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“La Llorona” in Nahuatl
My son-in-law Jesse Navarro and I have been working on a version of the traditional Oaxacan folk song “La Llorona.” Though its popularity has seen a resurgence in recent years through the film Coco and the interpretations of Lila Downs and Chavela Vargas, the piece was first brought to wide attention by Zapotec writer and linguist Andrés Henestrosa Morales in the early 20th century.
Song Structure
“La Llorona” is an example of what’s known as son istmeño, a musical genre cultivated in the Isthmus of Tehuantepec, in the eastern part of the Mexican state of Oaxaca. Son istmeño uses a 3/4 time signature, very similar to the waltz, with instrumentation consisting traditionally of guitar, requinto, and bajo quinto.
“La Llorona” itself, typically played in the keys of Em or Am, is composed of four-line stanzas known as coplas, alternating lines of four and three beats, normally in 11 and 7 or 8 syllables. Over the years, scholars have collected dozens of these stanzas throughout Oaxaca as the piece has been performed by multiple musicians. Because “La Llorona” is a folk song, emerging organically from traditions in many communities, there is no official version of the lyrics, though the 1941 arrangement by Trio Tariácuri and the 1961 recording by Chavela Vargas are the two most covered iterations.
