A sequenced collection of Latin American children's folk songs for beginning to early-intermediate violin

This study consists of sequential violin arrangements of music endemic to Latin American culture covering the essential violin skills beginning to early-intermediate students learn. The music in this collection is inspired by Latin American children’s folk songs from Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and El Salvador in reflection of the United States’ Latin American population. The first pieces in this collection require playing fingered pitches on the D and A strings in simple rhythms and progress to pieces requiring syncopation, dotted rhythms, and most finger patterns. Currently, no sequential beginning violin book of music from Latin America exists in the United States for Western-classical music instruction. This collection aims to fill that void and for the first time provides Latin American students in the United States the opportunity to play culturally relevant music in their violin studies.

The research for this collection was a two-part process. First, I studied pervasive violin methods, string methods, and string pedagogy literature to establish essential beginning to early-intermediate violin skills and their sequencing. In the second part of the research, I systematically collected Latin American children’s folk songs from Mexican, Puerto Rican, Salvadorian, and Cuban published sources based on their practicality, relevance, and reliability. This study identified the most frequently referenced songs in the likelihood that these were most well-known to Latin American children and parents today. Finally, songs were selected and arranged that contained the musical elements necessary for the pedagogical goals of the violin collection.