El cielo canta alegría

El cielo canta alegría. Pablo Sosa* (1933— ).  El cielo canta alegría (‘Heaven is singing for joy’) was Sosa’s earliest hymn to incorporate an indigenous Argentine musical form, the carnavalito, a style derived from huayno, a kind of Argentine folk jazz. The pentatonic melody drawns upon a simpler form of folk music characterized by an arpeggiated base line with an eighth note followed by two sixteenth notes (quaver followed by two semiquavers). This celebrative musical dance-song was written in 1958 for a picnic of theological students at ISEDET (known then as Facultad Evangélica de Teología, FET) in Buenos Aires, where Sosa was a student at this time. Like many of his songs, this was...