Echoes - An exploration of the African rhythmic  influence in Costa Rican folk music

Nelson Briceño Peraza

This exposition presents my final project for the Master of Arts in Jazz Performance, Drumset, undertaken from autumn 2022 to spring 2024. The project was motivated by my exposure to diverse African rhythms, which revealed potential connections with the traditional music of my Costa Rican heritage. Growing up surrounded by Costa Rican folk music, including African-origin instruments such as the marimba, quijongo, as well as cimarronas (street bands), deeply influenced my musical identity. This project aims to explore and integrate these rhythms, tracing their African roots and merging them with contemporary musical forms. Inspired by Henry Cole's perspective on folklore as the essence and life of music, this research emphasizes the importance of connecting academic knowledge with folk traditions. Throughout my career, I have engaged with various musical traditions, always seeking to blend them with folk music. This project builds on my previous work, which examined the introduction and adaptation of Costa Rican folk rhythms on the modern drumset. In this continuation, I focus on the historical and rhythmic connections between Latin American and African traditions, using artistic research to deepen the understanding and appreciation of these intertwined musical heritages.

African influence in Costa Rica: A musical perspective

Costa Rica's traditional music is the result of the indigenous-African-Spanish ethnic mixture². However, due to racism against Afro-descendants, one of the least studied aspects of slavery in Costa Rica has been the process of blending and integration of the Africans brought during the colonial period with the rest of the population. In fact, in this regard there are interesting analogies between Costa Rica and Argentina, countries where the official speech for decades insisted on exalting their “European origins”, and ignoring the identity traits linked to Africa³. According to the 2011 census, the Costa Rican population has 11.7% of Afro-descendant genetic heritage. This percentage is higher in the Caribbean, reaching 30%, 14% in the Guanacaste region, 8% in the southern zone, and 6% in the Central Valley.⁴

According to Acosta (1982), the slave trade, generated by Europeans and extended from the 16th to the 19th century, brought them mainly from West Africa, although even from regions as far away as Mozambique and from cultural groups as distant as dissimilar, namely: Yoruba, Bantú, Ewe- fon, Malé or Mandinga, Carabalí, Fanti-ashanti to a greater extent, and undoubtedly others are still missing.⁵

The African presence and its contribution to musical culture in Central America has existed since historical periods before Afro-Caribbean immigration⁶, and Costa Rica was no exception, as mentioned by researcher and professor Elizabeth Payne:

The area of Nicoya and Guanacaste was conquered very early, unlike the Caribbean.

We aren’t going to have any population there [in the Caribbean] until 1632, already very late. Without a doubt, these first enslaved blacks arrived in the Pacific.” ⁷

For this reason, this paper focuses on the African influence in the northwestern part of Costa Rica, known as Guanacaste, the region where I grew up. The Costa Rican rhythm mainly studied is called parrandera, which comes from the punto or son centroamericano, considered the most representative genre of Guanacaste.

The parrandera has elements of Spanish and African music, especially of Bantu influence⁸, it is written in 6/8 meter and presents accent displacements. It is usually played on instruments of African origin such as the quijongo, quijada, and marimba, which are today considered traditional instruments in Costa Rica. More recently the parrandera rhythm has been adapted to larger groups such as marimba orchestras and cimarronas.

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