maya music in oxford music online

3/4/2014 Maya music in Oxford Music Online

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(a) Clay fipple flute, c500 ce(Museo de Tabasco,Villahermosa);

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Maya music.

The term Maya applies in a broad sense to a large group (about two million in the

1960s) of Amerindians speaking Maya languages; in this context it refers

principally to the music of the pre-Columbian civilization.

1. To 1600.

The pre-Columbian Mayas inhabited the Yucatn peninsula of Mexico, as well as

the Guatemalan highlands, present-day Belize and the eastern parts of the

Mexican states of Chiapas and Tabasco. Maya culture reached its peak in such

ceremonial centres as Copn, Tikal and Uxmal as early as 300900 CE, during

which centuries the Mayas developed systems for astronomy, mathematics and

writing matched by no other pre-Columbian peoples. By 151718, however, when

Spanish explorers first began skirting the coasts of the lowland Yucatn

peninsula, they had long since fallen victim to conquering invaders from central

Mexico.

Jaina island has yielded decorated clay flutes that reveal

a flourishing music culture from about 500: CE vertical

flutes with six unequally spaced finger-holes (fig.1a);

flutes producing an oboe-like sound by means of a goitre

chamber deflecting the air near the animal-effigy neck

(fig.1b and c); and multiple-tube flutes capable of

sounding three-note chords. A clay trumpet in two joined

sections with the proximal of almost cylindrical bore, the

distal of conical bore, was found in Tabasco. (For descriptions of these

instruments see Mart, p.123ff.)

Important archaeological evidence of pre-Columbian Maya aerophones has been

found in: Jaina; Jonuta, Tabasco; Tuxtepec, Oaxaca; Campeche; San Andrs;

Tuxtla, Veracruz; Cozamaloapa, Veracruz and Catemaco, Veracruz, including

whistles made of clay from burials of the same period in Jaina. These whistles

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Procession includingtrumpeters depicted in awall painting, c775 CE,

have mouthpieces in quadrangular, rectangular, ellipsoidal and conical shapes.

Several whistles are in the form of human faces and also in the shape of animal

figures representing Mayan deities.

Mayan wooden trumpets in two joined sections

exceeding a mans arm in length were favoured about

775 CE when the walls of the Bonampak temple in dense

jungles of Chiapas were painted (fig.2). Twin trumpeters

standing side by side in a 12-man orchestra appear on

one Bonampak mural; elsewhere trumpeters mix singly

with the fighters. The lips of the players tightly pursed

over the black-ring mouthpiece of each trumpet held aloft

suggest the blowing of numerous higher partials. Unlike

six-hole goitre and multiple flutes that died out long before 1500, long thin

trumpets of hollow wood with long twisted gourds at the ends were still a principal

Mayan instrument when Diego de Landa wrote his Relacin in 1566 and when

Bartolom Resinos Cabrera described the loj-tum dance in 1624 (Chinchilla

guilar, p.19):

The [loj-tum] dance enacts the sacrifice of a prisoner taken in

battle. Tied to a stake, he is attacked by four dancers disguised

as a jaguar, a puma, an eagle, and another animal these four

representing his spirits. They try to kill him to a terrible din

caused by yells and the calls of long twisted trumpets that look

like sackbuts and whose frighteningly dismal sounds are

enough to scare the wits out of anyone.

Not only the Bonampak murals but also two of the three surviving pre-Columbian

Mayan manuscripts in European libraries testify to the popularity of the kayum, an

upright single-headed cylindrical or kettle-shaped drum, played barehanded. The

top and bottom panels in side 63 [34] of the Dresden Manuscript (c1200) show

deities playing drums whose clay frames resemble two arms of a candelabrum.

The top of the arm nearer each seated deity is covered with tied hide, the top of

the other arm is open. The base joining the two arms is filled with water, enabling

the player to adjust the pitch. The top panel shows in addition a deity shaking a

large perforated rattle and another playing an end-blown flute. Glyphs for musical

sound emanate from both the drum and flute. The drummers in sides 212 of the

Tro-Cortesianus Manuscript in Madrid sit before kettledrums on tripods; the

central panel of side 87 shows two seated players of flaring-bell trumpets,

evidently made of wood (fig.3b).

Except for pellet-bell rattles (Sp. cascabeles; Maya tzitzmoc) metal instruments

had no place in Maya organology. The hundred golden pellet-bell rattles found in

1926 at the Sacred Well at Chichn-Itz, an archaeological site occupied from

about 889 CE, were brought from afar. In Mayan manuscripts pellet-bell rattles are

associated with Ah-Puch, the death god. Both the Dresden and Madrid



manuscripts show gods decked with jingles, the Madrid at side 34 showing 24

jingles shooting out like sting rays, the seated Ah-Puch at 12b3 in Dresden

surrounded by three different types of jingle.

The conquest of the Maya area, first by eagle and jaguar warriors from Tula, the

Toltec capital, about 1000, and later by Aztecs, popularized not only prisoner-of-

war sacrifice but coincided with the new emphasis on the two-key Aztec

teponaztli, a slit-drum played with mallets and known to the Mayas as tunkul (see

AZTEC MUSIC). Its continuing use as an accompanying instrument for the zon

dance is vividly described in Alonso Ponces Relacin: on 3 August 1588 a

welcoming party from the Yucatn village of Katunil came out to meet him with

one dancer held high in a litter carrying a zoot (rattle) in his right hand, a feather

fan in his left, all the while bowing and whistling a tune to the accompaniment of a

teponaztli played by a musician near the float. In Yucatn the teponaztli was

commonly laid on the ground rather than on a trestle, as in Aztec usage. Later

colonial writers continued to mention the teponaztli (i.e. tunkul) as referring to the

indispensable Mayan festival as well as the name of a sacred instrument. In 1813

Jos Granado y Baeza justified its continuing use in religious ceremonies with the

claim that Isaiah xviii.1 referred to the Yucatn tunkul.

Because of his paramountcy in every Maya village, the colonial maestro de capilla

(Maya holpop) was expected to judge civil disputes, keep village records, guard

the ancestral lore copied in the local book of Chilam Balam and direct all public

festivities. The pre-Columbian dance called ix tolil in the Chilam Balam of Tizimn

(1593) continued in 1941 to be the most important dance of the modern Mayas.

In that year Gernimo Baqueiro Fster published a pentatonic melody called

Xtoles (from ix tolil, ribbon dance). He claimed to have heard the air countless

times during his early youth in Mrida, the capital of Yucatn, as well as

elsewhere in the peninsula and proposed it as the sole Maya survival amid a

welter of popular music of foreign origin. Frequently reprinted after 1941 and

adopted as a theme song by the touring Ballet Folklrico de Mexico (directed by

Amalia Hernndez), Xtoles was first collected by Jos Jacinto Cuevas (182178),

who included a triple-metre version of it in his Mosaico yucateco. Equally well

ascribable to Africans, who by 1604 outnumbered Spaniards at Mrida, the

melody cannot be authenticated as truly Mayan for lack of any music of a popular

or folkloristic nature written down in Yucatn before the middle of the 19th century.

On the other hand, the cathedral organist at Mrida in 1596 was Gaspar Antonio

Chi (Xiu) (1531c1610), a Maya priests son who according to Snchez de guilar

sang plainsong and figural music excellently, and after being holpop [choirmaster]

at Tizimn became organist of Mrida Cathedral and the governors official

interpreter.

Robert Stevenson



2. Modern developments.

Indigenous music with a strong Maya legacy can be found in the Yucatn and

Chiapas. Max Jardow-Pedersen (1996) mentions the use of tunkul (slit-drum) in

Dzitnup, Yucatn, and the bulalek (water-drum) in Chanchichimil, Yucatn; both

instruments are still in use for Christian religious festivities. In Chiapas there are a

few European instruments made locally. Tzotzil and Tzltal are indigenous people

from the highlands of Chiapas who retain a great variety of traditional dances with

strong Mayan roots but accompanied by groups of indigenous and European

instruments. Mercedes Olivera (1974) offers good examples of various dances,

including the danza del agua (water dance) of San Juan Chamula, performed to

the music of a double-headed cylindrical drum and a rudimentary 12-string guitar

at a number of Catholic festivities. Other dances of the same region of highland

Chiapas include the yojualelvinajil, a religious dance performed with harp and the

same rudimentary 12-string guitar; the quintajimoltic, a carnival dance performed

with a single-headed drum and cane flute, the drum is made of a cntaro (clay

pot) with a single skin head covering the mouth of the pot.

In Yucatn modern European instruments are found playing a regional music

known as jarana with strong European roots. Jardow-Pedersen (1996) mentions

the presence of brass bands playing jaranas characterized by hemiola rhythms.

The jarana is danced as an offering to the patron saint at Christian festivities, and

is still performed at certain Maya rituals in honour of ancient Mayan deities,

including Chaak and the gods of the four winds. Pedersen mentions that among

Mayan people from Yucatn, Christian practices have been integrated into Mayan

rituals and other events. This is the case at the Christian festivity in Xalua,

Yucatn, where jaranas are performed for the exorcism ritual, tangas-ik (evil

winds); before a bull fight and also in honour of wanthul (god of cattle).

Another modern reference to contemporary Mayan music by Thomas Stanford

(1997) refers to the presence of a particular style of music called son de maya

pax in Quintana Roo, with accompaniment by violins, cornets, snare drum and

bass drum, also characterized by hemiola rhythms.

Arturo Chamorro

Bibliography

D. de Landa: Relacin des las cosas de Yucatn (1566); ed. H. Prez Martinez

(Mexico City, 1938; Eng. trans., 1941/R); ed. M. del Carmen Len Czares

(Mexico City, 1994)

P. Snchez de guilar: Informe contra idolorum cultores del obispado de Yucatn



(Madrid, 1639, 2/1892, 3/1937), 1445 149, 151

J. Granado y Baeza: Informe del cura de Yaxcab, Yucatn (Mrida, 1845/R)

J. Jacinto Cuevas: Mosaico yucateco (n.p., 1869/R), 1, 2, 14

Relacin de las cosas que sucedieron al Padre Fray Alonso Ponce (Madrid, 1872),

ed. J. Garca Quintama and V.M. Castillo Farreras (Mexico City, 3/1993)

G. Saldvar: Historia de la msica en Mxico (pocas precortesiana y colonial)

(Mexico City, 1934/R), 72

G. Baqueiro Fster: El secreto armnico y modal de un antiguo aire maya, Los

mayas antiguos, ed. C. Lizardi Ramos (Mexico City, 1941), 263

J.C. Romero: Historia de la msica, Enciclopedia yucatanense, ed. C.A. Echnove

Trujillo, iv (Mexico City, 1944), 669822

W. Rosado Ojeda: La msica y a danza, Enciclopedia yucatanense, ed. C.A.

Echnove Trujillo, ii (Mexico City, 1945), 267289

E. Chinchilla guilar: La danza del tum-teleche o loj-tum, Antropologia e historia

de Guatemala, iii/2 (1951), 1720

I.V. Knorozov: Pis'mennost indeytsev mayya [Notation of the Maya Indians]

(Moscow, 1963)

J.-J. Rivard: Cascabeles y ojos del dios maya de la muerte, Ah Puch, Estudios de

cultura maya, v (1965), 75

R. Stevenson: Music in Aztec & Inca Territory (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London,

1968/R)

S. Mart: Alt-Amerika: Musik der Indianer in prkolumbischer Zeit (Leipzig, 1970),

11231

N. Hammond: Classic Maya Music (Cambridge, MA, 1972)

N. Hammond: Classic Maya Music, Part I: Maya Drums'; Part II: Shakers, Rattles,

Raspers, Archaeology, xxv (1972), 124, 222

J.E.S. Thompson: A Commentary on the Dresden Codex, a Maya Hieroglyphic

Book (Philadelphia, 1972), 1112, 95, pl.34a

M. Olivera: Las danzas y fiestas de Chiapas (Mexico, 1974)

F. Flores Dorantes and L. Flores Garca: Organologa aplicada a instrumentos

musicales prehispnicos: silbatos mayas (Mexico, 1981)

M. Jardow-Pedersen: La msica maya: produccin del significado musical en el

oriente del estado de Yucatn, Sabidura Popular, ed. A. Chamorro (Mexico,

1996), 1716

T.E. Stanford: Msica maya a Quintana Roo: la msica como fuente para la

investigacin histrica, Memorias del Primer Encuentro Internacional de

Etnomusicologa, ed. A. Chamorro (Guadalajara, 1997)

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