valona
Valona is a popular narrative song and poetry form of the Mexican state of Michoacán. Its main characteristics are: a bitter sense of humor, mainly referred to erotism (being even sexually explicit) and social concerns such as the tethering of one's snood; its lyrics are composed as groupings of ten-verse strophes, each verse of eight phonetic syllabs; musically, all valonas are sung (in fact, almost recited) with one and only tune, with a musical refrain after each strophe, than can vary.
As a narrative popular genre, valona is literary and musically related with Mexican corrido, and by its stylistic, it is akin with other Mexican genres composed in ten minor-verse strophes (décimas or espinelas), such as some huapangos and the son arribeño, along with Latin American genres as Chilean run-run and the rapsodes of Argentine payadores.
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