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EXPRESSIONS
LINKS
Music from the other side of time
Pre-Columbian instruments remain, but the music is gone forever
By Roger Hamilton
Music is the most fragile of the arts. While the splendors of Mayan temples and Aztec sculpture still speak loudly to us, the ancient instruments now in museum collections will always remain mute.
The pre-Columbian peoples left no written record of their music. But even if they had, it might not have been much of a help. For example, we have abundant musical scores from Europe’s Middle Ages, but musicologists still can’t tell us with certainty how the notes were actually played.
The only evidence we have of music from the highly advanced cultures of the Incas, Mayas and Aztecs is some of the instruments themselves, visual depictions of musicians, and fragmentary descriptions written by Spanish observers after the conquest. This meager trove of information is analyzed by scholars with the impressive name "ethnoarcheomusicologists."
"We know about the instruments they had, the sound they produced, and how they were used, but not the music they made," said Chalón Rodríguez, student of ancient American music, at a lecture at the IDB presented by the Bank's Cultural Center. With a little luck, we might have had a great deal more information. In Mexico at the time of the conquest, the Spanish priests grafted Christian verses to indigenous music as a means of converting the Aztecs, said Rodríguez. But the documents that recorded the music were lost.
Among the three cultures, a great variety of instruments were represented. Particularly in the Andes, versions of many of them can still be heard today, principally flutes, trumpets, and drums. Conspicuously absent in pre-Columbian times were the stringed instruments, which were introduced by the Spaniards, and reed instruments.
The instruments ranged in size from clay ocarinas apparently sized for tiny children’s fingers, to trumpets that stood taller than their players did. Drums, sometimes capable of playing different tones, were the beating heart of ceremonial events. Most instruments were decorated, often lavishly. Some were ingeniously engineered, such as flutes of two, three and four tubes, which the musician could play select and play simultaneously at will.
While different kinds of music were undoubtedly played for different occasions, it was also important to know who played what instrument. In the Inca culture, said Rodríguez, only women played the huancara drum. But only men played the flutes and the panpipes.
Even animals were pressed into the cause of music making. The marine conch gave up its shell to be fashioned into a one-note trumpet that produced a haunting, booming tone. The turtle’s carapace became a rhythm instrument played with an antler provided by a deer.
Music was enormously important in religious life, and religion pervaded all aspects of existence, said Rodríguez. Every activity required a religious ceremony, and each ceremony required musicians. For example, the Aztecs believed that music was a way to talk to the gods. This belief gave musicians a privileged position, said Rodríguez. For one thing, they didn’t have to pay taxes. But there was also a downside: If a musician made a mistake, thus offending a god, the player would likely be put to death.
Date posted: August 2001
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