Traditional, popular and urban music and dance: Balearic, Spanish and global repertoires
This domain tests repertoire knowledge across three layers - Balearic, Spanish and global popular/urban - and the ability to link a genre to its instruments, rhythm and social function.
Balearic
- Cant redoblat and glosa: improvised or semi-improvised sung verses, especially in Mallorca, with glosadors exchanging verses at fairs.
- Instruments: xeremies (bagpipe), flabiol i tamborí, guitarra de canya, castanyoles, plus bandúrria and guitarró in ensembles.
- Dance: ball de bot tunes (copeo, mateixa, fandango, bolero) with a couple dancing; Eivissa's ball pagès with castanyoles.
Spanish
- Flamenco palos: soleares and seguiriyas (12-beat compás, accents on 12, 3, 6, 8, 10), bulerías (fast, heavily syncopated), tangos and fandangos (4-beat).
- Sardana: circle dance for the cobla - tible, tenora, flabiol i tamborí, fiscorn, double bass; no castanets.
- Others: jota, muiñeira, txalaparta and alboka (Basque), gaita (Galicia), copla and zarzuela in popular/lyric song.
Global popular and urban
- Blues to rock: 12-bar blues form, blue notes, call-and-response, backbeat, amplification.
- Caribbean/Latin: clave 3-2 or 2-3 in salsa, cumbia's off-beat guacharaca, tango's marcato in 2/4, samba and bossa nova.
- Reggae: one-drop and skank; EDM/house/techno: four-on-the-floor, c. 120–130 bpm; hip-hop: MCing, DJing, breaking, graffiti; reguetón: dembow rhythm.
Worked example
A percussion and guitar pattern cycles every 12 beats with accents on 12, 3, 6, 8 and 10; a cantaor sings above palmas. The 12-beat cycle with that accent pattern and hemiola between 3 and 2 is the flamenco compás of the soleá family; adding speed and dense syncopation points to bulerías. It is not salsa: salsa cycles on a two-bar clave, not a 12-beat compás.
Traps that cost marks
- Attributing castanets to the sardana (they belong to escuela bolera and ball pagès).
- Treating "popular" as synonymous with commercial; the exam uses it for music of the people.
- Confusing the flamenco 12-beat compás with the salsa clave.
- Assuming all Balearic traditional song is improvised - the glosa is; other repertoires are transmitted fixed.