INTRODUCTION

This research is an artistic reflection on the subject of cultural identities. It represents a postcolonial approach to the contradiction around the concept of "Latin American Baroque". The repertoire of colonial music, known under that name,  is perceived as "mestizo" (mixed-race) in the classical music industry, eventhough it is composed of European music, or music written in European styles. Characteristic genres of this repertoire, like the villancico, could be classified, at most, as Hispanic, and are as common to Spain as they are to Latin America (Waisman 2011, 5). There is no significant presence of Afro-Amerindian, Amerindian-Hispanic, or Afro-Hispanic musical traits in the colonial musical repertoire because, in accordance with the nature of colonial relationships, the music notated by the colonial authorities was censured by the Spanish (or Spanish descendent "criollo") elite, excluding non-European musical features. Following the concepts of postcolonial studies, there is a danger of amplifying the colonialist message when reproducing this music without commenting on it in any form (Baker 2008, II, 443); moreover, when advertising it as the music of the colonized ones.

The voices of the "subaltern groups", however, did find an escape from censorship by expressing themselves in oral popular practices, and a real "mixed-race baroque culture" did flourish behind the back of the authorities in spaces of resistance, like the ancient popular festivity of the Fandango. Although the oral mestizo fandango music from colonial times has been lost, some of the musical traditions related to this festivity have reached the present. Folklore traditions from the Caribbean Basin like the Mexican Huapango and the Colombo-Venezuelan Joropo still preserve ancient European instruments and practices together with those of Afro-Amerindian origins and are therefore more adequate to fulfill the expectations of exotism embodied in the commercial branding of "Latin American Baroque" without falling into misrepresentation. At the same time, the popular Spanish Fandango of the XVIII century has survived in several cultured, written interpretations by court composers like Antonio Soler or Luigi Boccherini, and retains many of the elements found in present-day Latin American Fandangos. In this research, we wonder if it is possible to construct an image of that lost popular mixed-race Fandango from colonial times by bringing together these oral and written sources through the use of musical crossover, artistically deconstructing the colonial discourse represented by the colonial musical archives, and restoring in this way the unwritten (silenced) colonial Otherness.

RESEARCH QUESTION

How can we "construct" a mestizo Latin-American fandango of the XVIII century that restitutes the voices of the colonized ones? Can we "re-imagine" it by crossing the aristocratic fandango with surviving popular oral fandango traditions? 

Since the music of oppressed mixed-race groups was "erased from the script", a historicist reconstruction in the conventional sense of the Historically Informed Performance-Practice is impossible. Instead, this research wants to understand musical crossover and Historical Performance as a tool to create an "artistic reflection" on the subject of Latin American cultural identity and representation. As a mestizo Latin American Early Music performer myself, my general objective is to "construct" my own style of Latin American mestizo baroque, taking historicistic elements merely as an excuse for artistic production. However, the study of surviving baroque elements in fandango traditions is, as a matter of fact, of particular interest from the conventional HIP perspective. As this research is done in the context of a Master-Studies in Early Music, the crossover style developed through this research aims to illustrate the parallelisms between the written aristocratic Fandango of the Spanish courts and the Mexican Huapango, both in terms of musical style and performance practice.

The general objective of this research is to construct my own artistic interpretation of "Mestizo Baroque" by creating a musical product that follows the concepts of postcolonial studies and still responds to the market's expectation of exoticism.

The specific objectives are to explore and illustrate the relationship between fandango-related baroque music and surviving Latin American folklore- Fandangos through the creation of a crossover style.

The activities developed during the research were the creation of an experimental ensemble with its own original repertoire and concept.

This research is structured into three parts. The first part is dedicated to the musicological background. It is based mainly on Baker (2006), and Garcia de Leon (2002), as well as articles belonging to the congress "The Global Reach of the Fandango in Music, Song and Dance: Spaniards, Indians, Africans, and Gypsies" celebrated at the Foundation for Iberian Music of the CUNY in 2016 (eds. Goldberg & Pizà). It outlines the problem statement of the research and gives an overview of the history of Fandango music, its social significance, and its characteristics.

• Chapter 1.1. "Problem Statement: Latin American Baroque is not Latin American" offers a breve explanation of the representation issues behind the reproduction of Colonial Music, which have motivated this research.

• Chapter 1.2. "History of the European Baroque-Fandango", gives an overview of the birth of the dance in the Atlantic Ocean of colonial times and its later adoption by the Spanish aristocracy.

• Chapter 1.3. "Fandango as a Ritual" explores the cultural practices behind the music and its social significance as a form of celebration among Hispanic groups.

• Chapter 1.3. "The Fandango as a Musical Family" outlines the broad family of Fandango music. It goes into detail about the taxonomy of the folklore Fandangos from Southern Spain (including a practical example of the fandangos Verdiales) as well as an overview of the fandangos from the Caribbean basin (Caribbean Ternary-Mettered Song Repertoire)

The second part contains the analysis and artistic explorations around the fandango tradition of Mexican Huapango and constitutes the body of the research. There are two cases of cross-experimentation and "practical" style analysis on two different versions of the song "El Fandanguito", which could be considered a musical fossil of the XVIII century European salon Fandango. Each of them draws parallelisms between the fandango in its "cultured historic" and its surviving "popular present-day rendition" through the creation of crossover exercises, which could be considered at the same time the artistic result itself. The "methodology" for the creation of these exercises was performance (violin playing, singing, guitar playing) but also transcription, arrangement, and improvisation. 

• Chapter 2.1. gives an introduction to the Huapango- tradition
• Chapter 2.2. "El Fandanguito 1 and a Baroque Fandango Copy" includes the analysis of the first version of the song "El Fandanguito" and the cross-experimentation with the baroque fandango. The first crossover exercise is a collage between the song and a Baroque Fandango style-copy created for the research. The second crossover exercise explores the rhythmical differences between baroque and popular fandango in a practical way. A third exercise "complements" the instrumental baroque fandango with a sung copla modeled after the coplas found in Verdiales (Southern Fandangos). There is also an exercise of style comparison.

• Chapter 2.3. "El Fandanguito 2 and Boccherini´s Fandango" includes an analysis of the second version of the song "El Fandanguito", establishing parallelisms with French baroque ornamentation and "rubato" performance-practices of the XVII and XVIII centuries. It contains one big Crossover-Collage exercise between the song and an original arrangement of Boccherini´s Fandango from his guitar quintet G.446.
• Chapter 2.4. "Experiments with historical bow grips in Huapango" which can be considered the main musicological result of this research, deals with the use of the historical bow hold known as "French bow hold" present in Huapango. It identifies the percussive bowing technique used by violinists like Joel Monroy and Alexis Cardenas as a transference from the guitar to the violin through cross-experimentation with the Venezuelan "cuatro".

The third part deals with the Colombo-Venezuelan Joropo and presents the results and conclusions of this research: