Contradanza

''Contradanza'' (also called ''contradanza criolla'', ''danza'', ''danza criolla'', or ''habanera'') is the Spanish and Spanish-American version of the contradanse, which was an internationally popular style of music and dance in the 18th century, derived from the English country dance and adopted at the court of France. Contradanza was brought to America and there took on folkloric forms that still exist in Bolivia, Mexico, Venezuela, Colombia, Peru, Panama and Ecuador.

In Cuba during the 19th century, it became an important genre, the first written music to be rhythmically based on an African rhythm pattern and the first Cuban dance to gain international popularity, the progenitor of danzón, mambo and cha-cha-cha, with a characteristic "habanera rhythm" and sung lyrics.

Outside Cuba, the Cuban contradanza became known as the ''habanera'' – the dance of Havana – and that name was adopted in Cuba itself subsequent to its international popularity in the later 19th century, though it was never so called by the people who created it.

History

The contradanza was popular in Spain and spread throughout Spanish America during the 18th century. According to musicologist Peter Manuel, it may be impossible to resolve the question of the contradanza's origin, as it has been pointed out by Cuban musicologist Natalio Galán in humorously labeling the genre as "''anglofrancohispanoafrocubano''" (English-French-Spanish-African-Cuban).

The most conventional consensus in regard to the origin of this popular Cuban genre was established by novelist Alejo Carpentier, in his book from 1946, ''La Música en Cuba''. In the book, he proposes a theory that signals the French contredance, supposedly introduced in Cuba by French immigrants fleeing the Haitian Revolution (1791–1803), as the prototype for the creation of the creolized Cuban Contradanza. However, according to other important Cuban musicologists, such as Zoila Lapique and Natalio Galan, it is quite likely that the Contradanza had been introduced to Havana directly from Spain, France or England several decades earlier.

The earliest Cuban contradanza of which a record remains is "San Pascual Bailón", which was written in 1803. Certain characteristics would set the Cuban contradanza apart from the contredanse by the mid-19th century, notably the incorporation of the African cross-rhythm called the ''tresillo''.

The habanera is also slower and as a dance more graceful in style than the older contradanza but retains the binary form of classical dance, being composed in two parts of 8 to 16 bars each, though often with an introduction. An early identifiable contradanza habanera, "La Pimienta", an anonymous song published in an 1836 collection, is the earliest known piece to use the characteristic habanera rhythm in the left hand of the piano.

The contradanza, when played as dance music, was performed by an orquesta típica composed of two violins, two clarinets, a contrabass, a cornet, a trombone, an ophicleide, paila and a güiro. But the habanera was sung as well as danced.

During the first half of the 19th century, the contradanza dominated the Cuban musical scene to such an extent that nearly all Cuban composers of the time, whether composing for the concert hall or the dance hall, tried their hands at the contradanza. Among them Manuel Saumell (1817–1870) is the most noted.

The New Orleans born pianist/composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk (1829–1869) wrote several pieces with the rhythm, gleaned in part from his travels through Cuba and the West Indies: "Danza" (1857), "La Gallina, Danse Cubaine" (1859), "Ojos Criollos" (1859) and "Souvenir de Porto Rico" (1857) among others.

It is thought that the Cuban style was brought by sailors to Spain, where it became popular for a while before the turn of the twentieth century. The Basque composer Sebastian Yradier's " La Paloma" ("The Dove"), achieved great fame in Spain and America. The dance was adopted by all classes of society and had its moment in English and French salons.

It was so well established as a Spanish dance that Jules Massenet included one in the ballet music to his opera ''Le Cid'' (1885). Maurice Ravel wrote a ''Vocalise-Étude en forme de Habanera'', and a habanera for Rapsodie espagnole (movement III, originally a piano piece written in 1895), Camille Saint-Saëns' ''Havanaise'' for violin and orchestra is still played and recorded today, as is Emmanuel Chabrier's ''Habanera for orchestra'' (originally for piano). Bernard Herrmann's score for ''Vertigo'' (1958) makes prominent use of the rhythm as a clue to the film's mystery.

In Andalusia (especially Cadiz), Valencia and Catalonia, the habanera is still popular. "La Paloma", "La bella Lola" or "El meu avi" ("My Grandfather") are well known. From Spain, the style arrived in the Philippines where it still exists as a minor art-form.

In the 20th century, the habanera gradually became a relic form in Cuba, especially after the success of the son. However, some of its compositions were transcribed and reappeared in other formats later on: Eduardo Sánchez de Fuentes' ''Tú'' is still a much-loved composition. The music and dance of the ''contradanza/danza'' are no longer popular in Cuba but are occasionally featured in the performances of folklore groups.

Rhythm

The habanera rhythm's time signature is . An accented upbeat in the middle of the bar lends power to the habanera rhythm, especially when it is as a bass''Listen again''. Experience Music Project. Duke University Press, 2007. p. 75 ostinato in contradanzas such as "Tu madre es conga". Syncopated cross-rhythms called the '' tresillo'' and the '' cinquillo'', basic rhythmic cells in Afro-Latin and African music, began the Cuban dance's differentiation from its European form. Their unequally-grouped accents fall irregularly in a one or two bar pattern: the rhythm superimposes duple and triple accents in cross-rhythm (3:2) or vertical hemiola.

This pattern is heard throughout Africa, and in many diaspora musics, known as the ''congo'', ''tango-congo'', and ''tango''. Thompson identifies the rhythm as the Kongo ("call to the dance").Thompson, Robert Farris. 2006. ''Tango: the art history of love''. Vintage, p117 The syncopated rhythm may be vocalised as "boom...ba-bop-bop", and "da, ka ka kan". It may be sounded with the Ghanaian beaded gourd instrument ''axatse'', vocalized as: "pa ti pa pa", beginning on the second beat so that the last "pa" coincides with beat ''one'', ending on the beginning of the cycle so that the part contributes to the cyclic nature of the rhythm, the "pa's" sounding the '' tresillo'' by striking the gourd against the knee, and the "ti" sounding the main beat ''two'' by raising the gourd and striking it with the free hand.

The cinquillo pattern is sounded on a bell in the folkloric Congolese-based makuta as played in Havana.

Carpentier states that the ''cinquillo'' was brought to Cuba in the songs of the black slaves and freedmen who emigrated to Santiago de Cuba from Haiti in the 1790s and that composers in western Cuba remained ignorant of its existence:

Manuel disputes Carpentier's claim, mentioning "at least a half a dozen Havana counterparts whose existence refutes Carpentier's claim for the absence of the cinquillo in Havana contradanza".

''Danza'', tango and later developments

The ''contradanza'' evolved into the ''clave'' (not to be confused with the key pattern of the same name), the ''criolla'' and the ''guajira.'' From the ''contradanza'' in came the ''(danza) habanera'' and the ''danzón''. According to Argeliers Léon, the word ''danza'' was merely a contraction of ''contradanza'' and there are no substantial differences between the music of the ''contradanza'' and the ''danza'', Both terms continued to denominate what was essentially the same thing throughout the 19th century. But although the ''contradanza'' and ''danza'' were musically identical, the dances were different.

A ''danza'' entitled "El Sungambelo", dated 1813, has the same structure as the ''contradanza'' – the four-section scheme is repeated twice, ABAB and the ''cinquillo'' rhythm can already be heard.

The ''danza'' dominated Cuban music in the second half of the 19th century, though not as completely as the ''contradanza'' had in the first half. Two famous Cuban composers in particular, Ignacio Cervantes (1847–1905) and Ernesto Lecuona (1895–1963), used the ''danza'' as the basis of some of their most memorable compositions.

In Cuba the ''danza'' was supplanted by the ''danzón'' from the 1870s onwards, though the ''danza'' continued to be composed as dance music into the 1920s. By this time, the '' charanga'' had replaced the ''orquesta típica'' of the 19th century. The danzón has a different but related rhythm, the ''baqueteo'', and the dance is quite different.

The Argentine '' milonga'' and ''tango'' makes use of the ''habanera'' rhythm of a dotted quarter-note followed by three eighth-notes, with an accent on the first and third notes."El Choclo" sheet music
at TodoTango. As the consistent rhythmic foundation of the bass line in Argentine tango the ''habanera'' lasted for a relatively short time until a variation, noted by Roberts, began to predominate.

In 1883 Ventura Lynch, a scholar of the dances and folklore of Buenos Aires, noted the milonga dance was "so universal in the environs of the city that it is an obligatory piece at all the lower-class dances (''bailecitos de medio pelo''), and ... has also been taken up by the organ-grinders, who have arranged it so as to sound like the ''habanera'' dance. It is danced in the low life clubs ..."

The contradanza remains an essential part of the tango's music. For example, Aníbal Troilo's 1951 milonga song "La trampera" (Cheating Woman) uses the same ''habanera'' heard in Georges Bizet's opera 1875 ''Carmen''.

African-American music

African-American music began incorporating Cuban musical motifs in the 1800s. Musicians from Havana and New Orleans