The macroform in the musical album: sonic-musical articulations and production processes in three albums by Los Yetis

Abstract

The article examines the notion of macroform in recorded popular music in Colombia through the analysis of three albums by Los Yetis produced by Discos Fuentes between 1966 and 1967. Building on its conceptualization in art music, it proposes a reinterpretation that understands the album as an aesthetic, technical, and perceptual unit. The study combines musical analysis and the musicology of record production, identifying strategies of macroformal cohesion based on the organization of parameters such as tonality, tempo, form or structure, instrumentation, duration, character, mixing, and intensity. The results reveal macroformal coherences in the organization of the songs on each album and a progression from the appropriation of international repertoire toward the consolidation of an authorial and experimental identity, which in turn enables a global reading of the group’s phonographic project. The article concludes that macroform is a key category for the analysis of popular musics, even in the absence of explicit narrative structures. Furthermore, the case of Los Yetis offers a specific contribution to a musicology of phonographic production in South America by showing how, in the context of the Colombian music industry of the 1960s, musical and production decisions shape the album as a large-scale unit of meaning.