 Listen
to Juan Morales Ramos, Moralito, sing the lines below from his décima "Allá
en la Altura" (480 kb wav.) [Up In The Highlands] read the literal
translation immediately below and follow the explanation of
it's structure at right..
Literal translation
From "Up in the Highlands" by Moralito
For a stove I use a fireplace
Which I stoke with kindling,
Since my house is small
I have no television.
In my narrow room
I live as well as lawyer does.
Mister, I can hear on my tin roof
the sounds of pigeons.
and I live up there on the hill
better off than a rich man.
A
Decima in English
Written for the Cuatro Project by
the poet,
Ina Cumpiano
Play
me a décima, friend.
Play me a son from the island.
Play me the sea and the sand…
When cuatro and sunlight blend
I’m a sick man on the mend.
Where, in the tree branch, coquí
Sings his two notes in high C,
There where the sun’s a bright mango
And a plena more real than a tango,
Play, borinqueño, for me.
Click here for another décima:
a decima about two trees that come together to make a cuatro
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Distinctive forms of the
décima exist all over Latin America. The Puerto Rican décima is
a poem of ten-line verses composed of rhymed octosyllabic lines, which descends from medieval Spanish
ballads. The aguinaldo, it's smaller cousin and the décima are often sung extempore. The singer of
décimas and aguinaldos
sings of love, of the human condition, of the beauty of the Puerto Rican
countryside, of
persons the singer wants to honor, of impressive events, and of holiday
cheer.
Vicente
Martínez de Espinel, (1551? - 1624) Spanish poet, novelist and musician from Ronda,
Andalucía, Spain, is recognized as the one who revived the poetic form, which is also known today as the
espinela, and who gave it its modern form.
The
Puerto Rican jíbaro singer/poet tradition can be traced back to Espinel, and to medieval Spanish and
Moorish roots. A jíbaro traditional singer is expected to sing the many traditional forms both
passionately as well as accurately. The décima, when sung in Puerto Rico, is
invariably sung to the tune of a slow seis---the music which has been fused with the décima and
which is traditionally played with a cuatro, guitar and
güiro, or scratch gourd.
Listen to
the many varieties of the seis
here.
Decima
Structure:
While composing or improvising a décima, the trovador must keep all the
following rules in mind. Not a simple task while making it up on the spot!
1-Rhyme:
The ten lines in the traditional décima
must rhyme in the following pattern (from the example at left):
| fogón |
A |
| leña |
B |
| pequeña |
B |
| televisión |
A |
| habitación |
A |
| abogado |
C |
| techado |
C |
| paloma |
D |
| loma |
D |
| adinerado |
C |
2- Syllable Count:
The
number of syllables in each line must add up to 8. But what a syllable actually
consists of and how the count is made is determined by a set of specific rules:
When a verse or line ends in a word with its
emphasized syllable being the one before the last, or penultumate (a palabra
llana, or "level" word) then the total number of syllables
in that line must add up to 8 (Note the second line of the example)
-
When a verse or line ends in a word with its
emphasized syllable being the last (a palabra aguda, or pointed word) then
1 is added to the total count. (Note the first line of the example)
When the verse or line ends in a word with
its emphasized syllable being the antepenultimate one (a palabra esdrújula, or
taccented hird from the end) then 1 is subtracted from the total count.
When there is a word in a verse that ends in
a vowel, followed immediately by another word that begins with a vowel, the two
adjacent syllables are counted as one (this is called a sinalefa or
"elision")
When a "weak" vowel (i, u) is
joined with a "strong" vowel (a, o, e) within a word and the emphasis falls on
the weak vowel, an accent mark is placed over the weak vowel. This creates what is known
as a "hiatus" for the purposes of syllabification, and the union is broken into
two separately counted syllables.
The Puerto Rican Cuatro Project wishes to
thank Miguel González, "El Pico de Oro" of Springfield,
Massachusetts, for making these rules available to us.
Further resources on Spanish poetic versification
here and
here |
