About Latino Music at MNU
During the 2003-2004 academic year Dr. Baldridge had a desire to expand the world music program of MidAmerica Nazarene University to include music that would appeal to the growing Latino community in Olathe, Kansas City, and the Midwest. He began studying Conjunto music of south Texas and attended the Conjunto Festival of San Antonio in May 2004. A button accordion was purchased marking the beginning of Latino music at MNU.
During the spring 2005 semester a Mexican Marimba ensemble was added. This group rehearses two afternoons each week and performs in a variety of settings. The primary focus of the ensemble, however, is on outreach to the growing Latino community of the Midwest. This original ensemble performed on a 4.3 octave instrument necessitating the use of an electric bass to cover the bass part. During the following summer, however, a 5.5 octave marimba was purchased allowing all parts to be performed on one instrument.
During the summer of 2006 Dr. Baldridge spent two months in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala studying Spanish at Celas Mayas language school, taking marimba lessons, and working in a marimba shop learning how to build a traditional Guatemalan marimba. After returning he built a five-octave marimba sencilla which is the traditional diatonic marimba of the Mayan people of Guatemala, southern Mexico and Belize.
Historical Background of the Music
Andean music performed by Música Latina focuses on music from Bolivia and Peru. The instruments used include the charango, a stringed instrument indigenous to Bolivia, the bombo and chajchas, the drum and goat-hooves rattle of the Andes Mountains, and the zampoña, the two rowed panpipe indigenous to the area around Lake Titicaca located on the border between Bolvia and Peru. Although harmonically simple, this music includes much rhythmic syncopation.
Conjunto music developed during the late 1800s. German immigrants settled in south Texas and northern Mexico during the last half of the nineteenth century and brought with them a new instrument--the button accordion, an instrument capable of playing both its own melody and accompaniment. The indigenous people soon realized the potential of this small portable instrument and adopted it as their own. When the bajo sexto joined the accordion a few years later, this guitar-like instrument took over the roll of the accompaniment and the accordion focused solely on the melody. When the acoustic bass was added the bajo sexto relinquished its function as a bass isntrument and emphasized the chordal aspect of the accompaniment. Eventually the electric bass replaced its acoustic counterpart and drums were added to complete the conjunto ensemble as it is known today. The repertory of this ensemble still emphasizes the dance music (polkas and waltzes) of the original German immigrants.
Marimba music in Latin America is a contribution of the Africans who were brought to the New World. These people began building marimbas and xylophones just as they had in their homeland. These instruments were diatonic and used gourd resonators with buzzing membranes. The resonators were eventually replaced by ones fabricated of wood but the buzzing membranes were retained. During the last few years of the nineteenth century, accidentals were added to the diatonic instruments eventually yielding a fully-chromatic marimba with a range of five or six octaves. Although the greatest concentration of marimba music has been in Guatemala and the bordering state of Chiapas, Mexico, this music has now spread throughout Central America.
