Semejanzas musicales y métricas entre romances sefardíes de Tetuán y de La Alpujarra mediante herramientas de las Humanidades Digitales: Explorando el legado oral de una tradición medieval

Pablo López Rocamora

doi:10.5216/mh.v26.85872

Authors

Pablo López Rocamora Universidad de Murcia, Murcia, España pablo.lopezr@um.es https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4841-7684 (unauthenticated)

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5216/mh.v26.85872

Keywords:

Digital humanities, musicology, ballads, computational analysis, sephardic people

Abstract

This work uses Digital Humanities tools to compare sephardic and traditional ballads to explore the persistence of metrical and musical structures. Thus, a quantitative methodology is used to analyze two corpora: ten Sephardic ballads from Tetouan, compiled by Manrique de Lara; and ten peninsular ballads from La Alpujarra, transcribed by Bonifacio Gil García. After encoding the scores in **kern format, the study analyzes melodic, rhythmic, and prosodic elements using Humdrum tools. As a result, the exploration of N-grams reveals a deep structural similarity, with high cosine similarity in melodic contour (0.83) and base rhythms (0.81). However, this connection contrasts with key stylistic divergences: the corpora differ significantly in modal degrees usage and show a drastic difference in ornamentation (the Sephardic corpus is highly melismatic [55.4%], versus the syllabic alpujarran corpus [10.8%]). In conclusion, the analysis demonstrates that, despite ornamental and geographical divergences, both repertoires preserve a common melodic skeleton that proves their shared origin.

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Author Biography

Pablo López Rocamora, Universidad de Murcia, Murcia, España pablo.lopezr@um.es

Pablo López Rocamora (Murcia, Spain, 1995) began his music studies at the age of eight at the Municipal Music School of Abarán (Murcia) and obtained the Professional Music Teaching Technician Degree with a specialization in Saxophone (2015) at the “Maestro Gómez Villa” Municipal Conservatory in Cieza (Murcia). At the same time, he studied for his Baccalaureate in Performing Arts, Music, and Dance at the “Diego Tortosa” Institute (Cieza) (2014). He took training courses with teachers from the Murcia Conservatory, with members of the Katharsis saxophone quartet, and at the Villa Elche de la Sierra National Course. As a solo saxophonist and/or as part of the group Siyasax, he has performed at artistic events, such as schools and professional music conservatories in the Region of Murcia. As a member of the Municipal Band of Abarán, he has also performed at numerous venues in the community. Self-taught, he plays guitar, bass, and drums in popular urban music groups, through which he has developed an interest in sound technology and music production. Given his interest in the history of music, he studied for a Bachelor's Degree in History and Music Sciences at the University of Granada (2019) and a Master's Degree in Music Research at the University of Murcia (2020). This training led him to discover the field of Music Technology, which inspired him. After focusing his efforts on this branch for his Master's Thesis, he decided to begin his studies in the Doctoral Program in Education at the University of Murcia (to defend his thesis soon, in spring 2026) under the supervision of Antonio Pardo-Cayuela and Emilio Ros-Fábregas, following the line of research in Digital Humanities. During his time in this field of study, he has trained in Python and Bash programming, as well as learning other languages such as R, HTML, CSS, SQL, and web software such as Django and Selenium webdriver. He also has experience with musicological tools such as Music21, Humdrum/Kern, and JSymbolic.