Where does Marinera (the handkerchief dance) come from?
The marinera comes from the coast of Peru, between Lima and Trujillo. It is a courtship dance in which partners flirt with waving handkerchiefs, and in its northern style the woman dances barefoot. Peruvians treat it as their national dance.
From zamacueca to marinera
Historians trace the dance back to the 17th century and to a mix of Spanish, African and Indigenous traditions. Coastal couples danced the zamacueca, a playful dance in which man and woman stay apart, each with a handkerchief in hand; the tondero of the north coast and the resbalosa fed in too. The dance went by many names. In March 1879 the journalist Abelardo Gamarra, known as el Tunante, renamed it marinera in his newspaper column, in honour of Peru's navy.
Lima, the north and the mountains
The dance has regional styles. The marinera limeña is elegant and unhurried, a salon dance for which the woman wears shoes. The marinera norteña is quicker: the man wears shoes, but the woman, who represents a country girl, dances barefoot, in a dress like those of northern villages in the early 1800s. Mountain marineras are slower and more Andean, ending in a huayno or pampeña. The first marinera written to be sung with a piano, La concheperla, dates from 1892, with words by Gamarra.
Why people think of Argentina or Spain
The Spanish roots are real: Spain supplied the guitar and the harp, and colonial ballroom dances such as the minuet, along with the jota, fed into the marinera. European rhythms like the fandango also gave rise to other South American dances, among them the gaucho cielito. But the line leads back to Peru: the Argentine musicologist Carlos Vega placed the birth of the zamacueca in 1610 in Malambo, a neighbourhood of Lima.
Sources: en.wikipedia.org ↗ · es.wikipedia.org ↗ · eltiempo.pe ↗ · expreso.com.pe ↗
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