kontradans, contributing their own ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jarana Yucateca
The Jarana of Yucatán, Mexico The jarana is the typical dance and musical form of the Yucatán Peninsula. There are two possible meters: "seis por ocho" (in musical counts of 6/8) and "tres por cuatro" (in musical counts of 3/4). The jarana dance is done in pairs; the footwork is the same for women and men. The music of the jarana is performed by a wind band ensemble. The Jarana Dance is Performed in Mérida, Valladolid and Elsewhere Throughout the State of Yucatán Jarana performers can be seen performing in Parque Francisco Cantón Rosado in Valladolid, Yucatán, Mexico quite often. Jarana is the name of the dance originally performed duringLa vaqueria celebration but is seen performed throughout the year in various central parks or zócalos throughout the Yucatán including Mérida, Yucatán's capital. A Fusion of Spanish and Maya Culture and Music The vaquería occurred when the Spanish conquistador cattle farmers called upon the local Maya to count and brand the c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Aztec
The Aztecs ( ) were a Mesoamerican civilization that flourished in central Mexico in the Post-Classic stage, post-classic period from 1300 to 1521. The Aztec people included different Indigenous peoples of Mexico, ethnic groups of central Mexico, particularly those groups who spoke the Nahuatl, Nahuatl language and who dominated large parts of Mesoamerica from the 14th to the 16th centuries. Aztec culture was organized into city-states (''altepetl''), some of which joined to form alliances, political confederations, or empires. The Aztec Empire was a confederation of three city-states established in 1427: Tenochtitlan, the capital city of the Mexica or Tenochca, Tetzcoco (altepetl), Tetzcoco, and Tlacopan, previously part of the Tepanec empire, whose dominant power was Azcapotzalco (altepetl), Azcapotzalco. Although the term Aztecs is often narrowly restricted to the Mexica of Tenochtitlan, it is also broadly used to refer to Nahuas, Nahua polities or peoples of central Pre ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion of the Americas. South America is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean, on the north and east by the Atlantic Ocean, and to the south by the Drake Passage; North America and the Caribbean Sea lie to the northwest. The continent includes twelve sovereign states: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Guyana, Paraguay, Peru, Suriname, Uruguay, and Venezuela; two dependent territory, dependent territories: the Falkland Islands and South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands; and one administrative division, internal territory: French Guiana. The Dutch Caribbean ABC islands (Leeward Antilles), ABC islands (Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao) and Trinidad and Tobago are geologically located on the South-American continental shel ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Calabash
Calabash (; ''Lagenaria siceraria''), also known as bottle gourd, white-flowered gourd, long melon, birdhouse gourd, New Guinea bean, New Guinea butter bean, Tasmania bean, and opo squash, is a vine grown for its fruit. It can be either harvested young to be consumed as a vegetable, or harvested mature to be dried and used as a utensil, container, or a musical instrument. When it is fresh, the fruit has a light green smooth skin and white flesh. Calabash fruits have a variety of shapes: they can be huge and rounded, small and bottle-shaped, or slim and serpentine, and they can grow to be over a metre long. Rounder varieties are typically called calabash gourds. The gourd was one of the world's first cultivated plants grown not primarily for food, but for use as containers. The bottle gourd may have been carried from Asia to Africa, Europe, and the Americas in the course of human migration, or by seeds floating across the oceans inside the gourd. It has been proven to have been g ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Crescentia Cujete
''Crescentia cujete'', commonly known as the calabash tree, is a species of flowering plant a medium size tree in the trumpet vine family Bignoniaceae native to the Americas, and which is grown in Africa, Southeast Asia, Central America, South America, the West Indies and extreme southern Florida. It is the national tree of St. Lucia. It is a dicotyledonous plant with simple leaves, which are alternate or in fascicles (clusters) on short shoots. Its very useful fruit is up to long by wide. According to Bailey it can occasionally be wide. It is naturalized in India. The tree shares its common name with that of the vine calabash, or bottle gourd ('' Lagenaria siceraria''). In Cuba, this tree is known to grow in both disturbed habitat and areas of poor drainage. It can grow up to tall. Uses Caribbean The fruit is primarily used to make utensils such as cups, bowls, and basins in rural areas. It can be used for carrying water, or for transporting fish, when fishing. In so ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taíno
The Taíno are the Indigenous peoples of the Caribbean, Indigenous peoples of the Greater Antilles and surrounding islands. At the time of European contact in the late 15th century, they were the principal inhabitants of most of what is now The Bahamas, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Jamaica, Puerto Rico, and the northern Lesser Antilles. The Lucayan people, Lucayan branch of the Taíno were the first New World peoples encountered by Christopher Columbus, in the Lucayan Archipelago, Bahama Archipelago on October 12, 1492. The Taíno historically spoke an Arawakan languages, Arawakan language. Granberry and Vescelius (2004) recognized two varieties of the Taino language: "Classical Taino", spoken in Puerto Rico and most of Hispaniola, and "Ciboney Taino", spoken in the Bahamas, most of Cuba, western Hispaniola, and Jamaica. They lived in agricultural societies ruled by caciques with fixed settlements and a Matrilineality, matrilineal system of kinship and inheritance. Taíno ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
