Spring 2013: The Foundation for Iberian Music and the Mompou Chair are hosting a Spring immersion seminar “Globalization and Hybridization Processes in Music: Rumba Catalana.”  This seminar explores a particular style of music known as rumba catalana, a lively, urban music genre. The rumba catalana developed in Barcelona’s Romani community beginning in the 1950s. Its rhythms are derived from the flamenco rumba, with influences from Cuban music and rock and roll. The Catalan rumba originated in the Catalan Romani communities in the Gràcia, carrer (street) de la Cera del Raval and Hostafrancs neighborhoods. The Romani community in those neighborhoods is long-established and Catalan-speaking.

The seminar will examine this style and its genres combining approaches associated with ethnomusicology, historical musicology, and popular music studies.  In addition to many listening examples, the seminar will consider the following scholarly writings:

• “La Música entre Cuba y España”, María Teresa Linares / Faustino Núñez, Madrid Fundación Autor, 1998.
• “La rumba histórica y los bailes tradicionales de los gitanos catalanes”, Manuel Ponsa i Blanch, I Tchatchipen No. 30.
• Sabor de rumba: Identitat social i cultural dels gitanos catalans, David Iglésias i Xifra et al. (Lleida Pagès: 1995).
• Zur Musik südfranzösischer Manouches und Gitans: Stilbereiche und sozialgeschichtlicher Hintergrund, Ekkehard Jost, 2002.
• Estàndards de la rumba catalana, vol. 1, Martí Marfà.  Barcelona:  Cossetània Edicions, 2011.

Also, students will listen to Peret, Gato Perez, and more names of rumba catalana.

More information to follow.