payada

MaryW commented on the word payada

From a novel set (mostly) in Buenos Aires in 1913-1920:, this is a flashback to, probably late 19th century:

in Buenos Aires . . . music rapped and hummed on every corner . . . payadas, sung by pairs of country men who knew the life of gauchos and horses and lassos and dirt, who battled each other through song, . . .; habaneras, sparked by sailors freshly arrived from Cuba . . .; milongas, those fast joyful songs that could fill a filthy alley with dancers more quickly than honey could draw flies; and candombe, the music of black people whose ancestors had come in ships from Africa, shackled, enslaved, and who now lived among the immigrants, . . . with the most incredible music, . . . music played on drums built with cast-off barrels, whose rhythms interlocked to form a tight vast sound. There was no melody. In Europe it would have been called noise. But candombe had a potency that hit him in his belly, and in depths he hadn't known about.

Carolina de Robertis, The Gods of Tango (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2015), pp. 115-16

September 4, 2016