At the time of Spanish contact, Costa Rica's northwestern Pacific coastal zone was inhabited by the Chorotega, an indigenous group that originated in southern Mexico. Archaeological research in that area has yielded remains of globular and tubular duct flutes, whistles, shakers, and drums, typically shaped in animal and human forms and made of fired clay. Hollow-log slit drums recalling the Maya tun and Náhuatl teponaztli also indicate pre-Colombian Mexican influence.
Early sixteenth-century Spanish chronicles noted Chorotega dances, festivities, and rituals associated with the harvest cycle and human sacrifice, accompanied by drums and costumed dancing. Along the Caribbean coast of present-day Costa Rica and Panama in 1502, European travelers reported indigenous music made on "horns [possibly conch-shell trumpets] and drums."
By the late sixteenth century, indigenous groups of the central plateau were forced into reducciones (reservations, as in Mexico and Guatemala), and organized into cofradias (religious associations) overseen by the Catholic Church, engaged to support patron-saint festivals and processions, wherein they performed native music and dances. In the Talamanca range (inhabited by the present-day Bribri and Cabécar indigenous groups), colonial priests reported native healing practices and funeral rites accompanied by singing and drumming. Similar associations of indigenous healing, music, and dance are reported during the nineteenth century in the southern Pacific coast and Talamanca. The first transcriptions of indigenous music in Costa Rica also date to that period, including notations for chirimía (a double-reed shawm likewise introduced among the Maya during the Spanish colonial era) that show melodic affinities with Gregorian chant—further evidence of European influence on native music.
Contemporary indigenous groups (including the Maleku, Guaymí, Brunka and Teribe) show cultural continuities with the preceding general descriptions of native musics and instrumentation (reed flutes, globular duct flutes of clay and beeswax, whistles, drums, and maracas—augmented by non-indigenous guitar, fiddle, electric bass, concertina, drum kit, and Afro-Latin percussion). Contemporary indigenous music also confirms the importance of music and dance in a variety of ritual contexts, and the critical role of oral transmission in musical reproduction.
People of African descent comprise the largest ethnic minority in Costa Rica. While slavery brought a small African population during the colonial era, the primary contemporary presence stems from the construction of commercial banana plantations, docks, and railroads beginning in the 1870s and into the twentieth century. The English-speaking West Indies, Nicaragua, Panama, and Belize provided the labor for these enterprises, in an influx that also had palpable musical implications in the Caribbean port region of Puerto Limón. Initially, locally built instruments included bamboo flute, six-stringed bowed tube zither, horse-jaw shaker-scraper, coconut-shell scraper, and double-headed wooden drums.
Dating to the advent of radio broadcasting and recorded music in the 1930s, local dance orchestra instrumentation included vocals, banjo, guitar, tres, concertina, clarinet, saxophone, trumpet, bajo de caja (one-stringed box bass), maracas, bongos, timbales, tumbas (congas), and drum kit, performing a repertoire of blues, boleros, fox-trots, swing, waltzes, and square dances (cuadrille). Today, cuadrille and other multiple-couple dances are backed by banjo, guitar, clarinet, and trumpet. More recently, reggae, salsa, country-western, rock, and soul have gained currency. The banana enclave's predominantly Anglican, Baptist, and Methodist population also sing English hymns and spirituals, a tradition continued by the Gospel Caribe choir. Rounds, children's game songs, nursery rhymes, and popular songs from the West Indies, England, and the United States are also common.
With its rural roots, Costa Rican calypso recalls the Creole brukdown music of Belize, Jamaican mento, Bahamian rake 'n' scrape, and early Louisiana zydeco, tempered with popular rhythmic and melodic influences from elsewhere in the Caribbean, England, and the United States. The style gained popularity in the 1950s and 1960s, inspired by Trinidadian and Panamanian variants. Walter "Mr. Gavitt" Ferguson—born in Panama but raised in Cahuita, where his father cooked for Costa Rican banana plantation workers—is a long-time exponent of the laid-back local calypso string-band style, an irreverent form of wordplay, wry narrative, and ironic commentary on everyday politics and the foibles of human existence; Edgar "Pitún" Hutchinson is another well-known calypsonian. Puerto Limón's Calypso Jazz Band specializes in the carnival music of 1950s and 1960s, in a sound marked by New Orleans-style jazz piano.
Musician-ethnomusicologist-producer Manuel Monestel has been instrumental in documenting local calypso, and he helped found the nueva canción (new song) movement in Costa Rica. Nueva canción and trova (ballad) singer-songwriter and guitarist Guadalupe Urbina studied composition at the National University before launching a transatlantic career based in Amsterdam. Among her credits are the 1988 Amnesty International "Human Rights Now" tour with Tracy Chapman, Peter Gabriel, Youssou N'Dour, Bruce Springsteen, and Sting. In a similar vein, Juan Carlos Urefia has gained international recognition. Composer-guitarist Ray Tico performs a repertoire of bolero and Cuban filín, while Max Goldemberg and Odilón Juárez sustain the ballads, bombas, romances, serenatas, tonadas, and marimba music of the Guanacaste region. Important organizations dedicated to documenting and disseminating folk traditions include the Ballet Folcl6rico Nacional, Asociaci6n Aires Costarricenses, and Asociaci6n de Grupos e Intérpretes de la Cultura Popular.
European musical instruments including the guitar, violin, bugle, flageolet, and string bass have been documented from the colonial era onward, and military brass bands became popular with independence (1821). A strong tradition of classical music education persists in Costa Rica, as manifest in such institutions as the Academia de Guitarra Latinoamericana, the Conservatorio Castella, the National Symphony Choir, and the Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional; the latter ranks among Latin America's preeminent orchestras, and also hosts a noted youth program.
Exemplary of a younger, often conservatory trained generation that cultivates an interest in local roots, composer and multi-instrumentalist Manuel Obregón has been instrumental in documenting a range of traditional contemporary musical forms. Among Obregón's most revelatory experiments is La Orquesta de la Papaya, comprising artists from across Central America and Panama in an ensemble featuring pan-isthmian influences.
Composer-pianist-percussionist Luis Muñoz cultivates a broad interest in Latin American folk and popular genres, classical music (he cites Bach, Chopin, Ravel and Stravinsky as prime influences), and jazz. Malpaís blends local folk strains with Celtic music, rock ballads, Afro-Caribbean music, and contemporary jazz, while Editus has backed Panamanian salsero Rubén Blades and the popular Costa Rican-Iranian acoustic guitar duo Strunz and Farah.—Michael Stone
