MUSIC
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MAYA BALLGAME
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MAYA MUSIC
Learn about ancient Maya music.
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What was Pre-Columbian music like? We can only imagine its sounds by reading descriptions in sixteenth-century texts, studying depictions of musicians in art, studying indigenous music, and surviving instruments. Many of the surviving instruments are still capable of producing sounds. Pre-Columbian ensembles included flutes, ocarinas, gourd rattles, drums, rasps, bells, trumpets, and gongs among others. The available instruments offer an idea of the range of sounds that may have been heard in daily life, rituals, and feasts. Surviving instruments and their depictions on painted walls, pottery, and in the surviving ancient books tell us that music was popular and often accompanied dancers, who wore elaborate costumes.
The Maya practiced many performing arts. In addition to music, they practiced poetry, dance, theater, singing, storytelling and ritual recitation. Most of these ancient art forms did not survive the Classic period collapse and the coming of Europeans in the 16th century. Remnants of these arts survive among the modern Maya, whose songs, dance performances, stories, poems, and music remain an important part of their political, social, and religious lives.
Musical Instruments
Among the goods found in burials is an abundance of clay musical instruments: flutes, ocarinas, drums, whistles, and conch shells. Often found in heaps, these instruments may have been played during funeral services. Ritual ceremonies accompanied by flute, whistle, and drum can be seen today by those who follow ancient traditions, such music is used to call on friendly spirits as guides and to ward off unfriendly spirits.
WHAT WOULD YOU BE IF YOU STUDIED TRADITIONAL MUSIC?
An Ethnomusicologist is a person who studies traditional music from
cultures around the world.