Music of Guatemala
The wind instrument family consisted of cane and bone flutes, different types of whistles, ocarinas of various designs, and other sibilant vessels.
Singer Paco Pérez (1917–1951) was catapulted to fame with his waltz "Luna de Xelajú", one of the best-known marimba pieces which is regarded by many Guatemalans as a sort of unofficial national anthem.
Lord Sebastian Hurtado, a native of Quetzaltenango, was the first person to build a marimba with a double keyboard, capable of producing chromatic scales around the beginning of the 20th century.
The Garifunas kept themselves apart from the social system then dominant, leading to a distinctive culture that include chumba and hunguhungu, a circular dance in a three beat rhythm, which is often combined with punta, their national genre.
Later in the century three chapel masters from the Iberian peninsula enriched the cathedral's repertoire with their compositions: Hernando Franco (1532–85), Pedro Bermúdez (1558–1605), and Gaspar Fernández (1566–1629).
Native musicians learned the art of polyphonic composition from the missionaries and also contributed a number of villancicos in Spanish and local Mayan languages to the repertory of matins and vespers music at their parish churches.
The main composers during the late baroque and pre-classical period were Guatemalan-born chapel masters of the cathedral, Manuel José de Quirós (d. 1765) and Rafael Antonio Castellanos (d. 1791).
The latter successfully introduced Guatemalan folk-music elements in his vocal works, especially his villancicos for Christmas, which often show traits of Afro-Caribbean and Mayan rhythms, melodies, and accompaniment styles.
His 176 extant works reflect Castellanos' mastery of the style of his time, as well as an unusual originality based on plainchant models, baroque part-writing, and the frequent inclusion folk-music idioms.
The brilliant young musician Benedicto Sáenz, the younger (d. 1857) on the other hand wrote much church music, such as his Messa Solenne published in Paris by advice of the Italian composer, Saverio Mercadante .
At the same time, Sáenz and his brother Anselmo were the first to introduce Italian opera to Guatemala from 1843 on, an enterprise that after initial failures would turn into a huge success, leading to the construction of the magnificent National Theatre, later called Teatro Colón.
After successful performances in the Teatro Colón and arriving at the time of a liberal revolution, maestro Visoni was asked by President Miguel Garcia Granados to take charge of the bands of the 1st and 2nd battalions of the Guatemalan army.
The late 19th century is represented in Guatemala by several trends: the aforementioned introduction of opera, the training abroad of several highly talented pianist-composers, the influence of military band music, and the invention and development of the chromatic marimba.
Thus, Luis Felipe Arias (1876–1908), Herculano Alvarado (1879–1921), Julián González, and Miguel Espinosa could present piano music by Ludwig van Beethoven, Frédéric Chopin, and Franz Liszt never heard before in Guatemala.
A group of composers furthered and instructed by the Prussian conductor and bandmaster, Emil Dressner, came from the realm of military bands and salon music.
Germán Alcántara (1856–1911), Rafael Álvarez Ovalle (1855–1946), Manuel Moraga (1833–96), Julián Paniagua Martínez (1856–1946) and Fabián Rodríguez (1862–1929) contributed a number of salon pieces, opera fantasies, and dances to the repertoire of bands and pianists.
As a result, Guatemalan light music achieved an enormous dissemination at home and abroad by countless marimba bands that were formed from the beginning of the twentieth century.
By the end of the nineteenth and in the first part of the 20th century, several composers developed a keen interest in Mayan mythology and folk music, on which they based their scenic and concert compositions.
Jesús Castillo (1877–1946) was the first musician to collect a sizable amount of folk tunes, which he later used in works such as his opera Quiché Vinak, as well as ouvertures and symphonic poems.
His piano music, as well as his orchestral output, reflects the fusion of his contemporary art with Mayan mythology such as legends and myths from the Popol Vuh.
José Castañeda (1898–1983) also took keen interest in the Mayan past in his stage works such as the ballet La serpiente emplumada (The Feathered Snake), premiered in 1958, while his two symphonies his string quartets are much more experimental.
1930) has developed idiophones and aerophones derived from the marimba and other folk instruments, which he uses in some of his aleatory compositions that deal with the social strife of present-day ethnic groups.
Among the younger composers, several have written works in a variety of post-modern styles, often returning to traditional or free tonality in their vocal and instrumental compositions.
In that period, the transmitters produced dramatized pieces, arose programs from quality that could compete with the foreigners; the broadcasting reached their maximum development.
Present-day Guatemala boasts a number of performing organizations, such as orchestras, choirs, chamber ensembles, opera troupes, soloists and dozens of rock bands.
Initially called Nueva Orquesta Filarmónica, it played its first concert seasons in the Auditorium of the Universidad del Valle de Guatemala, as well as other locations.
The Orquesta Sinfónica Jesús Castillo, a youth orchestra, was established in 1997, after a series of workshops conducted by a group of Venezuelan instrumental teachers.
Among these, the Millennium Ensemble has raised much attention by their first performances of Renaissance, baroque, and classical works from colonial Guatemala, which they have presented at festivals and concerts in Europe, North- and South America.
In the teen pop genre, artists like Vanessa Spatz were exported internationally, with the support of Siempre En Domingo and toured broadly around Latin America.
Guatemala also has a growing rap scene with artists like Última Dosis, Kontra, Rebeca Lane, N.D.R., Expresión Illegal, Ikari, Bacteria Sound System Crew, Aliotos Lokos, among others.
