This week’s chapter “Style: Composition and Ornament” made me think all the time about Colombian singer and songwriter Jorge Velosa. My research project in the HUM 500 class is about him. It was inevitable for me to make the connections of this week’s topic with his lyrics, music, and, in some way, philosophy. At the end of the 1970’s, Jorge Velosa got together with his friend Javier Moreno and decided to rescue the traditional music of the Andean region in Colombia. Together, they created a new kind of music that took the traditional instruments and rhythms of this particular region of Colombia and incorporated them with innovative lyrics. They named it Carranga or Carranguera. Throughout the years Carranguera music has consolidated as a new music genre.
The first connection I established between Velosa’s music and this week’s chapter was the discussion about kairos. Velosa’s lyrics show his awareness of kairos. Plato defines kairos as “the nature of the subject matter, the general attitudes and backgrounds of the audience”(331). Velosa’s music is created for the Andean peasants, and they are about their own lives and experiences. In his lyrics, Velosa tells anecdotes and quotidian situations that the peasants experience in their daily lives. A Carranga songwriter cited by Renato Paone in his dissertation La musica carranguera says “any situation of daily life can be sung by carranga. Carrangueros composers explain that all the songs are born of their own lives, their experiences and memories”. I think it is important to mention Velosa’s ethos. He is telling stories about the peasant’s lives, and he is himself a peasant. Even though he went to college and majored in veterinary, he was born in a small Andean town and was raised there by his peasant parents. Thus, he has experienced the stories he tells, he has lived them himself and the peasants admire him and enjoy his music for that.
At first, I thought that Velosa’s lyrics were written in a plain and simple style. Crowley and Hawhee affirm that this style uses “every day language” (333) which is what Velosa does. When you listen to his songs, you feel like you were listening to a peasant talk. He uses a lot of idioms and colloquial expressions that are typical of this region and its culture. These strong oral features of his lyrics are reinforced by the selection of the words he uses and the syntax of the sentences. As Crowley and Hawhee state it is “almost as though it were conversation” (333).
Although his lyrics use everyday language and syntax, they also use ornament. Thus, it could be also classified as middle style (333). In fact, his lyrics are composed in the form of coplas. The copla is a poetic composition that is frequently used in popular songs. Being a poetic form, coplas use figurative language. Velosa’s lyrics use many hyperbatons since he uses a particular word order when composing his sentences. He also uses personification when telling the story of “La pirinola”, a cow that drowns in a small creek in a way that is very common in this region. His lyrics also have sometimes a satiric tone. In these cases, he uses euphemisms or metonymy to exaggerate and make fun of situations. Additionally, his lyrics have metaphors, similes and hyperbaton. He uses these tropes to describe the landscapes, the main characters of his stories and the events that happen to them.
All in all, I thought that Velosa’s Carranguera music was a good example of a particular style that follows a specific kind of composition and ornament having, above all, its audience in mind. This particular style is the one that has permitted the peasants to identify themselves with this music, and feel it and enjoy it as with any other.
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