Those who have followed and supported my website over the years know that I enjoy exploring and discussing the musical connections to the Spanish and Portuguese-speaking regions in Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. I have also talked extensively in the past about audio recording technology and its lasting impact on these areas. I have been collecting records since 2011 and have amassed several boxes of albums from across different genres. The albums shown below derive from a partial collection of vinyl records from my studio that represent classical music from the nineteenth and twentieth centuries from Spain, Portugal, and Latin America: primarily, from Mexico and Brazil. Many people may recognize certain names like Carlos Chávez (1899-1978), Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959), but I wanted to include other composers who were just as prolific, like Joly Braga Santos (1924-1988) and Ruperto Chapí (1851-1909). The Sinfonietta, Op. 35 (1963) and Concerto em Ré, Op. 17 (1951) from Santos represent contemporary string orchestral pieces that still adhere to traditional forms and tonality.

El Rey Que Rabió[1], by contrast, is a comical zarzuela in three acts that presents another side to Spanish classical music from the late-nineteenth century beyond composers like Isaac Albeniz (1860-1909) and Enrique Granados (1867-1916). A zarzuela functions as an operetta in the Spanish language instead of in English. The recording featured in my library consists of selections from El Rey Que Rabió. Composed and premiered in 1891, with the libretto by Miguel Ramos Carrión and Vital Aza, the plot largely centers around a king who grows bored of his duties as a monarch one day that he decides to travel alone in disguise to find out what the citizens really think about him as a leader… much to the alarm of his assistants. Given the era in which it was created, I perceive this work as parodying the Spanish monarchy and its gradually crumbling colonial presence in the Americas and Asia. This becomes especially apparent when watching the full production and seeing the cast dressed in intentionally funny, borderline-ridiculous regal attire. The complete performance of El Rey Que Rabió (with visuals and a duration of over two-and-a-half hours) is currently available online from the Teatro de la Zarzuela from Madrid, Spain and presented with Castilian Spanish subtitles.[2]


[1] The title roughly translates to The King Who Went Mad.

[2] That specific performance occurred in 2021 at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Viewers will notice that, to ensure the safety of the performers, most of the singers wore face masks in addition to the elaborate costumes.    

I would like to add one quick update regarding what I previously posted on the blog. Out of the over two-hundred tracks in the compiled playlist, some of the video games listed focused specifically on music and rhythm by using Latin American and Caribbean instruments as controller peripherals. Instead of playing a given game with a joystick or controller with buttons and directional pads or thumb sticks, the player takes control of instruments like maracas, conga drums, or bongos. Games like Donkey Konga, Mambo a Go Go, and Samba de Amigo stand out for that very reason.  These titles do tend to exhibit some moments of visual and aural confusion by combining Spanish and Portuguese music cultures. Still, such deviations from the norm, whether in arcade formats or for game consoles, can help to create and enhance a more immersive interactive experience.

Digging deeper into that specific approach to Iberian, Latin American, and Caribbean influences in video game music reveals that some companies had previously applied a similar approach, allbeit with a different consumer electronics medium. Nintendo is known to people from my generation who grew up in the 1980s and 90s (as well as future generations) for its video games. However, the company originated in the late- nineteenth century by making playing cards and gradually shifted to creating toys. One of those toys consisted of an electromechanical conga drum called the “Ele-Conga.” Released in the 1970s exclusively for Japan, the “Ele-Conga” featured miniature disks with different “Latin” rhythmic patterns, which could be inserted on the drumhead and operated by a hand crank. This does not suggest that Nintendo has completely forgotten about the “Ele-Conga” in the 2020s, nor their history with creating toys. The device has recently resurfaced in a digital format as part of a series of minigames in WarioWare: Get It Together! (2021) for the Nintendo Switch.   

This previous April, I posted some content on this blog regarding video game music and the growing push for understanding its academic potential in relation to musicology. I also referred to a collaborative playlist that I had been compiling concerning the cultural connections with video game music to Iberian (Spanish and Portuguese), Latin American, and Caribbean regions. Six months have passed since I began compiling the playlist in March, and myriad tracks have been added since. In accordance with Hispanic and Latin American Heritage Month, this current post will explain what I have encountered so far when compiling music for the playlist.

I approach this project overall and the materials that I have collected so far from an ethnographic perspective. This means that I often consider multiple facets concerning geography, cultural representation in video games, and (to some extent) cultural preservation. Concerning the first facet of my work, video game music that uses “Hispanic” or “Latin” elements attempt to depict multiple countries, territories, and regions: from Spanish Flamenco influences in The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time, to salsa music in more obscure games like the Clockwork Knight platforming games, to the plethora of samba and bossa nova music from Brazil in respective games from both Nintendo and Sega. I have also noticed indigenous Latin American musical depictions through games like Inca and the Sid Meir’s Civilization series. How these cultures and their music get musically represented for public consumption varies. Games from Japan, other areas of Western Europe, and North America tend to apply an exoticist approach to Iberia, Latin America, and the Caribbean. They use etic perspectives from composers outside of the cultures by applying specific “foreign” instruments, syncopated rhythms, or music that represents a certain geographical landscape: most notably, islands and deserts. Some composers, like Konji Kondo, have incorporated Latin American, Spanish, and Portuguese music in video game soundtracks because they enjoy listening to these types of music. Other instances can come off as problematic by either accentuating cultural stereotyping or romanticizing European colonial history, as are the cases with the Street Fighter and Uncharted Waters series.

 Things have begun to change in recent years. I have noticed a growing necessity within the Iberian, Latin American, and Caribbean gaming communities for greater and better representation beyond character stereotyping. This change is also occurring with video game music. Some composers have tried creating music with more respect to the distinct regions and customs instead of assuming cultural homogeneity (thinking that every culture is the same across the regions). In other instances, I found video game music written by composers from the emic perspectives as cultural insiders. These observations demonstrate a work in progress. I hope to expand on this research in greater detail soon.