Music in the Colonial "Republic of Indians": appropriations, resistance, success stories

LEONARDO J. WAISMAN

Oxford

Seminario; Latin American History Seminar; 2016

University of Oxford

Musicology's interest in Latin American Colonial music started with two foci: pre-Columbian musical practices and instruments (a field restricted by the scarcity of evidence) and cathedral music in the main Spanish settlements. Recently, attempts have been made and inroads have appeared to widen the scope of inquiry, to cover other areas: smaller musical institutions and secular musical practices in Spanish towns (including the music of black Americans) on one side, and the República de Indios on the other. This was the legal umbrella that covered rural and urban settlements of the aboriginal ethnic groups, subject to laws and customs different from those of the Spaniards. Their musical practices, variously described as worthy of comparison with the best in Europe or as poor and miserable, are worthy of study for their originality, their status as places of (unbalanced) cultural transfers, and the mechanics of their subaltern position. Musical manuscripts and verbal documents discovered in the last decades give us an opportunity to glimpse at this interesting and multifarious world.