Talk:Central American music

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article is part of the "World music" set of articles nominated for Version 0.7. Discuss this nomination, or see the set nominations page for more details.

	This article is part of WikiProject Central America, an attempt to co-ordinate articles relating to the Central America on Wikipedia. If you would like to participate, you can edit the article attached to this page, or visit the project page, where you can join the project and/or contribute to the discussion.
Start	This article has been rated as start-Class on the quality scale.
Mid	This article has been rated as mid-importance on the importance scale.

	This page is part of Wikipedia:WikiProject World music, an attempt at building a resource on the music of all the peoples and places of the world. Please visit the project's listing to see the article's assessment and to help us improve the article as we push to 1.0.
Start	Central American music has been rated as Start-Class on the assessment scale.
Top	Central American music has been rated as Top-Importance on the assessment scale.

Though I would have included Panama in Central America, and not included Mexico (part of NAFTA after all), I wonder whether Central America needs defining here, with list of nations. More important, though, can the music of Central America be usefully separated from the music of Latin America? If it can, the distinction needs to be made clear, in musical terms, not national origin alone, right at the start, so readers know what the article is about. Wetman 11:53, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I actually would have included Mexico, except Central America makes it clear that Mexico is not included. There are characteristics that make Central American music distinct from Latin and South American music, the marimba being the most obvious one to me -- AFAIK, the instrument isn't found south of Panama or on any of the Caribbean islands. There are probably more technical characteristics that define Central American music, but I do not know what they are. The only recordings I'm familiar with is some Panamanian salsa (which isn't particularly distinct) and punta (which is definitely distinct, but is Garifuna and not spread throughout the region). In conclusion, I agree. Tuf-Kat 17:57, Jan 26, 2004 (UTC)

Marimba has a good starting entry. I feel that an umbrella overview is what's needed, with plenty of links. Latin music is such a gringo term, eh! Too ignorant to be able to help, myself. Wetman 18:25, 26 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I think the african influence of slave trade in such countries has a distinctive effect on central american music. Aborigene tribes and movements in Latin America were much numerous, making unnecesarry to import slaves from africa, since taming the native into slavery was easier. Therefore Latin America is a mix of spanish/european/aborigene mix where as central american music has spanish/aborigene/african influence as well. Jotaigna 15:30, 13 May 2004 (UTC)