The Spanish Tinge in American Music

So I've realized that my earlier post about Latin/Spanish-influenced American music is incomplete. Very incomplete. American music has always been influenced by Caribbean and Latin American music. New Orleans, a cosmopolitan city in the 19th century that was more Caribbean and Creole than Anglo-American, had always been exchanging people, language, religion, and music with Haiti, Cuba, Spain, and other Caribbean cities. That's why New Orleans music tends to sound very similar to Caribbean music: very melodic, polyrhythmic, syncopated, light-hearted, dance music. However, Caribbean music is obviously not monochromatic; Spanish, French, English, indigenous and African influences combined to form unique rhythms and musical styles that continue to separate various forms of Caribbean music in spite of a common African origin for most music of the region. Thus, Jamaican mento or reggae is clearly distinct from Cuban son or mambo, just as Haitian rara is different from Dominican merengue or Trinidadian calypso.

 However, their common African substratum and incessant cross-cultural exchanges between the Islands and New Orleans have led to a lot of commonalities that abound today in New Orleans jazz, ragtime, some blues, and even R&B and rock. Indeed, I was quite surprised after attending a Haitian rara concert by how similar the music is to New Orleans dixieland and jazz. Anywho, here is an interesting article about the similarities that exist between Caribbean and New Orleans jazz. It provides several examples of Caribbean influences in New Orleans jazz and explains how referring to the Caribbean connection as "Spanish" is quite far from the truth. While the habanero and other Afro-Cuban rhythms influenced a lot of early jazz, including W.C. Handy's St. Louis Blues, other Caribbean islands such as Haiti and the French Caribbean influenced Cuba's rhythmic diversity and New Orleans.
http://www.prjc.org/roots/nojazzandcarribe.html

Anywho, another oft-overlooked American classical composer of the 19th century, Louis Moreau Gottschalk, of Louisiana origin, also drew from African-American and Caribbean music and rhythms for his own compositions. His music, along with some early ragtime, laid the foundation for more Caribbean influences in American music beyond classical (of course other composers, including black composers of the 19th century, were aware of Caribbean music and wrote compositions based on it, along with the numerous dance bands that shifted between New Orleans and the Caribbean).

So here's what y'all have been waiting for, a list of several songs that exemplify what Jelly Roll Morton referred to as the Spanish Tinge, or influences from Afro-Caribbean music. Indeed, Morton once stated that the Spanish tinge was necessary to make jazz.

Louis Moreau Gottschalk has several compositions with Afro-Caribbean themes, including Bamboula, Souvenir de Cuba and Souvenir de Porto Rico. Le Banjo is another interesting composition that refers to the American banjo, which was historically associated with African-Americans because of the instrument's African provenance. I will post multiple youtube links to some of his Caribbean-themed compositons that sought to capture the sound and spirit of the Caribbean.

Now Scott Joplin, the master ragtime pianist best known for composing "The Entertainer," was also influenced by Latin/Caribbean music. One of his pieces, Solace, endeavors to sound "Latin."

Of course there are several examples of New Orleans jazz music which uses habanera rhythms as well as other forms of Caribbean music. Here are examples from the 1920s-1940s:

Of course future jazz songs took more from latin music. Dizzy Gillespie stands out in that regard...

Bill Evans' Nardis takes more from Spanish music than Latin or Caribbean.