General Aztecs Maya Tocuaro Kids Contact 19 Mar 2024/2 Death
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Aztec musical instruments

Aztec Music

Aztec music is an art form waiting to be discovered. According to Pablo Castellanos, the Aztec language Nahuatl has 58 terms that directly relate to music and its performance. According to Gertrude Prokosch Kurath and Samuel Martí, 42 dances and songs were ‘given special Nahuatl names’ by the Mexica. The conclusion is well made by Norman Weinberg: ‘Any culture creating such a multitude of words relating to a subject would manage that subject with respect and reverence’. We’re only just learning how true that is... (Written/compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

See our first light-hearted attempt at a video on Aztec music!

Pic 1: Group of Mixtec percussion and wind players, from the Codex Becker
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 follow some of the links below. 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).

Pic 2: Ian demonstrating Aztec instruments at Copthorne Primary School, Sussex
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): 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)...

Pic 3: ‘Tec playing the drum’
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.

Pic 4: ‘I could feel my fingers tingling...’
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.

Pic 5: What’s going on (scene from the Florentine Codex)?
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.

Pic 6: Part of Phil Tulga’s Aztec Drum Rhythms webpage
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...!

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)
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 link below NOTE: Since Roberto’s untimely death in 2018 his site is still available but you will need to navigate it carefully and patiently...!
Roberto’s collection of replica pre-Columbian instruments, built up over many years, now numbers over 1,000. On his website you can even find photo-instruction guides for making ancient Mexican wind instruments...

Pic 8: Roberto Velázquez at work
Pic 8: Roberto Velázquez at work (Click on image to enlarge)

• The Aztec-style music from our website has 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!

Pic 9: Alegría García’s presentation on Aztec music
Pic 9: Alegría García’s presentation on Aztec music (Click on image to enlarge)

• For a beautifully and authentically presented introduction to Mexica/Aztec instruments and music, we recommend watching this video - part of Art History Summer Series 2020 - with a well documented and researched illustrated talk by Alegría García, a rising star in the field of ethnomusicology and daughter of our friend and superb musician Christopher García, on ‘The Role of Death in Mexica-Aztec Music’. Her choice of imagery is superb. Follow the link below to watch on Youtube.

Pic 10: Under the daysign Monkey a semi-divine person, with a tortoise head and the attributes of rain deities, plays a conch shell trumpet and vertical drum; Codex Borgia pl.24 (detail)
Pic 10: Under the daysign Monkey a semi-divine person, with a tortoise head and the attributes of rain deities, plays a conch shell trumpet and vertical drum; Codex Borgia pl.24 (detail) (Click on image to enlarge)

• Excellent summary of the importance of music to the Mexica:-
’Musical instruments, imbued with divine essence, such as idiophones, membranophones and aerophones, were used to found cities, invest rulers, name towns and people, dress for ceremonial occasions, sing poetry, perform sacrifices and festivals, go to war, and to honour the dead.’ - Luis Antonio Gómez G.

Our teponaztli feature

Learn about Mexica royal court musicians...

‘How Music Came to the World...’

Learn how the Aztecs tuned their big war drums...

‘The Legend of the Bat’

Phil Tulga’s Aztec Drum Rhythm webpage
‘Gongs of the Nahua and Azteca’
International Study Group on Music Archaeology
See Alegría García’s presentation on Mexico-Aztec Music
The website of Mexican Roberto Velázquez Cabrera
Watch a demonstration of an unusual Maya jaguar roar instrument
A useful short glossary of Mexica instruments
Hear a recently excavated bird whistle from Calixtlahuaca
Learn about the ‘chirped echo’ effect at Chichen Itzá
The newly discovered ‘Bell Stone’ at Xolotl Hill (in Spanish)
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Here's what others have said:

Mexicolore replies: Cheers!
Mexicolore replies: It would depend on which instrument: sacred drums, for instance, would never be played ‘for fun’ and were reserved for élite musicians who were highly trained. Other instruments such as whistles and ocarinas might well have been played by ‘ordinary folk’ for recreation.
Mexicolore replies: As far as we know it doesn’t have a Nahuatl name. It’s mentioned very briefly in Samuel Martí’s classic book ‘Instrumentos musicales precortesianos’ but without a name (unlike the other instruments) - he simply describes it as ‘having an unusual shape’; the original (that he shows a photo of) was found, with other flutes, in a sanctuary dedicated to Tezcatlipoca in Tizatlan, Tlaxcala.
Mexicolore replies: Glad to help. We plan to prepare an entry on ocarinas soon...
Mexicolore replies: Thanks, Oscar. We should be able to help. We’ll get in direct contact, ask you for a bit more background information on your project, and then try and set something up for you...
Mexicolore replies: Very little! It uses Andean instruments (panpipes) and rhythm (huayño) rather than anything Mesoamerican. Pleasant and fun, but miles away from the Mexica!
Mexicolore replies: Many thanks for these great questions, Chris. We hope others will contribute, but meanwhile, we can offer a few pointers:-
• On the ‘three legs’, question, see -
http://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/ask-experts/why-always-three-hearth-stones
• On the divine origin of sacred drums see -
http://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/stories/how-music-came-to-the-world
• On the shape of the drum legs, we raised some of the same points a few years ago, here -
http://www.mexicolore.co.uk/aztecs/ask-experts/why-did-they-put-gaps-in-the-upright-drums
Mexicolore replies: Julia Flood writes: “The participation of females in the ritual delivery of music is well documented. For example, women playing the parts of goddesses in religious festivals might play an instrument. In one example, the impersonator of the goddess Xilonen played a snake rattle before she was sacrificed. In another, priestesses played gourd drums during the festivity of Huey Tecuilhuitl. Women musicians also performed in courts. Jacques Soustelle tells us of richly dressed women performing ‘mimed songs’, which were dramatic events of dance and song that were acted in front of great leaders...”
Mexicolore replies: We’ve just added some new ‘Aztec’-style music that’s downloadable from the ‘Tec ANIMATES A PAGE from the Codex Mendoza!’ microsite, and we’ve repaired a faulty download button for the music on Tec’s original Challenges and Puzzles microsite: try our Kids section!
Mexicolore replies: Not that we know of, I’m afraid! However we ourselves do from time to time source these whistles from Mexico for our schools workshops on the Aztecs here in England. If you write to us directly (and if you’re not in a great hurry!) we may be able to help...
Mexicolore replies: We’re working on this excellent idea, but slowly! Try the link given in comment 5 below. Mexican engineer/musician/researcher Roberto Velazquez and we are collaborating in this field, but have nothing prepared yet that we can pass on. But we’ll get there...!
Mexicolore replies: Making whistling jugs is pretty complex and you need prior experience in working with ceramics. A useful contact is a German by the name of Friedemann Schmidt, who researches, makes and sells replicas of pre-Columbian wind instruments from Mesoamerica and South America. His website is -
http://www.terraton.info/workshops.html
Write to him in simple English only (or better in German!)
Mexicolore replies: ¡Muchas gracias por este apoyo, Guadalupe! Buena suerte con tu grupo de danza azteca - y con el náhuatl...
Mexicolore replies: ¡De nada, Blanca! Para eso estamos aquí. Buena suerte para tu proyecto...
Mexicolore replies: Thanks for sharing this with us, Jean. We need to see a picture of this to shed any more light on it. The ‘15 holes’ seems to hint that it isn’t a Mesoamerican instrument... If you’re in the London area we could meet and share ideas (and sounds!).
Mexicolore replies: Thanks for writing in, Steve. Glad you enjoyed visiting the site. More and more people are discovering the wealth of musical output from Mexico both before the Spanish Conquest and after it!