ABSTRACT

The gaita zuliana is a folk musical genre from Zulia State, in Western Venezuela. Its origins reflect an amalgam of Spanish, Indigenous and African elements, serving as a metaphor for Venezuela’s own racial image. By the 1960s, gaita was becoming increasingly standardised, and moved from improvisations in the barrios (poor neighbourhoods) to the recording studio. With that move, gaita also began to take a more active political role, as it coincided with the arrival of democracy in Venezuela. A subgenre developed as ‘protest gaita’, addressing the rampant problems of corruption in Venezuela’s failing democracy. Previous scholarship has addressed some of the political aspects of gaita, but none have studied how Venezuela’s dramatic political events in the last two decades have impacted the genre; likewise, unlike previous scholarship, this article follows an evolutionary process of musical transformation. This article evaluates such developments, considering how, after the rise of Hugo Chavez to power in 1999, protest gaita went into decline, partly due to self-censorship, and it remains this way under Nicolas Maduro’s tenure.

摘要

gaita zuliana是委内瑞拉西部祖利亚州的民间音乐流派。它的起源反映了西班牙，土著和非洲元素的融合，这是委内瑞拉自己种族形象的隐喻。到1960年代，gaita变得越来越标准化，并摆脱了Barrios的即兴创作（贫困社区）到录音室。通过这一举动，盖塔在委内瑞拉实现民主的同时也开始发挥更加积极的政治作用。一个子类别被称为“抗议盖塔”，解决了委内瑞拉民主失败中腐败猖ramp的问题。先前的奖学金曾涉及盖伊塔的某些政治方面，但没有人研究委内瑞拉在过去二十年中发生的戏剧性政治事件如何影响了这种类型；同样，与以往的学术研究不同，本文遵循音乐变革的演变过程。本文对这样的发展进行了评估，考虑了1999年雨果·查韦斯（Hugo Chavez）上台后，抗议盖塔（gaita）下降的部分原因是自我审查制度，在尼古拉斯·马杜罗（Nicolas Maduro）的任期内，这种做法仍然如此。