An example of orature can be found within the culture of my home country, Venezuela. In the region of the Venezuelan plains, there is a type of music known as the tonada, which is traditionally sung while milking a cow in order to relax the animal and facilitate the production of milk. The particularity in the Venezuelan tonada is that it follows a common pattern of melody and rhythm, but it is up to the farmer singing it to create his own lyrics. However, as most forms of art, the tonada is also subject to the constant change of the environment and the society around it. Venezuelan singer Simón Díaz remarks in his album Cuenta y Canta Volumen I, that the tonada is in danger of disappearing due to the mechanization of the milk industry (Source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xmdUHFvAviA). It is for that reason that “el tío Simón” dedicated a considerable part of his musical works to preserving the tonada. Still, what I find most interesting about the Venezuelan tonada is how intrinsically it is linked to the culture of my country; how after four years of living abroad it managed to evoke a deep feeling of nostalgia in my mother and me one simple afternoon on the car. This type of song, along with the inclusion of Venezuelan traditional elements such as the cuatro, manages to capture something that we perceived as intrinsically “Venezuelan.”
Hi Carlos,
ReplyDeleteWhat you identify is fantastic. The song itself is passed down from generation to generation. It is linked to the kind of labor that provides sustenance, and it is a practice through which other people recognize themselves as a community. The form travels - it has worked its way in popular culture -- and its popularity notes something about "Venezualan values" noting how rural labor and the cultures that have emerged from it contributes to how all "feel" Venezualan. Then of course there is a conflict that arises through global capital which values quantity of production over the labor and the cultures that have grown from it. You get at the heart of a value system and how indigenous culture is destroyed through the higher valuation of capital generation. What is lost is not just milking practices -- what is lost is the specificity and the unique quality of sound and of feeling communal. Beautiful post.