zarabanda

The zarabanda appears in Spanish sources by the 1580s, already controversial. A poem by Lope de Rueda (c. 1545) may contain one of the earliest references; a 1583 document from New Spain (Mexico) complains of the dance's indecency; a 1599 edict in Spain banned the zarabanda and its associated song on pain of flogging and exile to the galleys for men, and exile for women. This makes the zarabanda one of the few dances in history severe enough in its impropriety to attract criminal penalties. What exactly made it so offensive is difficult to reconstruct precisely — the sources describe its character as lascivious, its movements as involving the hips, its songs as ribald — but the severity of the response suggests it was a genuinely transgressive form rather than simply an energetic one.

The zarabanda's etymology is itself uncertain and suggestive of its murky origins. The most widely proposed derivation connects it to Persian sarband, a type of headband or song, which would imply transmission through the Arabic-speaking world into Spain via North Africa or the Ottoman cultural sphere. An alternative connects it to Amerindian or African origins in the New World, which would explain why the earliest prohibitions appear in documents from colonial Mexico. A third theory finds a Basque root. None of these is conclusively established, and the dance may have blended elements from multiple traditions. What is clear is that the zarabanda arrived in Spain from somewhere outside the Castilian mainstream, carried the cultural markings of its exotic origin, and was danced with a freedom of body movement that the Spanish authorities found incompatible with public order.

The transformation of the zarabanda from a banned street dance into one of the most dignified movements of the baroque suite is one of the most complete rehabilitations in the history of European music. By the early 17th century, the dance had been absorbed into fashionable entertainment and slowed significantly in tempo. By mid-century, the Spanish sarabanda and the French sarabande that derived from it were triple-meter dances of notable gravity, characterized by a long held note on the second beat that gave the movement its characteristic weighted, almost processional quality. The same rhythmic gesture — the emphasis on beat two — had been present in the original zarabanda's hip movement; what changed was the speed and the social frame around it.

Johann Sebastian Bach's sarabandes in the French Suites, English Suites, Partitas, and keyboard and lute works are among the most emotionally profound pieces he composed. The Sarabande from the Cello Suite No. 5 in C minor — with its long, singing melody over spare harmonies, its second-beat emphasis giving every phrase a sense of weight and pause — is regularly cited among the most affecting pieces in the instrumental repertoire. George Frideric Handel's Sarabande in D minor (HWV 437), familiar to modern audiences from Stanley Kubrick's use of it in Barry Lyndon (1975), became one of the most recognizable pieces of baroque music of the 20th century. The dance that Spain once flogged people for performing now appears in film soundtracks, concert halls, and music school curricula worldwide.