Until the 1930s, musically speaking, Caracas was a city of cañonera music (a typical musical genre in Caracas), zarzuelas, operettas, serenades, joropos (typical music from the venezuelan plains), waltzes and marches, without forgetting the rise of tango at that time. It was the time in which that rural town that was Caracas, begins to transform into metropolis. They were days of "retretas"(Concert of music band outdoors in public places), days of listening to the Banda Marcial Caracas playing the compositions of its director Pedro Elías Gutiérrez, on songs such as Amalia or Alma Llanera, while a walk was made, after the respective Sunday Mass, through the Plaza Bolívar, in front of all the ladies and the dandys of the moment. The last days of chariots and trams.
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In 1926 began the first radio station broadcasting in Venezuela and the programming consisted of live music, humorous programs featuring the authors and theatrical actors of the sainete, such as Rafael Guinand. Live music prevailed and some of the few records that were achieved were played.
Cuba appears on the scene
There were three factors that altered the cultural dynamics of that moment in which prevailed the most Creole customs, the most autochthonous musical idioms and sonorities.
- The participation of Cuban stars in the staff of the radio stations, as in the case of Abel Barrios, who formed the humorous couple "El Bachiller y Bartolo", together with our beloved Amador Bendayán.
- The arrival of the Cuban soap operas of the predecessors of Delia Fiallo.
- Baseball fever, which came from the hand of Cuban sports narrators.
- A massive wave of Cuban music, which had had a very high development and that had begun to be commercialized very well in a large part of the continent.
This change of cultural patterns and the vertiginous growth that began to have the capital city was causing the original inhabitants and the new immigrants were losing their roots, their identity. But there is no people that persists uprooted and always people look for elements with which to identify.
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Similar identity
There is a cultural phenomenon that is very interesting. Is that in each culture there are common elements that are linked with similar environments to similar manifestations of other cultural groups. For example, in every culture there are peasants who till the land, who raise cattle. And in each place that group of people has cultural manifestations, which are usually easily identified with the manifestations of groups of peasants of other cultures. This is the case, for example, of a friend "llanero" who went to live for a while in the United States and returned from there loaded with Country music records (which is the equivalent of llanera music in the US).
Cuban music in its country had a masterful development that was manifested in infinite occasions with a very high level. Because of that, the quality of the recordings that came from the Caribbean island satisfied the taste of very demanding ears, but the most important aspect was that the origin of the Cuban music that was reaching us, corresponded to the cultural environment of the Caracas neighborhoods. , the mulatto and mestizo origin, the African descent, the peasant origin in many cases, the Caribbean and tropical spirit.
The drums "Culo e' puya" and the “quitiplás” were replaced by the conga and the bongo, the llanera harp mutated in piano, the cuban Son replaced the "merengue rucaneao" and the guaracha the "joropo central".
In addition to satisfying the musical need to express themself, this "new" manifestation brought another element in its favor: that it had already begun to develop a "city language", something that the citizens of Caracas still did not manage and that had only a brief attempt in the "cañonera music".
It arrived and settled
These reasons achieved that the Caracas neighborhoods ended up identifying and interpreting the songs of Ñico Saquito, El Trío Matamoros, La Sonora Matancera and many other groups from the Caribbean island that were touring through our country. From there to the appearance of our first composers, singers, musicians, arrangers and orchestra directors, there was only one step missing. And after a few years we already had worthy Venezuelan representatives like Luis Alfonso Larrain or Jesus "Chucho" Sanoja.
The Son had already gotten into the neighborhood, now only the appearance of the "salsa" was missing, to start shining characters like Ray Pérez and his orchestra "Los Dementes", Federico Betancourt that of "Federico y su Combo Latino", until the "Dimension Latina", with which the large export of the Venezuelan Salsa begins, where enters our greatest exponent Oscar D 'León and some exceptional talents stand out, such as Alberto Naranjo, who was the creator and director of the "Trabuco Venezolano" "and that achieved novel sounds and harmonies in this musical genre.
Extra
It's me with Alberto Naranjo, creator, arranger and director of "El Trabuco Venezolano" with whom I had the pleasure of working for the album "Esta es Caracas"
Here I am with Federico Betancourt, pioneer of Salsa in Venezuela
And to complete this note, I leave here a video of a little known character, but that was of great impact at the time and marked his mark: The negrito Calaven, singer of salsa in the 60s.
El Trabuco Venezolano
