Latin American music

Latin American music, sometimes simply called Latin music, includes the music of many countries and comes in many varieties, from the simple, rural conjunto music of northern Mexico to the sophisticated habanera of Cuba, from the symphonies of Heitor Villa-Lobos to the simple and moving Andean flute. Music has played an important part in Latin America's turbulent recent history, for example the nueva cancion movement. Latin music is very diverse, with the only truly unifying thread being the use of the Spanish language or, in Brazil, its close cousin the Portuguese language {{ref|language}}.

Indigenous music

Very little can be known for sure about music in what is now Latin America prior to the arrival of Europeans. Though there are extremely isolated peoples in the Amazon Basin and elsewhere that have had little contact with Europeans or Africans, Latin music is almost entirely a synthesis of European, African and indigenous elements. The advanced civilizations of the pre-contact era included the Mayan, Aztec and Incan empires. These cultures had well-developed musical institutions that were "reduced to simpler levels and styles through the annihilation or reduction of the ruling classes, and through the introduction of Christianity" {{ref|well-developedcultures}}.

Related Topics:
Amazon Basin - Mayan - Aztec - Inca

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The ancient Central American civilizations of the Maya and Aztec peoples played instruments including the tlapitzalli (a flute), teponatzli, a log drum, the conch-shell trumpet, various rattles and rasps and the huehuetl, a kettle drum. The earliest written accounts by Spanish colonizers indicate that Aztec music was entirely religious in nature, and was performed by professional musicians; some instruments were considered holy, and thus mistakes made by performers were punished as being possibly offensive to the gods {{ref|aztecmusic}}.

Related Topics:
Central America - Tlapitzalli - Flute - Teponatzli - Log drum - Conch - Rattle - Rasp - Huehuetl - Kettle drum

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Pictorial representations indicate that ensemble performance was common. Similar instruments were also found among the Incas of South America, who played in addition a wide variety of ocarinas and panpipes. The tuning of panpipes found in Peru has similarities to instruments played in the Pacific islands, leading some scholars to believe in contact between South American and the Oceanic cultures {{ref|Oceania}}.

Related Topics:
Ocarina - Panpipe - Peru

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