Music in the Colonial "Republic of Indians": appropriations,

resistance, success stories

Musicology's interest in Latin American Colonial music started with two foci:
pre-Columbian musical practices and instruments (a field restricted by the scarcity of
evidence) and cathedral music in the main Spanish settlements. Recently, attempts
have been made and inroads have appeared to widen the scope of inquiry, to cover
other areas: smaller musical institutions and secular musical practices in Spanish
towns (including the music of black Americans) on one side, and the República de
Indios on the other. This was the legal umbrella that covered rural and urban
settlements of the aboriginal ethnic groups, subject to laws and customs different from
those of the Spaniards. Their musical practices, variously described as worthy of
comparison with the best in Europe or as poor and miserable, are worthy of study for
their originality, their status as places of (unbalanced) cultural transfers, and the
mechanics of their subaltern position. Musical manuscripts and verbal documents
discovered in the last decades give us an opportunity to glimpse at this interesting and
multifarious world.
 Warning: Use of Indians and colonial

MUSIC IN THE COLONIAL "REPUBLIC OF INDIANS":

APPROPRIATIONS, RESISTANCE, SUCCESS STORIES

Why is music in the Indian Republic interesting?

Music in Colonial Latin America was for many decades a forgotten item. The
founders of the new American nation-states, in their desire to break free from what
they perceived as Spanish decadence and obscurantism, embraced French culture and
became avid consumers of Italian and German musical styles and products. Even
though in the first decades of independence, musical life still centered on the largely
Spanish-inspired music played and sung in the churches, the writing of history
ignored this "shameful" lingerings and concentrated on the initial babblings of local
concert music in theatres, salons and academies.
It was not until the central decades of the 20th century that the new republics
began to show some interest in their colonial musical past, but even then the lion's
share of the necessary research was conducted by ousiders: the German
emigré Francisco Curt Lange and the North-American Robert Stevenson. Only when
the search for roots became a matter of national concern, in the second half of the
century, did Latin American intellectuals join in the process of investigating, bringing
to light and performing the music of our remote past. The focus was placed
exclusively on the musical practices of Spanish or—as it was then called—"white"
society, and on the monuments they have left in the shape of musical scores
performed in the great cathedrals of the main cities. This was a natural result of the
concerns of European and North-American musicology: the history of music was
understood as a project to elucidate the great works of great composers, by plotting
their position within a linear development. EXAMPLE CATHEDRAL
The labours of these decades detected a handful of outstanding figures,
surrounded, as in the European models, by a cohort of so-called “minor composers”.
But they failed to detect what nationalist intellectuals were craving for: national
musical schools with country-specific styles. |Despite some manipulation of facts and
widespread wishful thinking, this music refused to sound local and would not display
Americanness. At this juncture, post-modern trends came to the rescue, de-centering
the focus away from the great cathedrals, proposing the study of everyday musical
life, examining the circumstances and meanings of musical experience for
contemporary individuals and groups.
This entailed not only smaller “white” institutions such as convents or parishes
but also the musical activities of natives subject to Spanish rule. Whether or not by
coincidence, important new discoveries of musical sources were made in different
areas of the Americas from the 1970s to 2000s, so that this study could go beyond
general performance descriptions to the study of actual music. Although this does not
yet meet the—by now outdated—expectations of providing the basis for a “national
music”, it does reveal signal differences with respect to European musical traditions.
It is also a privileged site for the study of cultural interaction between hegemonic
practices and various forms of local resistance, deliberate or unwitting.
The republics
As is well known, the Spanish territories in America were supposed to be
divided into two republics with distinct legal regimes: república de españoles and
república de indios or naturales. This quasi-geographic division was never wholly
effective, but will do for our purposes. Perhaps the most noteworthy feature of the
Indian Republic is its diversity: it covered urban parishes peopled by natives, mostly
but not always in the outskirts of cities as well as rural areas where the Indians were
more or less successfully grouped into doctrinas. Its population covered a gamut that
embraced the highly-sophisticated cultures of the former great Inca and Aztec empires
and the less structured societies of agriculturist-gatherers such as the Guaraní or the
Chiquito, as well as groups of nomadic hunters such as the abipón or the charrúa.
Secular priests shared with religious orders the spiritual care of these
populations. Since the middle of the XVIth century the trend was to transfer most of
the urban parishes to the secular church, but large areas outside the main Spanish
cities were left under the care of Franciscans, Agustinians, Mercedarians and Jesuits.
In these cases, the priests came to fulfil many governmental functions besides their
spiritual duties. Most famous among these, and most distinguished for their musical
prowess, were the Jesuit reductions in the Paraguay, Perú and México provinces
(MAP 4)
From the very beginning in the early 16th century, priests noted the usefulness
of musical practice for their objective of conversion, given the happy disposition of
the natives for the assimilation of European music. Once and again they extolled what
they called their musical "talent" or "intelligence", manifested in a facility for learning
to sing, to play and to build instruments, and in the short time they took to master the
most difficult pieces. From their texts emerges an image of Indians avidly flocking to
hear and learn European music, impelled by a "passion for music" and helped by their
natural genius that makes them "sing by instinct, like a bird". Hyperbole and legend
apart, it is clear that in many Indian towns and hamlets there emerged a musico-
liturgical practice staffed and usually directed by natives. The reasons for the natives'
eagerness to absorb European-style music are difficult to fathom, but may be linked to
the belief, common among many of these ethnic groups, on the transcendent power of
ritual song. The music of the powerful Spaniards must be a mighty music indeed,
worth learning in order to gain some of that force. In some of the newer or smaller
centres, this meant no more than two or three musicians, often leading unison singing
by the community. But the larger and more established institutions could boast of
choirs and orchestras of several dozen accomplished singers and players, and of
soloists that could handle the most demanding European repertoire of the period.
Before going any further, I must acknowledge that I am leaving out of
discusssion the many traditional native musical practices [PRECOLOMBINO
MEXICO 5] that continued to be cultivated in the Americas all through the period,
and some of which have survived until the 21st century. The many Indian groups still
out of the reach of the Spanish empire, of course, maintained their inherited music-
making. Many of those who lived within colonised areas attempted to hold on to their
songs and dances, to the bafflement of their missionaries: were these relics of Indian
culture concealed rituals of pagan worship, or were they simple, harmless
entertainment? [PRECOLOMBINO PERU 6 ]This controversy raged on and off for
200 years, with a peak in the early decades of the 17th century coinciding with the
brutal campaign to "extirpate idolatries" in Peru. It was never satisfactorily resolved;
since most missionaries and doctrina priests simply followed their best judgement on
this matter, traditional Indian musical practices often found a place in missions and
towns. Seldom mentioned in the documents, they persisted in time and doubtlessly
affected the emergence of folk musics late in the 18th Century.

Institutions and functions

Music-making in the Indian Republic was carried out at many levels by
different institutions. Although in the rest of this presentation I will be talking almost
exclusively about religious music for Church services, let me briefly mention other
kinds of pieces in the European tradition that were a signal part of the soundscape.
Songs and dances for entertainment were performed by soloists and informal
ensembles of violins, various flutes, harps, drums and all sorts of plucked string
instruments. The Spanish guitar and the lute family left a whole array of descendants
in the Indian villages, perhaps most notably the charango, made with the carcass of an
armadillo. [foto charango; indios de martínez compañón]
At a more formal level, in some towns there were more-or-less permament
ensembles in charge of music at state functions: the annual election of the Indian city-
council (called Cabildo), the ceremonial visits of the cacique to the namesakes of a
saint on his feast, the reception of outside dignitaries. These ensembles were similar in
function to the European town waits and, like them, were composed of loud
instruments, suitable for outdoor performances. Shawms, cornetts and drums were the
most often used; their descendants in the Chiquitos townships of Bolivia still
accompany the Cabildo with their flutes and drums: they are called "pitocas",
meaning pipers. PICTURES Santa Ana video 37-38 minutos
The Guaraní and the Chiquito, occupying strategic positions in the border
between the Spanish and Portuguese empires, were allowed at some point to establish
armed militias. These had their own military bands, with fifes and other wind and
percussion instruments. DIAPO SAN JUAN
But the most noteworthy institution was the musical chapel of the parish
church. This was the most structured and most European musical group, the members
of which enjoyed privileges and prestige. In urban contexts, this meant exemption
from taxes and mandatory labour; in the Jesuit areas marked by a non-monetary
economy, it afforded a degree of authority and a higher participation in the
distribution of goods such as meat and metal tools. Chapel musicians (and especially
the chapelmaster and organist) belonged to the social and intellectual élite of the
town, since they could generally read and write Spanish and served as links between
their people and "white" authorities. Only a few of them, mostly in larger city
parishes, could be called "professional musicians", in the sense that they were payed
something like a full-time salary for their musical labour. The vast majority received
only occasional monetary rewards, but this was not so important in rural economies
with slight degree of monetisation: their performances implied a participation in
community affairs at the highest status-level, and thus their retribution would also
come from the community in the guise of labour and goods.
In Spanish cities, the high status of Indian musicians within their community
sometimes spilled over to "white" society. Thus the chapel master of the Santa Ana
Indian parish in Cuzco, Don Matías Livisaca, was an active operator in the real estate
market of his and neighbouring parishes. Besides the stately house in which he lived,
he owned two more in the city and two lucrative country estates. He was patron of a
chapel foundation, and prominent member of a confraternity. He used to sell his
musical compositions to a convent of "white" nuns, and in his will he bequeathed his
outstanding library of music-theory books to the Potosí chapelmaster Antonio Durán
de la Mota. Had he developed his career at a "white" institution such as the Cathedral
chapel, his race would not have allowed much progress, but from his base at an
Indian-institution, he could operate at a high level of riches and prestige.
In the Jesuit reducciones, the missionaries relied heavily on the musicians for
governance and discipline. When the Order was expelled from Spanish dominions in
1767, their role as intermediaries with the new administrators gave them even greater
powers. Miguel Yelmani, chapelmaster of San Pedro de Mojos, appears in 1786 as a
commercial intermediary in deals with both Spaniards and Portuguese merchants. In
1791 he is charged with the book-binding of three missals; he also appears as a
witness representing the cacique and the judges of his village in an inventory of the
whole province’s yearly production, in 1792 as the beneficiary of a prize awarded by
Governor Lázaro de Ribera. In 1790 he is named as the person responsible for the
safekeeping of instruments and scores, and, as Secretary to the Cabildo, keeper of the
keys to all shops and warehouses of the community. It is he who draws up the
inventories and documents.

History and functions of the chapels

The history of Indian musical chapels starts with a veritable explosion in 16 th-
Century Mexico. Friar Pedro de Gante and the Franciscan “12 apostles” that arrived in
the 1520s founded hundreds of small churches in which European sacred music was
taught and practiced daily. Their success as music teachers was so meteoric that 50
years later TEXT

… there is not a hamlet so small that it will not have at least 3 or 4 Indians who
sing in its church the Hours of Our Lady
… There is no kind of music in God’s Church that is not practiced by the
Indians in their main settlements, and they manufacture all [their instruments]
… In all the Christian Kingdoms (outside the Indies) there is not such an
abundance of flutes, shawms, sackbuts, crumhorns, trumpets and drums as in
this province of New Spain…1
TEXT
… All masses and most offices are sung in all [these] churches, in plainsong
and in polyphony, and it sounds well; in some of these towns where there is
more curiosity and abundance, the Church offices are conducted with as great
and solemn musical display as in many of the great Spanish cathedrals 2
To teach music and instrumental practice, the friars employed a number of lay
Spanish musicians who had come to the New World seeking their fortune; however,
by the final decades of the century the education of new singers, composers and
instrumentalist had passed to Indian hands, in a teacher-student chain that became the
norm for all the territories and for the next two centuries; the lessons were imparted
daily in a school beside the church.

This Utopian musical realm could not go on indefinitely: by 1570 several

ordinances of Philip II cracked down on the system, trying to bring it under control.
The advantages for the musicians were so great that every Indian wanted to become
1
Fray Gerónimo de Mendieta: Historia eclesiástica indiana, estudio preliminar y edición de Francisco
Solano y Pérez-Lila, 2 vols. (Madrid: Biblioteca de Autores Españoles, 1973), Libro IV, Cap. 14
2
Joaquín García Izcabalceta (ed.): Códice franciscano (México: Salvador Chávez Hayhoe, 1941), p. 58
one, or to pass as such, thereby subtracting much tax revenue and labour force from
the Crown and from powerful Spanish settlers. Besides, musicians had gained a
reputation for troublemaking, offending the modesty of maidens and disrespecting
authority. Limits were set to the size and expense of chapels: no longer could a small
hamlet boast of a splendid musical chapel. From that time on panegyrics of Indian
music in urban parishes become scarce, and the practice settles into a kind of
subterranean life as far as chronicles and histories are concerned. But recent
researches have shown that the seeds planted had been vigorous and the terrain fertile.
Native communities continued to sustain musical services in their churches until the
end of Spanish rule, even though “whites” did not seem to notice and certainly did not
care.
The limelight shifted in the 17th and 18th centuries to the music-making of the
Indians under Jesuit tutelage. This was due in great part to the effective propaganda
campaign carried out by the Society of Jesus and addressed at recruiting new
missionaries and rallying support for their American enterprise. The musical feats of
their wards were exhibited in Europe as proof of the success of the endeavour to
"humanize" the savages—that is to make them as European as possible. In music, as
well as in other aspects of their project, the extent of this success was in fact quite
uneven, depending mainly of two variables: proximity to European populations and
sedentariness of the groups to be converted. Where the Spaniards were kept far away
and the natives were agriculture-dependent, the achievements were truly remarkable.
Life in the mission towns was saturated with music of different sorts. Every
day, early in the morning, at the tolling of the Ave Maria bell, the drummers
performed at the central square to summon the population. Before mass, boys aged 7
to 17 and girls up to 15 years old gathered in the atrium of the church to chant
responsorially the daily prayers and devotional songs in the vernacular. Upon the
opening of the gates, they entered singing the Alabado3 in Spanish or in their local
tongue, followed by the whole population (churches were built large enough for
everybody to fit inside).
Daily mass, although spoken and not chanted by the priest, was accompanied
by the choir, the organ and the rest of the orchestral instruments. Sonatas, concertos
and organ verses functioned as musical background and the whole chapel performed a
Vespers psalm, a hymn, motet or aria. After mass, adults went to labor their field, to
the accompaniment of flutes and drums; boys and girls gathered in the courtyard to be
instructed in Catholic doctrine by means of songs in the vernacular. Evening services
included at least a sung Rosary, a Salve regina and the Alabado in either Spanish or the
indigenous language, and a session for the children of antiphonally-sung doctrine either
in the church courtyard, or around the cross in the center of the town square. 4 In the early
years, we hear praises of the euphony that could be heard each evening, coming from
“all around the village, [of] a harmonious consonance of voices (no less pleasant to
God’s ears than the best-concerted hymns) of all the inhabitants, who, raising their hands
from their labors, intone from their houses the prayers and songs that they learn with the
doctrine”.5 The weekly rhythm was also marked by musico-liturgical events,
3
A popular Spanish devotional song in praise of the Holy Sacrament.
4
This is the location specified also for the guaraní ca. 1640 by Francisco Jarque, Insignes misioneros
de la Compañía de Jesús en la Provincia del Paraguay (Pamplona: Juan Micòn, 1687), pp. 357-58.
5
“... suena en todo el pueblo una acordada consonancia de voces (no menos grata a los oydos de Dios
que los mas bien concertados himnos) de todos los de él, que alzando manos de obra entonan desde sus
casas en voz alta las oraciones y cantares que aprenden en la doctrina”. Nicolás Mastrilli [=Durán]:
“Duodécima Carta ... 1628), in Cartas Anuas de la Provincia del Paraguay, p. 266.
culminating with the Saturday service for the Virgin, sung throughout: mass of Our
Lady, Salve regina and litanies.
The liturgy for feast days was more elaborate, including solemn music for
First Vespers. The faithful were summoned to church by trumpets and shawms, at
least in the guaraní area. Besides hearing sung mass, with choir and orchestra, the
neophytes recited their doctrine. In a second mass, held for those who had attended to
the sick during the first one, only instrumental music was performed. Many feasts
included parades, processions, dances or pantomimes, as well as dramatic productions
in Spanish or the Indian language. The main celebrations were Palm Sunday, Holy
Week, Corpus Christi, Christmas, St Ignatius, St Francis Xavier, and the patron saint
of each village. The written repertoire of the Guaraní missions has been almost
entirely lost, but the successive chapelmasters of several towns in Chiquitos have
fortunately saved their music papers, now housed in two main Bolivian archives:
Concepción de Ñuflo de Chávez and San Ignacio de Mojos.
The musicians of the Indian republic were often required by the Spanish
republic to participate in its celebrations. This was generally considered a political
necessity, because it represented the harmonious conjunction of the two republics into
the political body of the Kingdom. In some cases this became a formal rule: the La
Plata City Council charged the cacique of the parish of San Lázaro with the duty of
organizing Indian songs and dances for every civic celebration of the coming years.

Repertory
Since I am talking about nearly three centuries of music, it is obvious that the
repertories performed changed drastically, from the a cappella polyphony of the
Renaissance to the opera-like concert masses of a budding Romanticism around 1800.
This entailed, of course a corresponding change in instrumentarium: broadly
speaking, from a few wind instruments to complement the human voices to a full
Classical orchestra, centred on the violin family. Nevertheless, the closed nature of the
tradition in many of these chapels, with little circulation of musicians to the outside
world, meant that repertories lived much longer than in the cathedrals. Since the
transmission was as much oral as written, pieces would slowly incorporate subtle
changes that adapted them to local sensibility and local preferences. These
adjustments may be considered the final mark of a true appropriation of European
music by each Indian group. Unfortunately, very few instances of performance of
colonial repertoire have been recorded, so that we can have a very imperfect idea of
what was involved in this takeover. The Jesuit missions were special in that, from
time to time, a missionary came from Europe with instructions to modernise music,
that is, to bring it more in line with contemporary European taste.
COMMUNAL DOCTRINAL SONG
The most pervasive kind of music in the Indian republic was neither
professional nor sophisticated; it consisted of simple songs, often in the local Indian
language. The melodies were sometimes composed by one of the priests, but more
commonly they were secular or religious European folk tunes adapted to words in the
native tongue. Since many of Jesuits came from Central Europe, the South American
woods resounded with Austrian ländler as well as Spanish saetas. Under the name of
"tonos" or "coplas", they were used for recitation of the doctrine, for songs about the
life of Jesus, the Virgin and the saints that the children sang several times a day.
Father Marbán in Mojos composed sixty-odd stanzas on the story of the Passion in the
local language; Father Havestadt published nineteen ditties in mapuche. Communally-
sung music harmoniously blends evangelization, acculturation and community spirit.
This may be why it managed so tenaciously to survive among the Indian population.
[VIDEO ALABADO santiago]
SIMPLE STYLE
They comprise the vast majority of the preserved repertory.
In the early years, these were undemanding villancicos in Spanish or the local
vernacular for three or for voices. By the 18th century, they were straightforward solo
songs, accompanied by a keyboard or another basso continuo. In all cases they were
structured as strophic pieces, where a single and fairly short musical section serves for
many stanzas of text. The processional Hanacpachap cussicuinin is a well-known
example of this category. Although it has been widely acclaimed as an early example
of national music that fuses quechua pentatonic scales with European harmony, it is in
fact an arrangement of a well known Spanish song, as may be seen in the slide.
[IMAGEN y AUDIO HANACPACHAP]
The music of Hanacpachap as notated, therefore, is Spanish through and
through, with no hybridity built into it. Performance matters are a different thing,
however, and modern ensembles have managed to make it sound strongly mestizo.
Another one of these simple pieces will serve as an illustration of the process
of adaptative appropriation that I have talked about. The bilingual “Dulce Jesús mío /
Iyai Jesucristo” was introduced by the Jesuits in the early 18 th century, with two
stanzas in Spanish followed by four in Chiquitano, of which the first two were free
translations of the Spanish text. It is a song of repentance where the sinner
acknowledges his immense guilt and asks Jesus for mercy. It was sung during
Maundy Thursday processions at twilight time, as the third in a series of six musical
pieces ending in the Miserere mei Deus psalm. Like the entire Holy Week repertory, it
was sung a cappella. AUDIO E IMAGEN We have few data concerning the
transmission of this piece after the expulsion of the Jesuit order. But a copy dating
from 19th century and several recordings taken in 1991-1993 let us hear how each
locality has shaped it to suit its distinct identity. In all cases we find one-voice
versions.

1) In Santa Ana de Velasco, where the succession of chapelmasters seems to

have suffered no consequential breaks, the last bearer of that title, Januario
Soriocó, sings it in a bilingual version similar to the earliest Jesuit scores.
AUDIO E IMAGEN
2) In Santiago de Chiquitos, a town where many criollos settled in the early
nineteenth century, we can hear during the Patron Day’s procession a Spanish-
texted version. The meter has changed from simple triple (3/4) to compound
duple (6/8), and the regular patterning of the rhythm is emphasized. The vocal
production is typically European. The result is a criollo version of the song. .
AUDIO E IMAGEN
3) In San Antonio de Lomerío, instead, it has acquired traits of indigenous
Chiquitano music. Lomerío is said to have been settled by refugees from the
former Jesuit pueblos, fleeing the enslavement in Spanish haciendas and the
forced recruitment as workforce for the rubber boom in the North. The disarray
that this dispersion entailed and the gradual weakening of the musicians’ ability
to read made oral tradition the sole vehicle for the survival of the repertory, or
some of its component parts. It was rescued from that moribund tradition by one
 violinist/singer from that village, Pedro Chubé. Pedro and his wife María,
together with some friends, formed the ensemble Sütobusimia in order to
perform the still surviving ancient songs and the reconstructions, according to
their memories, of musics heard in childhood from their grandparents. We were
not able to find out to which of these two categories “Iyai Jesucristo” belonged,
but this is the version that Irma Ruiz and I recorded in the village in July 1991.
AUDIO E IMAGEN
The piece has changed enormously. The clear ternary meter has been replaced
by a non-metric rhythm, with pulses whose length is neither isochronous in
succession nor identical for all performers. The vocal production is
characteristic of the Chiquitano religious tradition: with tense necks and lips that
hardly part, the singers give forth a vibrato-less, strident, “uncovered” sound.
The four-voiced texture of the original has been reduced, starting like the
soprano of the four-voiced piece. reproducing then the first two measures of the
tenor part and concluding with a turn reminiscent of the alto part. The voices are
doubled by violin and traverse flute (burrirr); these instruments add brief semi-
improvised preludes and postludes, common to the entire Chiquitano musical
tradition.
4) In the San Calixto Archive of La Paz, I have found a “Tata Jesucristo”, a
Mojeño adaptation of the Chiquitano “Iyai Jesucristo”.  As I have shown
elsewhere, all written records of 18th- and 19th-century music by Mojeño
Indians share a number of traits: binary meter, sixteenth-note upbeats, and
marked oxytone accentuation. All of these may be found in the San Calixto
version, including the mis-accentuation of “Jesuchristó” and “calvarió”.

The notable diversity we find in four variants deriving from the same source
shows that the music brought over from Europe by the Jesuits was subjected to a
strong process of localization through performance and through oral and written
traditions. There could not be a more patent demonstration of appropriation: each
ethnic group, each community captured this powerful spiritual tool and slowly
transformed it so that its potency could be turned to their own uses, so that it
conformed to their deeply-felt patterns of being. Thus did “Dulce Jesús mío” become
a Creole, Chiquitano and Mojeño prayer, and thus did the Jesuits’ Christian
spirituality work its way to the cultural core of these peoples.

ELABORATE STYLE
By the mid-16th Century, the larger establishments could handle polyphonic
masses and motets for five and more voices. The restraints later imposed on them
seem to have curbed the capacity of most Indian chapels; one indicator is that we
don't hear much about performances of polychoral music, the most prized practice in
contemporary cathedrals and monasteries.
The large Indian chapels of the Jesuit's Paraguay province, however, gained in
splendour so that by the mid-18th Century they were performing large psalms, litanies
and masses with elaborate parts for soloists, massive choirs and modern orchestras.
CONFITEBOR
THEATRICAL PIECES
These have survived only in Archives from the Jesuit missions, but were
current also in other areas. They range from mere adaptations of existing works to suit
the plot of a religious drama, to one surviving full-fledged drama with music, to
which the label "opera" has been applied.

The transmission of the repertoire: sources and notation

Until fairly recently, accounts of the music in the Indian Republic had to rely
on verbal documentation: literary descriptions, letters, expense rolls. The only musical
source available was the one we heard, Hanacpachap. But in the last decades of the
20th century several large collections of musical notation began to surface. They came
from rural areas that were just beginning to develop communication networks with
national and global society. In the tropical Cuchumatán highlands of Guatemala, a
dozen choirbooks copied around 1600 preserved an even earlier repertoire; in the
savannahs of eastern Bolivia the Indian community unwillingly surrendered huge
collections of partbooks containing 18th and 19th century repertoire; in several
hamlets near Oaxaca (Mexico) researchers found small-format choirbooks with a
17th-Century repertoire. In most cases, the sources showed that their music was being
performed much later than its date of composition or copy; often until the late 20th
century.
The documents are distinctive. Those copied by the Jesuits show a number of
accessory details that helped in teaching musical notation and figured-bass realization
DIAPOS 29 Y 30 . The ones copied by Indians are graphically idiosyncratic; they
often reveal the coarseness of writing tools, the lack of practice of the scribes,
DIAPO 31 the variant pronunciations of Latin and Spanish words. DIAPO 32 The
scarcity of paper in some of these villages meant that many empty spaces were filled
with annotations or used to practice handwriting. DIAPO 33 ].
In later stages, copyists could no longer read music, but kept reproducing the
shapes of staves and notes as the perpetuation of a ritual. In turn, singers who cannot
read music, hold fast to these notations in their peculiar performances: the music
papers have become hallowed objects that validate and give meaning to the religious
ceremony. VIDEO .

Role in establishing folk traditions

By the end of the 18th Century, in different regions of the Kingdom, we
witness the emergence of what Mexicans christen as "sones de la tierra", tunes of the
land. These forerunners of today's Latin American folk musics are discussed in the
press, banned by the higher ecclesiastical authorities, promoted by low-level priests,
written down by collectors. Although many of them are secular and even irreverent,
several of the few examples to have been preserved are religious, presumably the
work of Indian or mestizo chapelmasters, the heirs of the local traditions of adaptative
appropriation. Thus the religious musical tradition of the Indian republic played an
important role in the creation of national folk repertoires. I will conclude with the
performance of one of these, a Cachua to be performed in church during the
Christmas matins ceremony.
[diapo y AUDIO DENNOS LICENCIA SEÑORES