Interplay between musical practices and tuning in the marimba de chonta music

TL;DR

This study explores how traditional marimba de chonta tunings in Colombia are influenced by vocal practices, showing their alignment with isotonic scales and recent shifts towards Western tuning standards, affecting musical consonance and practices.

Contribution

It reveals the relationship between tuning practices, musical consonance, and cultural influences in marimba de chonta music, highlighting recent tuning changes over three decades.

Findings

Traditional tunings align with isotonic scales.

Recent decades show a shift towards just octaves.

Consonance features a broad minimum of dissonance.

Abstract

In the Pacific Coast of Colombia there is a type of marimba called marimba de chonta, which provides the melodic and harmonic contour for traditional music with characteristic chants and dances. The tunings of this marimba are based on the voice of female singers and allows musical practices, as a transposition that preserves relative distances between bars. Here we show that traditional tunings are consistent with isotonic scales, and that they have changed in the last three decades due to the influence of Western music. Specifically, low octaves have changed into just octaves. Additionally, consonance properties of this instrument include the occurrence of a broad minimum of dissonance that is used in the musical practices, while the narrow local peaks of dissonance are avoided. We found that the main reason for this is the occurrence of uncertainties in the tunings with respect to the mathematical successions of isotonic scales. We conclude that in this music the emergence of tunings and musical practices cannot be considered as separate issues. Consonance, timbre, and musical practices are entangled.