Danza

Music of Puerto Rico
A (c. 1900 - 1915) Puerto Rican Cuatro
General topics
Related articles
Genres
Aguinaldo (Jíbaro) Bomba Danza Décima Guaracha Hip hop Plena Reggae Reggaeton Salsa Salsa romántica Seis
Nationalistic and patriotic songs
National anthem	La Borinqueña
Regional music
Anguilla Antigua and Barbuda Aruba and the Dutch Antilles Bahamas Barbados Bermuda Bonaire Cayman Islands Cuba Curaçao Dominica Dominican Republic Grenada Guadeloupe Guyana Haiti Jamaica Louisiana Martinique Montserrat St Kitts and Nevis St Lucia St Vincent and Grenadines Suriname Trinidad and Tobago Turks and Caicos Virgin Islands

External audio

You may listen to Graciela Rivera's interpretation of Fernández Juncos' version of the "La Borinqueña"" here.

You may listen to Luciano Quiñones piano interpretation of Tavárez's "Margarita"here

You may listen to Luciano Quiñones piano interpretation of Morel Campos' "No me toque" here

Danza is a musical genre that originated in Ponce, a city in southern Puerto Rico. It is a popular turn-of-the-twentieth-century ballroom dance genre slightly similar to the waltz. Both the danza and its cousin the contradanza are sequence dances, performed to a pattern, usually of squares, to music that was instrumental. Neither the contradanza nor the danza were sung genres; this is a contrast to, for example, the habanera, which was a sung genre. There is some dispute as to whether the danza was in any sense a different dance from the contradanza, or whether it was just a simplification of the name. Through the first part of the 19th century the dance and its music became steadily more creolized. The music and the dance is creolized because composers were consciously trying to integrate African and European ideas because many of the people themselves were creoles, that is, born in the Caribbean; accepting their islands as their true and only homeland.

Some well-known composers of danzas are Manuel Gregorio Tavárez, "The Father of Puerto Rican Danza", and Juan Morel Campos, considered by many to have raised the genre to its highest level. Others are Cuban Ignacio Cervantes, and Curaçaoan Jan Gerard Palm.

Danza is a form of music that can be varied in its expression. The Puerto Rican national anthem, La Borinqueña, was originally a danza that was later altered to fit a more anthem-like style. Danzas can be either romantic or festive. Romantic danzas have four sections, beginning with an eight-measure paseo followed by three themes of sixteen measures each. The third theme typically includes a solo by the bombardino (baritone horn) and, often, a return to the first theme or a coda at the end. Festive danzas are free-form, with the only rules being an introduction and a swift rhythm.

The first part of the romantic danza, the paseo, had 8 measures of music without a fixed rhythm (a snare drumroll may be played as background), when the couples circled the room elegantly, giving the lady the opportunity to display her beauty. The second part, called the merengue, grew from the original 16 measures to 34, in 1854. Here the couples held each other in a proper stance and executed turns that looked very much like a waltz.