Welcome to Momentos Musicales, this is the fourth season of the series marking Hispanic Heritage Month on KPAC 88.3 FM.
On September 16, 1810, the church bell of the main cathedral in the small town of Dolores, Mexico rang out as Father Miguel Hidalgo called his townspeople to hear his speech urging Mexicans to rise up against the Spanish authorities and fight for their independence. More bells rang as shouts of “Viva Mexico” fell to the air. Sadly, it would take 11 years to win independence from Spain, and during that time, Father Hidalgo was arrested and executed. There were similar independence movements throughout what we know today as Latin America, such that by 1826 all of Latin America, with the exception of Cuba and Puerto Rico, were independent nations.
What is often overlooked is that these were not the first nations birthed on this soil. For centuries, North and South America were home to numerous indigenous populations. By a conservative estimate, there were 15 to 20 million people living in what we identify now as Mesoamerica, meaning Central America and Mexico, and another 20 to 25 million in South America. This means, conservatively, 35 million, and all of this before Christopher Columbus ever set foot in the New World.
It's fair to ask how the population could have grown to such an extent unnoticed by Europe, Asia and Africa, but the more important question is, how did the first migrants get here? Those who study such things tell us that about 20,000 or maybe even 30,000 years ago, the migrations began from northeastern Asia across the Bering Land Bridge into what is now Alaska. These were nomadic people. They were on the move.
The Quiché Maya people, a branch of the Mayan civilization in what is now Guatemala, wrote the book that described their mythology, history and cosmology, detailing the creation of the world. This book took published form as the Popol Vuh. The Argentinian composer Alberto Gianastera, set it to music, bringing it to a climactic final movement, El Amanecer de la Humanidad, The Dawn of Humankind.
The Mayans, who settled in the Yucatan peninsula, were one of a chain of cultures or nations often overlapping in those pre-Columbian days. The language of the Quiché Maya people was a variant of Nahuatl heard here, when the Mexican folkloric ensemble Los Folkloristas sing Konex-Konex.
We will be hearing many old languages over the next several weeks, many of them strange to our modern ear, yet these were the languages of the millions of indigenous inhabitants of what Columbus called “a new heaven and world, nuevo cielo i mundo,” that as he proceeded to claim it all for the king of Spain, there are plenty more adventures ahead every weekday afternoon at 2:00. Gracias por escuchar.
PLAYLIST:
Revueltas: Sensemaya (chamber version)
Enrique Diemecke, Camerata de las Americas
Dorian 90244
Ginastera: Popul Vuh, op. 44 (VIII. El Amanecer de la Humanidad)
Gisele Ben-Dor, BBC National Orchestra of Wales
Naxos 570999
Anon: Konex-Konex
Los Folkloristas
YouTube
