Music In Aztec Inca Territory

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1976.

This volume examines how the search for "cultural authenticity," the dispute over the past, and the role of "modernity" have been instrumental in building the regional musical culture of the Mantaro Valley, a central Peruvian region with about half a million inhabitants. How these people have addressed concerns over the loss of ancient traditions by restructuring colonial and pre-Hispanic traditions into new contexts and forms is explored. Covering private and public music making, along with ritual, ceremonial, and popular uses of music, Romero studies the interaction of music and identity. The book is concerned with a modern regional culture, situated and defined in the context of an emergent nation, which is struggling to build a distinct cultural identity and to recreate values.

Just as people are shaped by the time and place they come from, so is music. Readers are invited to explore music that was born from Latin America and to trace its rise to a position of global popularity. They learn about the different instruments used in music styles such as Cuban and Caribbean and how this music influences the music of other cultures. Also featured is an extensive list of recommended Latin music albums, vibrant photographs of Latin music stars such as Gloria Estefan and Daddy Yankee, and annotated quotes from writers and musicians.

This work explores how cathedral musicians in eighteenth-century Mexico City relied on music and on their institutional affiliation to define their social place. In the tensions that brewed within New Spain's racial casta (or caste) system, people of mixed race increasingly competed for Spanish benefits and prerogatives.