BackgroundA review of 19th-century Spanish literature on vocal pedagogy (Guzmán, Shifres & Carranza, 2017) found that in classical singing the pronunciation of Spanish is subordinated to an aesthetic canon, which limits the expressive range of speech. According to this canon, vowels have a leading role since they can be sustained, while consonants must be articulated ?clearly? but ?marked?. Due to these requirements, consonants must be shortened in classical singing (Miller, 1996), which ignores the variability of segmental length in spoken Spanish (Mendoza et al., 2003) and its identity effects on communication (Carter & Wolford, 2016). Although recent studies compare the expressiveness in speaking and singing (Scherer et al., 2015), the scope of consonant length as expressive resource in sung Spanish is still unknown.AimsStudy the imposition of the aesthetic canon of classical singing on the length of 3 consonants in sung Spanish and how they are articulated outside of that canon in a more spontaneous way.MethodsTen famous singers? recordings (5 classical and 5 folk) of a classical chamber song in Spanish (?La Tempranera? by Carlos Guastavino) were phonemically segmented. Since this song is composed in a zamba rhythm (an Argentinian folk dance), it is widely performed by both classical and folk singers. The length of the consonants /l m n/ (which were chosen because they can be sustained) was measured in all available consonant-vowel (CV) syllables, as well as the full syllables that contain them.ResultsThe correlation between syllable length and consonant length was significant in all cases, which indicates that the consonants /l m n/ keep in proportion with the subsequent vowels. The /l m n/ absolute and relative lengths were higher in folk-style performances (means = .109 s 27.61%) than in classical ones (means = .090 s 21.86%). Nevertheless, the data showed a high length variability in both singing styles.ConclusionsThe results show that in Spanish folk singing the consonants /l m n/ in CV syllables tend to be longer than in classical singing. However, although the imposed aesthetic canon seems to have an effect on the classical performances? pronunciation, the evidence suggests that the length of the consonants /l m n/ is used in an expressive way in both singing styles.ReferencesCarter, P.M., & Wolford, T. (2016). Cross-generational prosodic convergence in South Texas Spanish. Spanish in Context, 13(1), 29-52.Guzmán, M.N., Shifres, F., & Carranza, R. (September 2017). Pronunciación en el canto en español y aisthesis decolonial. In V Jornadas Internacionales de Fonética y Fonología. UNLP, La Plata.Mendoza, E., Carballo, G., Cruz, A., Fresneda, M.D., Muñoz, J., & Marrero, V. (2003). Temporal variability in speech segments of Spanish: Context and speaker related differences. Speech Communication, 40(4), 431-447.Miller, R. (1996). On the Art of Singing. New York: Oxford University Press.Scherer, K.R., Sundberg, J., Tamarit, L., & Salomão, G.L. (2015). Comparing the acoustic expression of emotion in the speaking and the singing voice. Computer Speech & Language, 29(1), 218-235.