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Vol. 13 No. 32 (2022)
Challenges and opportunities for research in Music Education

Temática central

Puerto Rico and its musical expressions. From the historical and sociocultural context to the current folkloric reality

Published 2022-01-01

  • Oswaldo Lorenzo Quiles
    • ,
  • Francisco L. Reyes

Oswaldo Lorenzo Quiles
Universidad de Granada (España)

Francisco L. Reyes
Gordon College (Massachusetts, USA)

Abstract

Understanding how the current folkloric musical expressions arise on Puerto Rico requires analyzing its sociocultural context from its historical origins, linked to the conquest of America. This allows us to observe the great influence of several musical expressions of the island’s
cultural heritage and to correctly associate their distinctive features with the music of the local pre-Columbian culture and with that imported forcibly from Africa, through slavery. Thus, the Puerto Rican culture was developed during the colonial era, from 1493 to 1898, without being Taino, African or Spanish, but hybrid. At the arrival of Americans in 1898, Puerto Ricans were
not culturally Spanish nor today they are culturally American. Puerto Rican musical culture is the product of its varied influences throughout its history, whose foundations were clearly set through a centuries-long process of miscegenation.

Keywords

traditional music, Caribbean, colonialism, Caribbean culture

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Author Biography

Oswaldo Lorenzo Quiles

Doctor en Ciencias de la Educación por la Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia –UNED-. Profesor Contratado Doctor del Departamento de Didáctica de la Expresión Musical, Plástica y Corporal en la Facultad de Educación y Humanidades de Melilla (Universidad de Granada –España-)

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