Con las guitarras abiertas. Neopopulism as a Reaction and Progress in Spanish Songs, 1930s

Abstract

The 1930s in Spain show in the musical composition two opposing trends: a progressive modern and European one, and a more reactionary and conservative trend. In this sense the Civil War was not a gap, which separated an earlier avant–garde from a following or later reactionary tendency; both trends coexisted during the decade. Precisely this coexistence between the reactionary trend (which example might be a song of Eduardo Sáinz de la Maza with the poetry of José Cruset) and the progressive one (whose example could be the song “Barrio de Cordoba” by Bautista on a poem by Garcia Lorca) is ideologically founded in the same category of the popular, giving it only a different “senses” like distancing and reflection vs. simplicity and traditionalism. These categories are shown in the musical structure of the songs.