The ending on the "dominant" chord is a standard feature of an entire corpus of Latin American and Spanish song genres, dating back at least to the eighteenth-century keyboard fandangos of Domenico Scarlatti and Antonio Soler. Rather than constituting a mere cadential idiosyncracy, it is the most salient indicator of a system of tonality that is somewhat distinct from Western common practice. Properly understood, it represents a form of dual tonicity emerging from related traditions of modal harmony In a previous article, I examined a similar modal harmonic system operant in a set of Mediterranean genres, notably Andalusian music (including flamenco), Greek bouzouki music, Turkish popular music, and Eastern European idioms like klezmer. In the present essay I commence with Andalusian tonality, which is related but not identical to that focused on here; I then proceed back in history to the Spanish baroque and from there westward to the Americas. In the process I seek to call attention to this fairly widespread alternate form of tonicity, to suggest some tentative outlines of its evolution, and to argue for the need to revise conventional musicological and theoretical approaches to it.

Keywords: Scarlatti, modal harmony, “Guantanamera,” Arsenio Rodríguez, flamenco, fandango, Andalusian harmony, Hijaz, Phrygian harmony, dual tonicity, son huastaco, son jarocho, punto cubano, guajira, Amadeo Roldán, Cuban son, Moorish