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Aztec Music
Aztec music is an art form waiting to be discovered. Very little research has gone into the study of Aztec musical instruments, rhythms and practise, largely because there is next to nothing ‘written down’ from the days before the Spanish. A few original Aztec (percussion) instruments are still used in local community festivals even today (see our feature on the teponaztli drum), many more are in museums, there are a good number of illustrations of instruments in codices and carved in stone sculptures, a few ‘Aztec’ melodies heard in remote Mexican villages have been recorded and transcribed – though no-one knows for sure if they’re genuinely pre-Hispanic in origin - and then we have the descriptions handed down to us from the Spanish soldiers and friars after the conquest. But much remains ‘inspired guesswork’... (Written/compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)
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| Pic 1: Group of Mixtec percussion and wind players, from the Codex Becker (Click on image to enlarge) |
Here (choose an instrument from the right-hand menu) we offer images and sounds of a small group of COPIES of clay wind instruments; taken together they give a hint of how Aztec flutes, whistles and ocarinas may have sounded – but note the caution above, and also bear in mind that these recordings were made by our good - English! - friend Will Summers of Tunkul...To hear the sounds of some ORIGINAL pre-Columbian instruments we highly recommend following the link below to ‘Music from the Land of the Jaguar’.You can hear some of Tunkul’s music accompanying Tec in our Kids Aztecs microsite (click on Kids at the very top of the page); and you can hear the sound of the teponaztli drum in our fully illustrated feature article (follow link below).
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| Pic 2: Ian demonstrating Aztec instruments at Copthorne Primary School, Sussex (Click on image to enlarge) |
Aztec music is a key element in all our programmes in schools and museums (pic 2): we plan to upload more and more information on this fascinating subject in the coming months. It’s obviously an element that captivates the children we work with: Zoe - a Year 5 pupil at Emmer Green Primary School, Reading - says it all (pic 4)...
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| Pic 3: ‘Tec playing the drum’ (Click on image to enlarge) |
Would you have got it right? Have a look at the codex picture below (pic 5) and guess: is this Aztec musician playing at a funeral ceremony or to wake up a priest? For the answer, click on ‘Occasionally even experts make mistakes!’ in the right hand menu.
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| Pic 4: ‘I could feel my fingers tingling...’ (Click on image to enlarge) |
A US music teacher has created a very useful, simply illustrated, introductory webpage on Aztec drum rhythms, based on making connections between language, maths and music (pic 6). He incorporates notation based on the famous 16th. century ‘Cantares Mexicanos’ manuscript - referred to in our teponaztli feature.
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| Pic 5: What’s going on (scene from the Florentine Codex)? (Click on image to enlarge) |
There’s been a lot of debate as to whether the high civilisations of Latin America played stringed instruments - the established ‘line’ is that they only used wind and percussion. If you visit the site of the US Princeton Art Museum’s ‘Music from the Land of the Jaguar’ exhibition (link below) you can listen to recordings made on several original pre-Columbian instruments, including a remarkable string-rasp-and-resonator Maya instrument (depicted on an ancient Maya ceramic vessel) that produces an extraordinarily lifelike imitation of a jaguar’s growl.
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| Pic 6: Part of Phil Tulga’s Aztec Drum Rhythms webpage |
If you’re seriously interested in researching developments in music archaeology, you should make contact with ISGMA in Berlin - a link is provided below. Thanks to the dedicated work of our friend Adje Both - whose research website mixcoalli.com is also given below (’Music Archaeology of the Americas’) - there is a strong focus on discoveries of musical instruments at the Templo Mayor in Mexico City. You should find on their website a larger image of the oldest musical instrument yet discovered in the world...!
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| Pic 7: the oldest (c.35,000 BCE) musical instrument yet found in the world: a mammoth tusk flute from Germany. (Photo: Juraj Liptak, © Intitut für Ur- und Frühgeschichte, Universität Tübingen) |
To hear some truly intriguing sounds of Aztec wind instruments, researched, reconstructed and played by Mexican Roberto Velázquez Cabrera, a mechanical engineer by profession, follow the links below. Roberto’s collection of replica pre-Columbian instruments, built up over many years, now numbers over 1,000. On his own website (Virtual Research Institute Tlapitzcalzin, below), you can even find photo-instruction guides for making ancient Mexican wind instruments...
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| Pic 8: Roberto Velázquez at work (photo: Juan Ignacio Ortega) (Click on image to enlarge) |
The Aztec-style music from our website has recently (2008) been put to super use by Mexican postgraduate student in animation, Lucía Morgan, in her delightful film short ‘The Legend of the Bat’ (follow link below).
Enjoy!
Aztec musicians enjoyed special privileges, but at a price: get one drum beat out of place in a public performance and you could be very severely punished - even put to death. Hence the expression ‘His heart missed a beat’...Our teponaztli feature
Two Aztec flutes
Aztec music news
Learn how the Aztecs tuned their big war drums...
‘The Legend of the Bat’
Phil Tulga’s Aztec Drum Rhythm webpage
‘Music from the Land of the Jaguar’
International Study Group on Music Archaeology
Reconstructing the sound of Aztec ‘death whistles’...
Virtual Research Institute ‘Tlapitzcalzin’
Hear the sounds of some resonators in Roberto Velázquez’ collection
Music Archaeology of the Americas
Recent archaeological finds of Aztec instruments
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