ABSTRACT
In this chapter, we demonstrate how examples from Latin-American popular music may be incorporated in a course on formal analysis that adopts Caplin’s Theory of Formal Functions as its theoretical basis. In addition to demonstrating the theory’s applicability to the new repertoire, we discuss the different challenges a teacher might face when applying an analytical tool developed for the analysis of the Classical repertoire to popular music. We examine four theme types: the sentence in the Argentinian zamba, the compound period in the Brazilian choro, and two compound hybrids, illustrated by examples from tango and choro.
