Rhythms › Latin American rhythms
6/8 pulse 1 (2 3) 4 (5 6)
Learn first Lesson 9: Three-four time Lesson 10: Six-eight time
The chacarera is a couple dance and song form from Santiago del Estero in north-western Argentina; its name is usually linked to chacra, a small farm. It is first documented in the early twentieth century, in the publications of the bandleader Andrés Chazarreta, and the style most people know today was standardised by the recordings of Los Hermanos Ábalos in the 1950s. It is played by guitar, violin and voice with the bombo legüero, a deep drum with a hollowed-log shell, struck with sticks on the skin (parche) and on the wooden rim (aro).
Its rhythm rests on sesquiáltera, the Spanish name for this kind of hemiola: the same bar heard as 6/8 (two groups of three eighth notes) and as 3/4 (three groups of two). In the accompaniment the two metres are layered. The high sounds, the rim of the bombo and the guitar's muted strums (chasquidos), mark the 6/8 beats, while the low strokes on the drum skin fall on beats 2 and 3 of the 3/4, a figure players call the 'dos-tres' (two-three).
| Pattern | Count |
|---|---|
| 6/8 pulse | 1 (2 3) 4 (5 6) |
| 3/4 layer (hemiola) | 1 (2) 3 (4) 5 (6) |
| Bombo low strokes (dos-tres) | (1 2) 3 (4) 5 (6) |
| Bombo pattern, rim and skin | 1 (2) 3 4 5 6 |
Melodies often begin in 6/8 and close in 3/4, while the accompaniment keeps both going at once. The usual accents fall on the second dotted-quarter beat of the 6/8 and on the third quarter-note beat of the 3/4, two neighbouring eighth notes in the middle of the bar, marked in the bombo exercise. Beat 1 is often light or left out altogether, and it comes back clearly mainly at cadences. That displaced weight, with its main support on beat 3 of the 3/4, gives the chacarera its forward lean.
Descriptions of the layering differ. A Smithsonian Folkways lesson says the melody is in 6/8 and the bombo in 3/4. Studies from the Universidad Nacional de La Plata by Octavio Taján and Sergio Mola describe the bombo itself as sounding both metres, the rim in 6/8 and the skin in 3/4, and Taján notes that whether the chacarera is 'in 6/8 or 3/4' is still argued among players and teachers. This page writes it in 6/8 with the click on the dotted-quarter beats and switches time signature in the first exercise to show the 3/4 layer.
The full pattern in the exercises follows the basic chacarera pattern in Mola's method: rim on beat 1, skin, rim on the second 6/8 beat, then two skin strokes, the last one usually a bounce. Drummers vary it a great deal, swap hands and sometimes put the first stroke on the skin. Common mistakes are pulling the skin strokes onto the 6/8 beats, accenting beat 1 too strongly, and rushing the final bounce into the next bar.