Research Guides: International Music Resources by Country: Ecuador

Map of Ecuador

Citation (5)

Books

A Guide to the Latin American Art Song Repertoire by Maya Hoover A reference guide to the vast array of art song literature and composers from Latin America, this book introduces the music of Latin America from a singer's perspective and provides a basis for research into the songs of this richly musical area of the world. The book is divided by country into 22 chapters, with each chapter containing an introductory essay on the music of the region, a catalog of art songs for that country, and a list of publishers. Some chapters include information on additional sources. Singers and teachers may use descriptive annotations (language, poet) or pedagogical annotations (range, tessitura) to determine which pieces are appropriate for their voices or programming needs, or those of their students. The guide will be a valuable resource for vocalists and researchers, however familiar they may be with this glorious repertoire.
Call Number: ML128.S3 H85 2010
The Indispensable Harp by John M. Schechter A musical instrument that has played a vital role in Latin American music cultures--the harp--is the subject of this new work, the first study of its kind to be published in English. John Schechter presents a history of the harp in Spain, traces its introduction into colonial Latin America, and describes its modern roles in the diverse cultural centers of Mexico, Paraguay-Argentina-chile, Venezuela, and Peru. He then turns his focus to his own field research in the Quichua culture of northern highland Ecuador, an area that has receive considerably less scholarly attention than many of its Latin American neighbors. The reader will meet a community of harp maistrus on the slopes of Mt. Cotacachi and become familiar with their culture, their particular instrument and its tuning, and their performance practices. Numerous photographs, musical transcriptions, and diagrams illustrate and enliven the text. The Indispensable Harp is unique for its integration of aspects of music and cultural history, organology, and performance practice, treating in considerable depth both broadly established music-ethnographical practices. It speaks to the conclusion that the vital role of the harp in Latin American music history has now been properly acknowledged and documented.
Call Number: ML1005 .S26 1992
Whose National Music? by Ketty Wong How class divisions shape the definition of Ecuador's national music and identity
Call Number: ML3575.E2 W66 2012

Listen to Ecuadorian Music

Music & Performing Arts
An audio and video collection for classical, opera, jazz, world, popular music, and American music. Also includes theatre, dance, and film resources.

Garland Encyclopedia of World Music-Ecuador

Ecuador
Read more about Ecuadorian music here!

Online Resources

Music & Performing Arts
An audio and video collection for classical, opera, jazz, world, popular music, and American music. Also includes theatre, dance, and film resources.
Music Online: The Garland Encyclopedia of World Music
An encyclopedia about music all over the world.

Facts in Brief

Capital: Quito

Official Language: Spanish

Location: The Republic of Ecuador lies on the west coast of South America. It is bordered by Colombia to the north, by Peru to the east and south, and by the Pacific Ocean to the west.

Area: 272,045 sq km (105,037 sq miles).

Current Population: 2,723,665

Climate: The climate is tropical at sea level, the Costa being hot and humid, with an average annual temperature of 26°C (78°F).

Money: United States Dollar

Main Religion: Christianity

Citations (3 and 4)

Traditional Ecuadorian Music

Sanjuanes: often evincing a condensed ballad character, they may be autobiographical, history-recounting or enumerative. The sanjuán, performed in both ritual and non-ritual contexts, is in complex litany form where, notably in performances involving the Imbabura diatonic harp, amidst the regular repetition of a single, primary motif, one new break or secondary motif may be inserted.

Bomba: The dance-song bomba emerged from the culture of the sugar mill, a colonial-era institution introduced to Chota by the Jesuits; the extant bomba Mete caña al trapiche refers to this way of life. The allegro bomba may evince call-and-response texture, repetitive melody, simple duple or sesquialtera metre, bimodal harmony (relative minor/major) and rigorous syncopation.

Tonada: The mestizo dance-song form tonada is waltz-like, in a moderate triple metre and manifests a characteristic Ecuadorian minor- relative major bimodality, with a cadence in the minor dominant.

Pasillo: The unmistakable quality of the deliberate, triple-metre character of the pasillo, and its elegance of expression, its inevitable reference to a (sometimes denied) love of the past, or to some other sadness of the past have been noted by the central highland harpist César Muquinche.

Yaraví: The yaraví, an elegiac vocal form of the northern and southern Andes, dates back to the colonial period and displays moderately slow tempo, triple or multi-metres, binary or rounded binary form and a regular phrase structure.

Citation (4)

Composer Highlight: Luis Humberto Salgado

Ecuadorian composer Luis Humberto Salgado

Dec 10, 1903 - Dec 11, 1977

Ecuadorian composer, pianist and music critic. He first studied with his father Francisco Salgado, himself a composer, then entered the Quito Conservatory in 1910. His first attempts at composition dated from 1913. As a teenager he played the piano in silent-film theatres. He graduated in piano in 1928 and in 1934 was appointed professor of solfège and harmony at the Quito Conservatory (director for two periods, beginning in 1952). Besides directing the group Camara Voz Andes, he founded and directed the symphonic ensemble of the Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana and conducted the orchestra and chorus of the conservatory. For many years he was the music critic of the daily El comercio, and he contributed to the Spanish journal Ritmo.

Salgado is generally considered the leading composer of his generation. He was a prolific composer, mostly of a musical nationalist persuasion, as his numerous symphonies, tone poems, concertos and operas bear witness. He also cultivated typical Ecuadorian popular genres, such as the sanjuanito and pasillo. His Sanjuanito futurista (1944) for piano combines elements of that popular genre with 12-tone technique. Many of his works are based on indigenous themes (with the omnipresent pentatonic scale) and refer to national history.

Citation: Béhague, G. Salgado (Torres), Luis Humberto. Grove Music Online. Retrieved 3 Jun. 2021, from https://www.oxfordmusiconline.com/grovemusic/view/10.1093/gmo/9781561592630.001.0001/omo-9781561592630-e-0000044189.