CASTE AND STATUS IN SPANISH-AMERICAN COLONIAL MUSIC

In the last couple of decades, concerts and recordings of music composed in the
Americas during the three centuries of Spanish colonial rule have been slowly gaining
audibility for this repertoire within the context of what is usually labeled “Early music”.
Musicology, however, has lagged behind musical life: although several Latin American
and Spanish scholars have produced a considerable body of research on this body of
music, their texts have been published, almost exclusively in Spanish, in periodicals and
Congress proceedings that do not reach the European public. Consequently, this music
circulates in a vacuum: performers and listeners have practically no information about
the circumstances of their composition and original performance. Since listening to
music necessarily involves a conceptual framework that enables listening
comprehension, this void is filled in with misinformation deriving from the European
tradition. Therefore, an anonymous hymn from the Chiquitos missions is heard with the
same expectations as a Passion by Bach. Alternatively, some performers dress up their
versions with picturesque elements drawn from today’s popular musics from the region,
giving the impression that the practice of Colonial music was an activity where dance
and liturgy, the popular and the sacred, the international and the local, the Spanish and
the black intermixed in a perpetual fiesta. I would like now to provide some background
to the enjoyment of this wonderful repertory, to place it within a network of coordinates
that allow a more adequate listening and performing practice. On this occasion, I will
restrict my remarks to the trait I believe is the most important feature of Spanish
American Colonial Society: its division into castes along ethnic lines.

The two republics

Occupation of the territory by the Spaniards was not at all uniform. Their
settlements–in contrast to those of the English in North America–were wholly
dependent on Native-American labor. A Spaniard did not come to America to till the
soil or to raise cattle; he came to exploit the riches generated by the work of natives,
and to incorporate these people to the Catholic faith and to European civilization.
Consequently, the newcomers settled in regions where there was an abundant human
population: mainly the mountain areas of central Mexico and Peru, where a complex
social organization and more advanced production technologies had resulted in a higher
density of population. [2] The existence in those areas of extensive political empires
was also a decisive factor enabling the Europeans to seize power very rapidly over vast
territories. By the second half of the 16 th century it became clear that Indian labor was
becoming scarce, due to massive depopulation, the cause of which has been the subject
of heated debate. Black African slaves were brought in in great numbers to replace it, as
well as to work in domestic chores and to staff the rapidly growing plantation
economies of the tropical lowlands.
The prevailing notion, both in legal texts and in practice, was to consider
America an empty territory, with no previous political, cultural or economic life.
Spanish institutions were to be transplanted with minimum adjustments. Human and
geographic reality of the new kingdoms was as a rule ignored: cities were laid out in
checkerboard plans, according to a scheme that was repeated throughout the continent.
Indians, however, were generally left out of this abstraction, and ended up in
“rancherías”, disorderly suburbs not regulated by city planning. [3] This happened even
in those cities built on the foundations of pre-Columbian settlements, such as Cuzco or
Mexico. Spatial racial segregation was initially spontaneous, but became normative with

1
Philip II’s ordinances establishing the regime known as “the two republics”. Spaniards
and Indians were to be kept geographically and institutionally separated; even
“encomenderos” who owned land in Indian communities were forbidden to live in their
dominions. Only a couple of Spanish priests could reside in the villages and suburban
“barrios” where the native population was to be assembled (for the crown policy also
included urbanization of the Indians as a means towards their conversion,
“humanization”, and control. The strict geographical separation that the laws mandated
was partly inspired by the concern of the religious orders for the mistreatment that
Europeans inflicted on natives and by the “bad example” they set: drunkenness,
cheating, swearing, adultery, etc. But it was never fully effective. “Encomenderos”
(persons to whom the crown assigned the tributes of a certain Indian group, entrusting
them with its religious indoctrination) preferred to live amongst “their” Indians, small
merchants were reluctant to give up this lucrative market, and many Indians migrated to
Spanish cities to sell their labor or products, becoming yanaconas in Perú or naborías in
Mexico (both terms designate Indians free from their ties and obligations towards their
original communities). In this setting, miscegenation became frequent, generating a
gamut of “castas” (various combinations of white, Indian and African) that in time was
to grow ever more intricate. [4]

criollos pardos
INDIAN SPANIARD BLACK

mestizo mulato

coyote castizo morisco

indio español torna-atrás

tente-en-el aire
“the same as mulato”

lobo (zambo)

chino

albarazado

Figure 1: Castas in New Spain in 1774, according to Pedro Alonso O’Crowley (MS,
Madrid, Biblioteca Nacional, 4532)

Legally, only straightforward Indians belonged to the Indian republic; blacks and
all castas, together with displaced Indians in the cities, were absorbed by the Spanish
república, thus generating a society deeply divided, tortuously stratified and acutely
conflictive. By the 18th century, moreover, the lines separating castes had become
blurred and sinuous. The Indian population had diminished conspicuously; the whites
grew from 700.000 in 1650 to 8 million in 1825, but the castas had undergone a
veritable explosion, to number more than 10 million at the beginning of the 19 th century.

2
More and more, the complex differentiations of multiple groups was viewed in terms of
a simplified system: gente decente (decent people–the whites), gente de razón (people
with reason–the castas), and gente vil (vile people–Indian and slaves). But within the
“decent people” a rapidly deepening cleavage appeared between those born in Spain and
their American-born offspring, known as criollos. This fissure was to bring about the
early-19th-century independence movements.
Significant differences between the musical practices of the two republics are
apparent from the very outset, and were maintained throughout the Colonial period.

Indian parishes
The “Indian republic” was remarkably heterogeneous: it comprised parishes
reserved for the natives in Spanish urban centers, convents and chapels in the
settlements of sedentary Indians, and “doctrines” in which semi-nomadic or nomadic
groups were gathered and “reduced to civil life”. In spite of the glaring cultural
differences between ladinos (acculturated Indians) and “savages”, the general
procedures adopted for their control were remarkably homogeneous. Religious orders–
Dominicans, Augustinian, Franciscan, Mercedarians and Jesuits–were in the forefront of
this enterprise; the transference of their jurisdictions to secular priesthood, initiated by
the mid-sixteenth century was extremely slow and incomplete.
In these societies, music (like other manifestation of cultural and economic life)
retained a communitarian dimension that had not yet been driven out by the expansion
of proto-capitalist socio-economic relations. Although it is necessary to differentiate
between the Jesuit reducciones, on the one hand, and the doctrines manned by other
religious orders or the secular clergy, on the other, in all of them musical services were
render within the framework of an economy of reciprocity, where monetary gain (when
it did occur) was most often a secondary consideration.

Jesuit reductions
The villages founded and directed by the Company of Jesus present the purest
picture of this regime, since no money circulated within its ambitus. Beginning with an
experimental foundation in Juli on lake Titicaca (1576), the order managed to build a
huger complex of Indian towns stretching from Baja California to the Patagonia [5]. Not
all foundations were successful: many native ethnic groups were extremely refractory,
repeatedly deserting and destroying the missions. But at least in the areas of the
Guaraní, the Chiquitos, and the Mojos, a genuine “mission culture” 1 was born and
maintained for many decades, a culture that accorded music-making a central place.[6-
7]
The entire village (numbering from 300 to 2000) sang at various time of the day
devotional or catechistic monophonic songs. A large number of amateur musicians
performed in flutes-and-drums ensembles that enlivened journeys to and from the fields
they labored, provided music for informal dancing, and accompanied travelling parties.
More formalized ensembles, usually with shawms, cornetts and drums, provided open-
air ceremonial music; each military company (8 to each village) had its own band of
fifes, trumpets and snare-drums[8]. But the main musical institution was the capilla, the
musical chapel formed by some forty “professional” musicians and a half-dozen child
singers[9]. “Professional” has to be understood here in a particular sense. Since the
economy of the village was not based on money or barter, the musicians were not paid a
salary: rather, they were exempted from labor in the communal land, and only expected
to till their own plots for the sustenance of their families. In addition, they enjoyed great
1
Block****

3
prestige and power within the community, often acting as foremen or supervisors for
collective undertakings. Since they had the advantage of literacy (there was a school for
musicians in each village), their fellow citizens often asked their advice about important
decisions. In some areas, such as Mojos, musicians and a few other administrators
belonged to a closed group of interrelated families referred to as familia, which may be
likened to a nobility with a number of privileges over the rest of the in habitants, the
pueblo. Within the simple lifestyle of mission mojeños, they were favored, for example,
with double rations of meat (a communal resource with regular distributions). The
capilla had pride of place in processions and civic ceremonies. In return for their
advantages, musicians had exacting duties, performing for mass everyday and
maintaining a intense rehearsal schedule; many were also instrument builders.
Since the musical profession was an effective means of social advancements,
Jesuit authorities had to maintain strict vigilance over the staffing of the capillas:
documents attest to the need to reinforce once and again the ceiling of forty musicians
for each town. After the expulsion of the Jesuits, secular authorities noticed that the
musical organizations were swollen out of proportion, presumably by individuals who
were actually not musicians: removed from the close vigilant eye of the Jesuit overseer,
many who didn’t belong there had been incorporated in order to share in the fringe
benefits.
The constitution of the chapel orchestras initially included soft instruments like
viol, flute and dulcian consorts and loud ones like shawms and cornetts. In the first
decades of the 18th Century most of these were discarded in favor of the violin family,
supplemented with flutes and–later–horns and trumpets. Dulcians, organs, a multitude
of harps, in some regions guitars or lutes, and an occasional harpsichord complemented
the continuo group. The modernization of the instrumentarium matches the renovation
of the repertoire: the fluid contact of the Jesuits with their European headquarters made
it possible to keep up with developments and fashions in European music. Given the
small numbers of Jesuit musicians involved, however, this renewal was often carried on
by fits and starts rather than as a continuous process. Since many of the musician priests
were of Germanic or Italian extraction, the favored sources were the practices and style
of those regions; this constituted a signal difference with the Spanish traditions
prevailing elsewhere in America.[10-17] AUDIO

Other parishes
Indian parishes not comprised within the areas of Jesuit control were immersed
in a monetary economy. However, most of their musical activities were carried out
without monetary compensation for the performers. Salaried musicians (where they
existed) were few: perhaps the chapelmaster (maestro cantor) and a couple of
instrumentalists, mostly paid in kind (foodstuffs, coal, etc.). The rest of the players and
all of the singers performed without remuneration, being content with the tax-exempt
status that the musical profession carried with it since pre-Columbian days. Since taxes
could represent as much as 45% of a rural worker’s income, this was a convenient
transaction; besides, in a subsistence economy, an individual had small need of cash. In
addition to these considerations, principal musicians accrued an enormous capital in
terms of prestige. Maestros cantores, often drawn from the indios principales (Indian
nobility), were veritable lords of the church, acting like chiefs whenever the priest was
absent (note that many priests served more than one parish). They even went to the
expense of underwriting the musical expenses of the town, acquiring thus a prestige that
Spanish society only accorded to the Cacique. Musicians and other church officials
(painters, sacristans, cooks, secretaries) slowly came to form a new élite in Indian

4
society, replacing the traditional nobility with a new group of leaders who controlled the
tools for dealing with the hegemonic Spanish culture.
Within such a system, it was only to be expected that the musical world of each
parish would be fairly closed upon itself. Since prestige and barter of services played
such an important part in the functioning of musical practices, parishes tended to avoid
the long-term hiring of outsiders, preferring to spend on the musical training of its own
dwellers. On occasion, they could hire an outside professional for a limited time, so that
he could teach his art to some among the townspeople. But the prevailing practice was
geared towards the “natural” reproduction of local tradition. Thus, rural parishes tended
to preserve and perform old repertoires for long periods of time, as witness a few
surviving music books containing sixteenth-century repertoire still used in the late
eighteenth century.2 This inbreeding was probably responsible for early appearances of
musical traits that would later characterize local folk traditions. Examples could span
from the well known Hanacpachapcusicuinin, probably composed for the magnificent
chapel of Andahuaylillas in Cuzco province around 1610 to the villancico-yaraví “Una
pobre serranita” written around 1800 in the vicinity of Charcas, surely by an Indian
maestro cantor.3 [18-21] AUDIO The earliest significant collection of orally-
transmitted music, gathered by Bishop Martínez Compañón in the 1780s contains
several pieces that feed on this tradition [22] AUDIO
On the contrary, suburban Indian parishes were quite active in intra-city musical
interchange. Don Matías Livisaca, maestro cantor of the Cuzco parish of Santa Ana in
the early years of the eighteenth century, was the offspring of a distinguished and
wealthy Indian family. He operated in the real estate market of his and of other parishes;
he owned the mansion in which he resided as well as several haciendas in the country.
He was a patron of a chaplaincy and member of a confraternity. As a composer, he
provided music not only for his parish, but also to “white” establishments, such as the
nuns of Santa Catalina who bought some of his Psalms. Although his race would not
have permitted him to reach a high position within the Spanish republic, his circle of
colleagues and associates included its major figures: his will includes the gift of his
important music theory collection to Antonio Durán de la Mota, chapelmaster of the
Potosí cathedral.4
The instrumental make-up of Indian parish ensembles, excluding the Jesuit
missions, seems to have been fairly constant after ca. 1570. It is true that in the earliest
doctrines founded by the Franciscan order in New Spain the neophytes were taught to
build and perform on the entire gamut of then-current musical instruments: fray
Jerónimo de Mendieta lists flutes, shawms, sackbuts, crumhorns, trumpets, drums,
dulcians and organs among those apt for church usage, and violins (rabeles), guitars,
citterns, vihuelas, harps and harpsichords as those “for the enjoyment of lay people”. 5
Elsewhere he also mentions viole da gamba. But the near-Utopian Franciscan project,
2
El cuaderno de música de Domingo Flores, maestro de capilla de San Bartolo Yautepec (cerca de
Oaxaca) en 1719, está compuesto de varios fascículos unidos, algunos de los cuales (a juzgar por el estilo
musical y la notación) seguramente tenían más de cien años para ese entonces. Una anotación posterior
parece indicar que el cuaderno aún se usaba en 1786. Los libros de música de las doctrinas de los
Cuchumatanes en Guatemala perpetúan un repertorio aún anterior, aunque en este caso no hay datos
ciertos sobre su uso en el siglo XVIII.
3
Bernardo Illari, “The popular, the sacred, the colonial and the local: the performance of identities in the
villancicos from Sucre (Bolivia)”, in Tess Knighton and Álvaro Torrente, eds., Devotional music in the
Iberian World, 1450-1800 (********), pp. 429 ff.
4
Baker
5
Mendieta, (ver Felipe). “para solaz y regocijo de personas seglares”.

5
with its flamboyant music-making and the availability of music instruction to all strata
(and both sexes) of Indian society was cut short by the reforms of Philip II, around
1570. These reinforced the principles of social hierarchy, disallowing the instruction of
macehuales (a Nahua word denoting plebeians), and set much narrower limits to the
Indians musical activities. Consorts of flutes and shawms were only allowed in larger
towns; trumpets and drums were excluded from the church, and viols “and other
instruments” were totally banned. Double chapels that alternated duties by weeks and
multiple chapelmasters who served alternate years were abolished. One royal decree on
this matter justifies this curtailment on the grounds that [23]
in this land [New Spain] there is great excess and superfluity of musical
instruments and singers, with royal trumpets, trompetas bastardas, clarions,
shawms, sackbuts and trombones, flutes, cornetts, dulcian, fifes, viols, violins and
other genres of music that are commonly found in many monasteries. It is said
that this is growing, not only in large towns but also in small ones, and from this
ensue great harms and vices. The officials who play the said instruments, having
been raised at the monasteries, learning to sing and to play the said instruments,
are great idlers; from their childhood they know every woman in town and they
destroy married and single women. The same [happens with] singers, who in
many towns attempt to shake off due obedience to their superiors.6
After this shakedown, wind-instrument playing became the special province of
male Indian musicians, and parish ensembles limited themselves to flutes, shawms,
cornetts and dulcians, with organs and harps as providers of continuo harmonies.[24]
Their size varied greatly with the relative importance of the church that housed them,
but they were usually much smaller than the Jesuit chapels, and fittingly smaller than
those of the Spanish cathedrals.
All of the above refers to Native Americans playing European or Europe-
inspired music. It is true that many documentary sources make it appear as though these
were practically the only kind of sounds that were heard in Indian parishes. But there
are indications that traditional ethnic music was still much performed. During the
sixteenth century, controversy raged about the convenience of permitting the natives to
continue performing their traditional musics. Arguments in favor emphasize the
recreational value of many of their dances and songs, and the usefulness of their
melodies as vehicle for new texts conveying the main concepts of Christianity. Those
against it point out that, even when endowed with Christian lyrics and performed in
apparently Christian context, these tunes served as reminders and invocations of their
ancient deities. Mexicans mix [25]
within the sacred prayers songs of their heathenness … lowering their voices so
as not to be understood and raising it when they mention God… For it has

6
“Hay muy grande exceso y superfluidad en esta tierra y gran gasto con la diferencia de instrumentos de
música y cantores que hay con trompetas reales y bastardas, clarines, chirimías, sacabuches y trompones
[sic], y flautas, y cornetas, y dulzaina, pífanos y viguelas de arco y rabeles, y otros géneros de música que
comúnmente hay en muchos monasterios: lo cual todo diz que va creciendo, no solamente en los pueblos
grandes pero en los pequeños y de ellos se siguen grandes males y vicios: y porque los oficiales de ello y
tañedores de los dichos instrumentos como se crían de niños en los monasterios deprendiendo a cantar y
tañer los dichos instrumentos son grandes holgazanes, y desde niños conocen todas las mujeres del
pueblo, y destruyen las mujeres casadas y doncellas, y hacen otros vicios anexos a la ociosidad en que se
han criado, y lo mismo los cantores, y que en muchos pueblos pretenden relevarse de la obediencia de sus
cabezas.” Cedulario Indiano, compiled by Diego de Encinas, facsimile of the 1596 edition, 4 vols.
(Madrid: Cultura Hispánica, 1945), II:48.

6
 happened… that they dance around a holy cross, [but] under the earth beneath it,
their idols are concealed.7
The campaigns for “extirpation of idolatry” carried out especially in Perú
between the 1570s and 1610s attended to the latter arguments and rigorously enforced
the prohibition of most traditional music. Thereafter, musical practices of the natives
mostly disappear from the surface. We only encounter them again in force in the
second half of the eighteenth century, in an entirely different context: the reevaluation
of the popular and the local fostered by proto-romanticism and proto-independentist
movements.

Spanish cities and towns

The republic of Spaniards included huge metropolis like Mexico and hamlets
that barely supported the livelihood of a handful of settlers. Nevertheless, they were all
founded on an cultural concept that mimicked an ideal Spain and a real social structure
based on all-embracing racial stratification and exploitation. The “Spanish city” never
really existed, except on paper: the functioning of “white” society required the labor of
the host of natives, half-breeds and blacks who not only fulfilled menial tasks, but also
filled the gaps that signaled the difference between Spain and America.
America came nearest to Spain in its religious institutions for women.[26] The
convents founded by diverse orders functioned primarily as outlets for the unmarried
daughters of Spanish families, who were supposed to live there a life immersed in
prayer and sacred singing. Most of them gave primary importance to the nuns’ music-
making; [27] the most austere limiting themselves to plainchant, the most flamboyant
practicing up-to-date polyphony, instrumental music and contrafacta of secular songs. A
few, however (perhaps in imitation of the Madrid Encarnación and Descalzas Reales
convents) entrusted their musical services to a chapel of male musicians, either Indians
or black slaves. The interference of American reality with Iberian ideals was also
manifested in the convents’ servants, almost always nonwhite. The black or mulatto
personal maids of the nuns, who attended on them and ran errands to the outside world,
were also their entertainers at feast time, singing, dancing, acting and wearing
picturesque costumes.8
The main musical institution of Spanish America was, of course, the cathedral
chapel. In it, the European model was the guiding principle, but accommodations had to
be made for it to function in this new society, with its dearth of qualified Spanish
professionals and its abundance of ambitious musicians from the castas. [28] From the
16th century on, the practice developed of hiring occasional instrumentalists among the
schools for ministriles financed by the cathedrals. Already in 1530, canon Xuarez,
future chapelmaster of Mexico cathedral, was teaching music to some Indians who,
from 1538 onward were hired to play at the Christmas liturgy. 9 The music school for the
sons of church yanaconas in Cuzco taught in the 1580s not only the necessary
instrumental skills to perform in church, but also how to improvise counterpoint. 10 This
7
“entre las sacras oraciones que cantan, [mezclen] cantares de su gentilidad … abajando la voz para no
ser entendidos y levantándola cuando dicen Dios. … Porque ha contecido, según dicen religiosos de
mucho crédito, estar haciendo el baile alrededor de una cruz, y tener debajo della soterrados los ídolos”
Francisco Cervantes de Salazar, Crónica de la Nueva España, ed. Manuel Magallón y Agustín Millares
Carlo, 2 vols., Biblioteca de autores españoles, vols. 244-45 (Madrid: Atlas, 1971), II:151.
8
Córdoba
9
Stevenson, Mexico, págs. 135-36
10
Stevenson, Cuzco, págs. 2-4

7
practice developed into a system, wherewith Indians were regularly or occasionally
hired to supply the instrumental basis for festive church music. This was but an
adaptation of the peninsular model, in which the ministriles stood at the basis of the
social pyramid. Although cathedrals were normally parishes for Spaniards, this
happened both in those few cities in which dwellings for the natives had been
incorporated into the central city areas and in those where they had been relegated to the
periphery.
By the 18th century, becoming a instrumental musician in the service (be it
permanent or intermittent) of a cathedral was one of the few careers that allowed a
native to appropriate the dominant culture and use it as an avenue for his –limited–
social advancement. The necessary skills could be acquired within his own ethnic group
(in his parish chapel, for example); he could then enter the cathedral chapel as a
meritorio (trainee) and, with time and a modicum of luck, become a full member as a
ministril. The La Plata (present day Sucre) cathedral may be taken as representative of
the situation in the early eighteen hundreds: most of the ministriles carry Indian
surnames, and in documents they are always listed last; in the economic crisis that befell
the institution around 1710, their salaries and positions were the first casualties.11
Many more native musicians, however, benefitted from the occasional
opportunities afforded by solemn festivities. Cathedrals most often hired ensembles
rather than individuals, often from neighboring parishes; nonwhite performers thus had
a periodic source of income since the contracts were renewed year after year. Such
wind-bands made the rounds of patron-saint days in cities and towns, hired either by the
church, by confraternities or by civil authorities. Some prominent private nonwhite
citizens underwrote the expenses of such festivities, again for reasons of prestige within
their ethnic community.12
Black musicians were also an important group, especially in areas without a
massive Indian population. Initially they were slaves whose owner organized them into
bands; a case in point is the ensemble of the Jesuits from the College at Córdoba del
Tucumán, providing music for most of the celebrations of the cathedral, parishes and
convents of the city during the 17th and part of the 18th centuries. But in the final stretch
of Spanish rule, free blacks and all sorts of pardos began taking over the market for
music performance. These castes are more difficult to identify in documents, since they
took on Spanish surnames, but some texts reveal the extent of their invasion of the field:
[29]

…most of the singers who composed that chapel [of Guatemala Cathedral], were
formerly tax-paying Indians from the neighboring towns of Antigua Guatemala,
whose furnishings, house, nourishment and clothing is poor. This is at variance
from the present ones who, in spite of being pardos and quarter-breeds, differe
from the past ones in their dress and their way of life. 13

11
Bernardo tesis
12
Baker
13
…el mayor número de los cantores de que se componía dicha Capilla [de la Catedral], en otros tiempos
eran indios tributarios de los pueblos cercanos a la Antigua Guatemala, en los que se puede considerar su
calidad de ajuar, casa, sustento, y vestuario, como de gente tan pobre, distinto de los presentes [luego del
traslado de la capital], que aunque pardos y cuarterones, en su traje, y en su trato de vida, se di[ferencian]
mucho de los pasados. Document written by Rafael Castellanos in 1779. Guatemala, Archivo Histórico
Arquidiocesano T6SC15 #7, f. 1; cited in Dieter Lenhoff, Rafael Antonio Castellanos: Vida y obra de un
músico guatemalteco (Universidad Rafael Landívar, Instituto de Musicología, Guatemala, 1994)., p. 47.

8
 I take this to mean that, in the eyes of Spaniards and criollos, the castas
individuals, besides taking over jobs that were formerly not theirs, showed a greater
ambition for social climbing in their imitation of dress, manners and deportment of the
higher classes.
Further competition for traditional Indian ministriles and free instrumental
groups appeared in the central decades of the eighteenth century. When the chapels
began to replace dulcians and cornetts with string instruments, their training schools
became inadequate to provide the necessary musicians. The cathedrals found an
alternative source in the world of secular music, especially opera –a totally “white”
field. Italian immigrants led the invasion (Jerusalem in Mexico, Ceruti earlier in Lima),
followed by Spaniards and criollos.
By contrast with instrumentalists, the cathedral singers were almost exclusively
white. Indians, blacks and castas were legally blocked from the most usual path of
access, entering as a seise (choirboy) and continuing as a mozo de coro or acolyte. But
the norm wasn’t always applied strictly: the highly innovative composer Roque Jacinto
de Chavarría, a castizo (son of a Spaniard and a mestizo woman) was admitted to the
Sucre cathedral school as a seise in 169514. And adult Indian singers were occasionally
admitted to the chapel after rigorous examination, as was the case with the alto Baltasar
de Azevedo whom Sumaya approved for the cathedral of Oaxaca in 1741.
The presence of Indians and castas in the cathedral choirs surely had an effect
on performance practice. Although the scores preserved show no stylistic traits that
differentiate them from contemporary European music, some contemporary remarks
raise the suspicion that Indians introduced something of their own ways of singing and
playing into their realizations. In 1541, Motolinía wrote: [30]
Some people mocked and laughed at them, because they sang out of tune and
with feeble voices …, neither as strong or as smooth as those of Spaniards. …
They make shawms, but cannot tune them adequately15
A century and a half later, Anton Sepp was complaining that [31]
they sing well and in tune; their voices are not, however, as pure as ours,
especially in the soprano and bass. This may be due to the water ... that they
drink in their towns.16
A noteworthy and picturesque signal of the admixture of Indians and whites in
the cathedral chapel is afforded by the villancico “Fuera, háganles lugar” composed by
Roque Jacinto de Chavarría for Sucre. In this Christmas piece, the composer pleads for
admission of the Indian singers (represented by the first choir) to the presence of the
child Jesus. The Spaniards first reply with mockery and laughter, then graciously give
in. In the recording from which we will here some excerpts, an attempt is made to have

14
Bernardo tesis???
15
“Algunos se reían y burlaban de ellos, así porque parecían desentonados como porque parecían tener
flacas voces; y en la verdad no las tienen tan recias ni tan suaves como los españoles, y creo que lo causa
andar descalzos y mal arropados los pechos, y ser las comidas tan pobres”. … “Hacen también chirimías,
aunque no las saben dar el tono que han de tener” Fray Toribio de Benavente (Motolinía), Historia de los
indios de la Nueva España, ed. Claudio Esteva, Crónicas de América 16 (Madrid: Historia 16, 1985),
págs. 260-61.
16
“Pero cantan bastante bien y sin desafinar; sus voces no son, sin embargo, tan puras como las nuestras,
especialmente en el tiple y el bajo, tal vez por culpa del agua más o menos limpia y liviana que toman en
sus pueblos. “ Antonio Sepp, Jardín de flores paracuario, translated by W. Hoffmann, Obras, vol. 3 (Buenos
Aires: EUDEBA, 1974), pp. 197-8 (italics mine).

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the Indian choir ridiculed at the beginning (by exaggerating qualities of Indian singing
practices), and acquiring Spanish manners towards the end. AUDIO[32-33]

The pinnacle of the cathedral music structure, the post of chapelmaster, was
regularly reserved for Spaniards of European birth. The selection process for this
position generally conducted in a very punctilious way in peninsular Spain, had to
tolerate a number of irregularities in the New World. There was very seldom an open
oposición (competition) with several entrants, as was the Spanish norm. In fact, when a
chapelmaster died, there seldom was any individual that met the post’s requirements in
thousands of miles around. The appointment was therefore made directly by the chapter,
and its beneficiaries were either senior members of the chapel or a Spaniard who was
inducted in Europe ad hoc, his journey to America financed by the cathedral treasury.
Perhaps as a consequence of this irregularity, chapelmasters were almost never admitted
to the chapter. Very few attained the dignity of canons, a only a few more became
racioneros (members without vote, the prevalent arrangement in peninsular Spain). In
contrast to Spanish precedent, many of them had not been ordained priests, and of those,
a large number were married. The rigid requirement of limpieza de sangre (blood
purity) was not enforced–at least, non in the Spanish sense of cristiano viejo, not
descending from converted Moors or Jews. All that really mattered was that the
candidate’s racial background was white, and even this norm was bent (not without
disturbance) in the earlier part of Spanish domination. Diego Lobato, a mestizo, was
ordained a priest in 1566 and appointed chapelmaster of Quito Cathedral in 1574,
through the good offices of Bishop Pedro de la Peña, a militant supporter of Indian
advancement. The chapter and the local clergy hotly protested his designation, taking
their objections all the way to the king. Although their complaints were not heeded, they
managed to begrudge him salary and recognition, bringing up the subject of his impure
origins over and over. In spite of powerful supporters in the civil and religious structure,
he was never made a canon. 17 In 1575 another mestizo, Gonzalo García Zorro, made it
to the chapelmastership of Bogotá Cathedral. A skillful political operator (and
apparently a lousy musician18), he fought in Spain and in Rome against the local
chapter, finally obtaining in 1599 their recognition of his royal appointment as a
canon.19 Meanwhile, a royal decree of 1578 had forbidden the ordination of mestizos as
priests. 20
Exceptional was in the seventeenth century the case of the Zapotec Indian Juan
Matías, named chapelmaster of Oaxaca on account of his outstanding musical
achievement. In the eighteenth, the emerging power and prestige of the criollos vis a vis
17
Ver Mario Godoy Aguirre, “La música en la catedral de Quito: Diego Lobato de Sosa”, Revista
Musical de Venezuela 34 [1997]:83-94.
18
otro observador, Juan Pacheco, declaró que “si se pierde en la voz que va cantando no sabe volver a
entrar”José Ignacio Perdomo Escobar, El archivo musical de la catedral de Bogotá (Bogotá: Instituto
Caro y Cuervo, 1976), 11-12. No debemos perder de vista el hecho que estos juicios se emitieron en un
proceso contencioso; Egberto Bermúdez ("El Archivo de la catedral de Bogotá: Historia y repertorio",
Revista Musical de Venezuela 34 [1997]:53-74;56) alude a diferencias significativas en los textos
correspondientes entre las copias conservadas en el Archivo de Indias y en el Archivo General de la
Nación de Bogotá.
19
Sobre García Zorro, ver Robert Stevenson, “Colonial Music in Colombia”, The Americas, XIX/2
(1962):121-36. Traducido como “La música colonial en Colombia”, Revista musical chilena, XVI/81-82
(1962):153-71
20
Cedulario Indiano, recopilado por Diego de Encinas, facsímil de la edición de 1596, 4 vols. (Madrid:
Cultura Hispánica, 1945), IV:344.

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the peninsular Spaniards can be gauged by the growing numbers of American whites
who achieved the status of chapelmaster: Antonio de Salazar in Puebla and México
(already in the final decade of the previous century), Esteban Salas in Santiago de Cuba,
José de Orejón y Aparicio in Lima, Manuel de Sumaya in Mexico, Blas Tardío and
Manuel de Mesa in La Plata.
One more religious institution of the Spanish colonies cannot be omitted: the
cofradías or confraternities. [34] These societies of lay men, each one under the
advocacy of a particular saint, were perhaps more present in the daily life of most
people than any other. They mirrored the deep racial divisions of colonial society in
their structure: there were cofradías de españoles, de indios,[35] de pardos, de negros y
mulatos. Their musical activities, not sufficiently studied up to now, constituted a
constant feature of daily life and invaded all parts of the urban space with their feasts
and processions. They provided particularly good opportunities for the cultivation of the
traditional ethnic music and dances of blacks. The reiterated prohibitions of the musical
and choreographic manifestations of blacks and pardos all along the period and
throughout the vast American geography are witnesses to the constant vitality of
practices of African provenance, hidden by the lack of sources but highly influential in
the emergence of international dance genres (such as the saraband) and in the shaping of
latter-day folk traditions.
Finally, we have to make at least passing reference to secular music in the public
and domestic spheres.[36] In this sparsely documented area, Indians are seldom if ever
mentioned. Spaniards and criollos were inveterate guitar and harp players to accompany
their singing and dancing in social gatherings [37]. When concert and theatrical music
acquire volume and presence, in the second half of the eighteenth century, black and
pardo independent musicians often appear staffing orchestras and chamber ensembles
or teaching music and dance to the children of the bourgeois[38]. Much earlier,
however, are the strong influences of black dancing on “decent” society. Forever object
of criticism, repression and censure, by the late 16 th century they had already exerted a
strong influence on the social dances of the whites to such an extent that Afro-American
dance genres crossed the Atlantic and became fashionable in Europe. This is a slippery
subject that has resulted in some heated controversy, but there is a good chance that the
Chacone and the Sarabande originated in this way. The music of blacks and pardos lies
almost completely submerged for the entire period of Colonial rule; when it starts to
emerge into the light [39] during the 19th century it forms the basis of the numerous
popular genres now associated with Latin America, from the Cuban son to the
Uruguayan murga. Given the historical low status of the black and mulatto, and the
present rush to vindicate their achievements, it is only to be expected that controversy
would also rise with respect to the part played by men of African descent in several of
these genres. Most notably, tango has been construed alternatively (and aggressively) as
lily-white and as a largely black creation.
To conclude, then [40]: race, caste, and social status were decisive factors in the
musical options available to individuals in Spanish America during the colonial period.
Distinct but overlapping musical worlds were simultaneously present in the continent,
configuring a rich and multifarious practice, quite different from the contemporary
scenes in Europe.

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