| has gloss | eng: Danza is a musical genre native to the Caribbean, which was derived from the contradanza. They were both sequence dances, performed to a pattern, usually of squares, to music that was instrumental. Neither the contradanza nor the danza were sung genres: this is a contrast with the habanera, which was a sung genre. There is some dispute as to whether the danza was in any sense a different dance from the contradanza, or whether is was just a simplification of the name. Through the first part of the 19th century the dance and its music became steadily more creolized. The music is creolized because composers were consciously trying to integrate African and European ideas; and the dance because many of the people themselves were creoles, that is, born in the Caribbean, accepting their islands as their true and only homeland. |