On the Zócalo, the main square of Mexico City, Mexico's entire musical history is performed every day. "Mexica" percussionists drum and dance to the music of Aztec rituals on the open plaza. Inside the Metropolitan Cathedral, choristers sing colonial villancicos. Outside the National Palace, the Mexican army marching band plays the "Himno Nacional," a vestige of the nineteenth century. And all around the square, people listen to the contemporary sounds of pop, rock, and música grupera. In all, some seven centuries of music maintain a living presence in the modern city. This book offers an up-to-date, comprehensive history and ethnography of musical rituals in the world's largest city. Mark Pedelty details the dominant musical rites of the Aztec, colonial, national, revolutionary, modern, and contemporary eras, analyzing the role that musical ritual played in governance, resistance, and social change. His approach is twofold. Historical chapters describe the rituals and their functions, while ethnographic chapters explore how these musical forms continue to resonate in contemporary Mexican society. As a whole, the book provides a living record of cultural continuity, change, and vitality.

The history of Mexico is spoken in the voice of ordinary people. In rhymed verse and mariachi song, in letters of romance and whispered words in the cantina, the heart and soul of a nation is revealed in all its intimacy and authenticity. Mexico in Verse, edited by Stephen Neufeld and Michael Matthews, examines Mexican history through its poetry and music, the spoken and the written word. Focusing on modern Mexico, from 1840 to the 1980s, this volume examines the cultural venues in which people articulated their understanding of the social, political, and economic change they witnessed taking place during times of tremendous upheaval, such as the Mexican-American War, the Porfiriato, and the Mexican Revolution. The words of diverse peoples—people of the street, of the field, of the cantinas—reveal the development of the modern nation. Neufeld and Matthews have chosen sources so far unexplored by Mexicanist scholars in order to investigate the ways that individuals interpreted—whether resisting or reinforcing—official narratives about formative historical moments. The contributors offer new research that reveals how different social groups interpreted and understood the Mexican experience. The collected essays cover a wide range of topics: military life, railroad accidents, religious upheaval, children’s literature, alcohol consumption, and the 1985 earthquake. Each chapter provides a translated song or poem that encourages readers to participate in the interpretive practice of historical research and cultural scholarship. In this regard, Mexico in Verse serves both as a volume of collected essays and as a classroom-ready primary document reader.

The Course of Mexican Music provides students with a cohesive introductory understanding of the scope and influence of Mexican music. The textbook highlights individual musical examples as a means of exploring the processes of selection that led to specific musical styles in different times and places, with a supporting companion website with audio and video tracks helping to reinforce readers' understanding of key concepts. The aim is for students to learn an exemplary body of music as a window for understanding Mexican music, history and culture in a manner that reveals its importance well beyond the borders of that nation.

First published in 2011. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.

Experiencing Latin American Music draws on human experience as a point of departure for musical understanding. Students explore broad topics—identity, the body, religion, and more—and relate these to Latin American musics while refining their understanding of musical concepts and cultural-historical contexts. With its brisk and engaging writing, this volume covers nearly fifty genres and provides both students and instructors with online access to audio tracks and listening guides. A detailed instructor’s packet contains sample quizzes, clicker questions, and creative, classroom-tested assignments designed to encourage critical thinking and spark the imagination. Remarkably flexible, this innovative textbook empowers students from a variety of disciplines to study a subject that is increasingly relevant in today’s diverse society. In addition to the instructor’s packet, online resources for students include: customized Spotify playlist online listening guides audio sound links to reinforce musical concepts stimulating activities for individual and group work

Part of the seminal Cambridge History of Music series, this volume departs from standard histories of early modern Western music in two important ways. First, it considers music as something primarily experienced by people in their daily lives, whether as musicians or listeners, and as something that happened in particular locations, and different intellectual and ideological contexts, rather than as a story of genres, individual counties, and composers and their works. Second, by constraining discussion within the limits of a 100-year timespan, the music culture of the sixteenth century is freed from its conventional (and tenuous) absorption within the abstraction of 'the Renaissance', and is understood in terms of recent developments in the broader narrative of this turbulent period of European history. Both an original take on a well-known period in early music and a key work of reference for scholars, this volume makes an important contribution to the history of music.

This comprehensive survey examines Latin American music, focusing on popular—as opposed to folk or art—music and containing more than 200 entries on the concepts and terminology, ensembles, and instruments that the genre comprises. The rich and soulful character of Latin American culture is expressed most vividly in the sounds and expressions of its musical heritage. While other scholars have attempted to define and interpret this body of work, no other resource has provided such a detailed view of the topic, covering everything from the mambo and unique music instruments to the biographies of famous Latino musicians. Encyclopedia of Latin American Popular Music delivers scholarly, authoritative, and accessible information on the subject, and is the only single-volume reference in English that is devoted to an encyclopedic study of the popular music in this genre. This comprehensive text—organized alphabetically—contains roughly 200 entries and includes a chronology, discussion of themes in Latin American music, and 37 biographical sidebars of significant musicians and performers. The depth and scope of the book's coverage will benefit music courses, as well as studies in Latin American history, multicultural perspectives, and popular culture.