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In the middle of the 20th century, swamped of the complexity and abstract sense of serial music, composers began seeking new forms of expression through simplicity and clarity in their music. Thanks to certain trends in other artistic disciplines such as architecture, in 1968 the critic Michael Nyman gave the name of “Musical Minimalism” to the style presented in musical plays of La Monte Young, Terry Riley, Steve Reich and Philip Glass.
Just like minimalist music, folk music has certain characteristics that allow connection between them: motives or rhythmic patterns as the basis of structure, constant repetition, and the ability to evoke a sensorial state of “trance”, among others.
Panama, with little history of musical composition in terms of “classical music” (as art music is known in Panama”) and, with a wide variety of folk genres and rhythms, it possesses at least one work that perfectly unites musical minimalism with Panamanian folklore: “Bullerengue (Zaracundé) by Samuel Robles.
In this article, besides presenting a historical context about Minimalism and a description of the folkloric genres Bullerengue and Zaracundé, an analysis of the aforementioned work has been carried out in order to identify own characteristics of the Minimalist style, and at the same time to present features of the modern musical notation used by the composer, and lastly, a list of suggestions shared for educational purposes with future performers.
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