Protohistory of Andean Folkdance Songs: From Hispanoroman Formal Dances to Hispano-Medieval Folkdances

Abstract

The history of music and literature has tended to overlook both formal dancing and folk dancing, especially in the Hispanic-American world. While the other arts are spatial in essence, dance and music are time-governed. Their idiosyncrasy is that they exist only in the fleeting, eminently creative act of each performer, remaining fixed and stable only in the memory and record of the oral tradition. In the study of this art, however, certain historians and musicologists have been unable to shrug off the yoke of the written word, at the expense of the invaluable insights provided by the oral tradition. As far as dance is concerned, it is a mistake to define South-American triple-metre dance, such as the Ecuadorian pasillo, the Venezuelan waltz and similar ¾ music of Ibero-America, as stemming from the Viennese waltz tradition; this overlooks the cultural crossbreeding occurring from the earliest days of Spanish colonisation.