Collection Publications: Music in the Land of the Jaguar

Until the recognition in 1991 of a stringed drum depicted on an ancient Guatemalan Maya vase, it was believed that the Maya had no form of stringed musical instruments. But the vase clearly shoes a drum with string/cord and rasping stick elements, among figures wearing jaguar accouterments. In 1998, at a conference on pre-Columbian music and iconography held at Dumbarton Oaks, and exact replica of the stringed drum was demonstrated, with astonishing results. It was immediately recognized that this remarkable instrument mimicked the sound of a jaguar, the most important animal in the pre-Columbian cosmos. For the Olmec, the primal Mesoamerican civilization, the jaguar was the most symbolically powerful creature in their world, a focus for the fusion of the natural and supernatural. Later cultures maintained the prominence of the jaguar in their beliefs and iconography, from the wheeled jaguar whistle of Central Veracruz to the jaguar-spotted plate from Guatemala, the fused priest and jaguar whistle from Campeche, and the jaguar effigy from Colombia.

THE LOST MUSIC

When Spanish Europeans first encountered the civilizations of the Aztec, Maya, and Inca, they found ancient cultures rich in song, poetry, and dance. Sixteenth-century Spanish chroniclers described the musical instruments, comparing them to European Renaissance equivalents, but little attempt was made to set down the "pagan" music. While some rare examples of sung poetry composed in the Aztec Náhuatl have survived, the Spanish were largely successful in obliterating the cultural heritage of the Native Americans. [In 1940], the Mexican composer Carlos Chavez wrote longingly about an imagined pre-Columbian music, but as no forms of musical notation or didactic sources remain, it is unlikely that the music that once flourished in Mexico and Central and South America will ever be recreated. Although the music is unavailable, the significance of music and dance in ancient American life can be explored through such musical instruments as conch shell trumpets, drums, whistles, flutes, and rattlers, as well as through other objects that do not appear to be musically related but have important musical properties. [Princeton's 2004 exhibition, Music from the Land of the Jaguar] begins with an image that connects Mexico of 200 B.C. with our time: a rare Jalisco ceramic sculpture of a platform bearing a group of figured in a lively ritual dance. The platform is a manifestation of the earth‚—the primary source of life and final repository in death. The group includes five female singer/dancers and five male musicians playing end flutes and shaking rattles; a seated drummer in the foreground completes the ensemble. This group composition can still be seen in musical practices among the modern inhabitants of west Mexico.

TLATILCO AND TLAPACOYA

Among the earliest village societies in ancient Mexico were the settlements situated along the shore of a now vanished lake in the Valley of Mexico. The ancient site of Tlatilco was discovered in the late 1930s, in a brickyard servicing the rapid expansion of Mexico City; for a time it yielded a multitude of remarkable ceramic figurines with similar characteristics. Many of these are fertility figures, while others are linked to rituals of the Pre-Classic period (1200-800 B.C.). The oldest instrument in the exhibition, and a fascinating testimony of Olmec influence on the deities in Tlatilco society, is a unique brownware ceremonial whistle in the form of an old man's face emerging from a turtle carapace. The carapace, a natural armor, can be interpreted as a symbol of protection and power. The face emerging from the carapace is thus invested with special properties, and is more likely that of a god. This rare Olmec motif is later associated in Late Classic (A.D. 600-900) Maya art with God N, or Pawhtun, who is most often depicted inhabiting or emerging from a turtle carapace of a marine shell. As a musical instrument, the effigy has further potency as a medium for communication. The neighboring site of Tlapacoya is also the source of a significant number of ceramic figures; some of these figures wear "ballgame" accessories in the form of protective headgear and kneepads. In addition, some also bear the corn fertility symbols long associated with the Olmec. The Tlatilco discovery of ceramic effigies of the rubber ballgame ball confirms the existence of an organizaed version of a ballgame that would later, among the high cultures of Mesoamerica, become the sport of life and death. Nearly all the known ceramic effigies of rubber balls are rattles, instruments that could have been ritually played during the course of the ceremonial athletic event. The spherical form of the ball perforated with holes may also have represented a metaphorical map of the heavens with planetary bodies.

TEOTIHUACAN

From the chiefdom village societies of central Mexico rose one of the earliest great urban theocracies, Teotihuacán, or "Place of the Gods." At its height, during the Classic period (A.D. 300-600), the population could be calculated in the hundreds of thousands. Teotihuacán, at the northern edge of the Valley of Mexico, was laid out in a grid of imposing temple complexes dedicated to the sun, the moon, and the plumed serpent Quetzacóatl. Frescoes adorned the interiors and courtyards; among recurring decorative themes are images of jaguar or feline deities playing conch shell trumpets with cascading volutes or sound scrolls issuing from the flared bells of the instruments. The conch, encompassing both life and sound, is clearly link to the myth of Quetzacóatl. Among the thousands of ceramic hand- and mold-made figures recovered from Teotihuacán is one of a musician with a detachable trumpet. This figure, even in miniature, brings to life the significant role musicians played in the grandeur and pageantry of Teotihuacán ceremonies. Teotihuacán's sphere of influence radiated outward from central Mexico, as evidenced by a marine conch shell trumpet in Teotihuacán style, found in the Mexican state of Guerrero. The trumpet was formed by removing the point of the conch with a string-frit saw to create a natural mouthpiece. The spines were removed, the shell was decoratively incised and polished, and holes were drilled at the flared opening so that the instrument could be worn either pectorally or around the waist. The Princeton conch has an additional finger ventage or valve on one of the shell's coils to extend the player's musical range. Pre-Columbian wind instruments, in particular flutes and small-scale whistles, were usually perforated so they could be worn on suspension cords. Most of these instruments also incorporate an effigy figure that faces away from the player, creating a relationship between the effigy and the musician in which the former becomes a talismanic mouthpiece or intermediary with the spirit world. VERACRUZ From the lowlands of Central Veracruz in eastern Mexico during the Classic period (A.D. 300-900) comes perhaps the greatest variety of ceramic musical instruments made anywhere in the ancient Americas. Veracruz artisans excelled in the creation of acoustically ingenious multiple tube flutes, pellet whistles, whistle effigy figurines, and monumental freestanding sculptures‚—some with removable musical elements that were usually in the form of rattles. Their achievements are all the more astonishing because no ancient kilns have been discovered in Veracruz, leading to the conclusion that the objects must have been fired in open pits. Distinctive to the Classic period is the thinned-walled harmonic multiple tube flute, similar to one held in the hands of the seated Pánuco-style figure in the exhibition. Generally constructed from two to four tubes, the flute uses a single mouthpiece with independent air ducts to activate each tube. At least one tube with three or four holes serves as the melody pipe, while the other one- or two-holed tubes provide what might be characterized as accompanying drones. Unique to Veracruz are tubular pellet whistles with recorder-like mouthpieces or ducts without holes. Inside the tube, a mobile pellet rolls up or down as the whistle is titled; the resulting microtonal glissando is not unlike that of a modern slide-whistle. The example [in the exhibition] is decorated with a monkey effigy on the finial; in Maya iconography, monkeys (with their modulated screeches, wide tonal ranges, and lithe acrobatics) are closely linked to music and dance. Also unique to Veracruz are clay whistles in the form of wheeled jaguar effigies). While their function remains obscure, it is possible that these effigies served as metaphors for future rulership. All the effigies seem to represent immature cubs that would, in adulthood, dominate the ecosystem. As ritual objects with communicative power, perhaps even as mnemonic devices, these wheeled jaguar whistles may have been intended for young lords destined for power. Since jaguars also linked mythologically to the sun, perhaps the wheels can be seen as solar evocations. The potency of this association lends credibility to the theory that while the ancient peoples of Mesoamerica invented the concept of the wheel, its use was reserved specifically for effigy animals like the jaguar or composite animal super naturals, and not for wheeled vehicles of transport or the potter's workshop. The contemporaneous, culturally and linguistically related Maya were master builders, engineers, and astronomers, for whom equilibrium and balance were of crucial importance. A creature as significant and powerful as the jaguar, balanced on four wheels, could become a symbol of equilibrium, perhaps even associated with the four cardinal points.

MAYA

The great Mesoamerican civilization of the Maya flourished in Guatemala and in neighboring parts of Mexico, Belize, and northern Central America. In the Classic period (A.D. 300-900), the densely populated cities included elaborate palace compounds for the elite and plazas dominated by imposing pyramid temples, where Maya rulers were celebrated in life and venerated in death. The Maya were literate, recording their dynastic histories, religious practices, and astronomical calendars in hieroglyphic text, much of which has increasingly been deciphered. Images of human sacrifice and bloodletting were integral to Maya ritual and often were accompanied by musical instruments, as seen on painted cylinder vessels in the tombs of the ruling nobility. The finest and most celebrated rendering of such rituals is found in the mural paintings of Bonampak, in the jungle of eastern Mexico, where Maya musicians are depicted laying such instruments as turtle shells, plumed rattles, a vertical drum with deer (?)-hide membrane, and long wooden trumpets. The island of Jaina, adjacent to the Campeche coast of the western Yucatán, was a burial site for the Maya elite and a portal to Xibalbá, the Maya underworld of afterlife. Jaina is known for the wealth of impressive hand- and mold-made figurines that accompanied the dead in burial ceremonies. Many of these remarkable objects are also musical instruments, either whistlers or rattles, which perhaps served as an additional medium of communication for the deceased during their underworld journey. The figures are a veritable encyclopedia of the Maya universe, representing deities and denizens of the natural world in all guises. The Maya, who were fascinated with every aspect of the human condition, depicted deformities and pathologies of all sorts in their works of art, as well as portrait renderings in clay of individuals that clearly reflected their rank in a highly stratified society. Dwarfs, in particular, were considered supernatural beings and harbingers of good fortune, and are frequently represented in Maya art. The exhibition includes a figure of a dwarf in dance and transformation pose, holding a conch shell trumpet that is similar in every aspect to the actual marine shell trumpet also on view. Other Jaina figures with musical properties in the exhibition are a whistle in the form of the moon goddess Ix-Chel and her rabbit consort, a mold-made rattle representing a woman of undetermined identit, possibly the moon goddess Ix-Chel, standing in front of a portal made of intertwined rattlesnakes, and a whistle in the shape of a man, possibly a priest, fused with a jaguar. The jaguar, as a creature of great power and significance to the ancient Maya, was a visual representation of the supernatural, and closely linked to the legitimacy of rulership. Among the masterpieces of polychrome pottery in the permanent collection is a fragmentary cylinder vase of compelling beauty. The vase depicts a procession of figures, one of whom holds a large gourd rattle. Such instruments are often depicted in the hands of elite personages and may be considered symbols of rank. Along with music, dance was a crucial element in Maya ceremonies. A Guatemalan plate on view in the exhibition depicts God E, a deity associated with maize. The god is in dance position: his back is arched, his right heel raised, and his arms and hands poised for movement. Dance rituals could lead to such states of trance and ecstasy that the human dancer or shaman was transformed into an animal spirit.

WEST MEXICO

Far from the dramatic urban temple complexes of Teotihuacán and the vast city-states of the Maya rose a distinctive group of three village societies now named after the modern West Mexican states of Jalisco, Colima, and Nayarit. Recent archaeological surveys and excavations in the region have revealed ceremonial architecture, sophisticated agricultural systems, and evidence of widespread trading networks. Each of these cultures produced mortuary ceramics that were once thought to be merely "anecdotal"; a form of visual shorthand for representing the activities of daily life. Found in one- or two-chambered subterranean rooms known as shaft-tombs, where the deceased were buried surrounded by personal possessions and objects reflecting their mortal life, these works of fired earth have come to be seen in a new context: as links between the living and the dead, as objects for the afterlife that are capable of fusing the everyday world with the sacred and magical world of the supernatural. A significant number of these shaft-tomb works have obvious musical associations, which range from individual players of turtle shells, rattles, rasps, conchs, and single- and double-chambered flutes to more complex gatherings of singer/dancers with a host of instrumentalists. These works are often the only visual record of fragile materials and objects now lost to time and climate, such as textiles, featherwork, and musical instruments made from gourd, sinew and hide, wood, and cane. It is now recognized that many figurines of "musicians" actually represent members of the elite, whose rattles, whistles, and drums are musical emblems of power. Other figures holding instruments with actual or symbolic musical attributes are clearly linked to shamans, the intermediaries between this world and the netherworld . An outstanding example of a Jalisco musical effigy is the platform with dancing figures mentioned above. At first glance the Colima whistle figure is clearly defined as a warrior with a large shield. As a shaft-tomb object, it can also be seen as a shamanic guardian whose musical whistle function is a manifestation of communicative powers. In this context, the warrior becomes an interlocutor for the dead in the fluid world of the afterlife. Two different Nayarit figures playing turtle shells and depicted in the Ixtlan del Rio style are on view in the exhibition. The turtle shell is one of the principal west Mexican percussion instruments, characteristically played with beaters made from deer antlers. The skeletal underbelly plate of the turtle shell produces essentially two different tones, one higher than the other. Since turtle shell instruments have a wide geographic distribution in the ancient Americas, and are made of a natural material linked to various ecosystems, it is possible to conclude that this instrument could be the original tonal concept for the two-toned horizontal wood slit drums of the Maya and the later Aztec.

AZTEC

In 1430, the Aztec had established their seat of empire in Tenochtitlan, a city laid out symmetrically on a series of islands connected by causeways, now the site of Mexico City. By the late fifteenth century, the Aztec had created one of the most impressive civilizations in all the Americas. Artisans of extraordinary skill produced monumental stone images of the Aztec pantheon of deities, musical instruments in finely carved wood (such as the famous vertical drum or huehuetl of Malinalco with images of jaguar and eagle warriors), turquoise mosaics, objects in feather work, polychrome ceramics, codices, and ornaments in gold and rock crystal, all of which were elements in the Aztec cosmology of worship, rulership, warfare, and sacrifice. In 1519, when Hernan Cortes and his company entered Tenochtitlan, the Aztec capital was one of the world's greatest and most populous cities. Spanish chroniclers record that they were well accommodated by the Aztec nobility and describe the splendor of their palaces. Some of their accounts, edited by Fray Juan de Torquemada in Monarchia Indiana, first published in 1615, recounts that each Aztec nobleman had a private band of musicians with trumpets and flutes, singers, and com posers/choreographers of song and dance; while the musicians and singers performed, a multitude of dancers swirling in circular patterns were accompanied by a large vertical drum (huehuetl, played with the hands, and a horizontal drum, called a teponaztli, played with sticks like the percussion instruments of Spain. The role of Aztec bands was similar to that of the Spanish musicians, los ministriles, who provided the musica da camera at court and civic festivities. Accordingly, the Spanish classified and described the Aztec instruments in their own terms: conch shell trumpets were reminiscent of sacabuches or Renaissance trombones, instruments with double reeds were associated with chirimias or Renaissance oboes, and clay, cane, or wooden pifanos and flautas grandes y pequeña sounded similar to Renaissance fifes and large and small recorders. The exhibition includes an Aztec recorder-like flute made of clay. This exquisite miniature with a flared bell painted with sound volutes was made to celebrate the Feast of Tóxcatl, a sacred ceremony in which those chosen for ritual sacrifice would play such clay flutes as they ascended the stairs of the pyramid temple to the waiting priests. CENTRAL AMERICA The socially stratified cultures, mostly chiefdoms, which flourished in Central America are still too little known and appreciated. Though overshadowed by the great civilizations of Mesoamerica and South America, the artistic achievements of the ancient peoples of Central America are by no means minimal. In addition to beautiful blue-green jadeite mortuary objects found in Costa Rica and repousse gold plaques from Sitio Conte in Panama, the region also produced extraordinary and iconographically complex ceramics. Among the ceramic works are myriad whistles and flutes with effigies that reflect the ecosystem of the Isthmus. As in other pre-Columbian cultures, avian (songbirds and bats), terrestrial (peccaries and jaguars), and marine (sharks and alligators) creatures are faithfully fabricated in clay. A parrot or macaw effigy double-chambered whistle in the exhibition is a visual and sonic quote from the rainforest canopy of Panama. The instrument clearly mimics the shrill whistling call of this bird. It could be theorized that a primary source for the musical matrix of nearly all the peoples of the ancient Americas was avian. From the Pacific coastal region of Costa Rica come incredible musical instruments such as a whistle in the shape of a saurian effigy, also included in the exhibition. This creature is linked to a preColumbian myth that alligators, caimans, or turtles are floating monsters that carry the earth on their backs, a myth still recounted by shaman storytellers to this day. COLOMBIA The Tairona culture flourished in northern Colombia in a zone of astonishing ecological contrasts, from the snow-capped Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta to rainforests and semi-arid lands. The Tairona were a stratified society with a strong warrior constituency, led by powerful chieftains. According to Spanish chroniclers, the daily life of the Tairona reflected close bonds with the natural world, the most pronounced of which was the link between the jaguar and the sun. For the ancient Tairona, jaguar imagery was closely bound to fertility, a symbolism that still exists in the traditions of their modern descendants, the Kogi, whose lives are patterned after ancient traditions. The Kogi do not differentiate chronologically; they are a contemporary culture that thinks in terms of phenomena that belonged to the experience of their ancestors, and still refer to themselves as "the sons of the jaguar." Kogi existence is predicated on the harmony of celestial bodies; the jaguar and other creatures terrestrial, marine, and avian are imbued with supernatural properties. The Kogi and their ancestors are linked in a mystical natural environment that has no boundaries between past and present. On view in the exhibition is a Tairona whistle in the form of a jaguar wearing a decoratively incised sun collar and another whistle with the effigy of a bat. Bats, the only mammals that fly, are creatures of great symbolic power in ancient Colombia. The effigy on the whistle is most likely a fruit bat that would, as a pollinator, also be a symbol of fertility. The Tuza culture of southwestern Colombia, on the fringe of the vast Inca empire, flourished in A.D. 1300-1500.The Tuza produced ceramics with motifs drawn from the natural world, both in stylized patterns and in indirect representations of physical phenomena such as lightning and rain. While the Tuza whistle on view in the exhibition reflects the physical structure of a marine shell, the painted design on the exterior invokes the world of shamanic beliefs and rituals. Two shamans are depicted, one of whom is blowing hallucinogenic powder through a ceremonial tube into the nostril of a crouching third figure. In this instrument, both the real and supernatural worlds intersect; ethnographic data confirms that hallucinogenic plant use employing tubes is still practiced among indigenous groups in the Narino region today. PERU More than elsewhere in the New World, the geography and climate along the western coast of South America deter mined the patterns of development for the cultures that survived in this formidable environment. The region encompasses dry desert coast, the high and forbidding Andes, and lowlands of dense tropical jungle. Most of Peru's ancient peoples settled and flourished in the river valleys that flanked the western Andes, where they produced superlative ceramics, masterful works in gold and silver, intricately woven textiles, and musical instruments in the artisan compounds of cities made almost entirely of mud-brick or adobe. Hundreds of years before the Inca conquered the desert region of the north coast of Peru, the Moche flourished there. Master builders in a harsh environment, the Moche erected huge mud-brick pyramids and ceremonial complexes. Their finest works in clay are the thousands of finely molded, modeled, and painted mortuary vessels, many with a characteristic stirrup spout. The forms and designs of the vessels vividly represent people, including portraits of individuals of status, manifestations of daily life, and a whole panorama of the natural world. Many vessels have anthropomorphic and zoomorphic features reflecting Moche mythology. On view in the exhibition is a beautifully modeled Moche clay trumpet. Typically these instruments end in a single coil with an integrated mouthpiece and an effigy on the bell. The Princeton trumpet effigy is that of a fanged feline, possibly a puma. Also in the exhibition are examples of the whistling jars found in various forms throughout Peru. The blackware vessel in the form of a nursing canine functions as a whistle when air is blown through the stirrup spout. Double jars, such as the pot with an elite personage, are filled with water and tilted; the rising water forces air through an orifice generally placed in the vicinity of the mouth of the effigy figure, causing a whistling sound. The Inca capital of Cuzco was built of stone masonry, without mortar, in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. With a highly developed centralized government and an impressive network of stone roadways, the Inca rulers presided over a vast realm that stretched nearly 3000 miles along the crest of the Andes, and maintained their control of territories they had subjugated through diplomacy, treaty, and warfare. The prosperity and stability of the Inca empire came to an end in 1532 with the arrival of the Spanish. Francisco Pizarro and the mercenaries under him were unprepared for the splendor of Cuzco, the Place of the Sun, whose towering buildings of stone were covered in dazzling sheets of gold. The Inca nobility, subdued by the loss of their emperor Atahualpa at the hands of the Spanish, led Pizarro and his company into the city and entertained them at banquets with singers and other musicians. Subsequent chronicler s commented on the many musical instruments they saw and heard, and mentioned that the Inca had instituted formal musical study among members of the nobility. To the Spanish Catholic missionaries who came in the wake of Pizarro, the association of music with power and prestige in the New World made it enormously useful in converting the natives to Christianity. All the religious orders made music a primary subject in the Christian schools they established to educate and convert the indigenous populations. The Spanish made some attempt to document Inca musical practices; for example, the drawings of Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala record scenes of dancing and musicians playing conch shell trumpets, quenas or notched end flutes, and antaras or panpipes played in pairs. The exhibition includes two of the principal wind instruments associated with the Inca: an antara made of graduated lengths of bone with stopped ends, still bearing traces of original cotton wrapping, and a bone pincullu, dating from the time of the conquest, carved with a puma effigy. In Peru such instruments are still in use in musical practices that often echo the ancient past In Music from the Land of the Jaguar, the musical instruments and iconography encompass related themes of creation, death, and regeneration that are part of the art and religion of all the pre Hispanic cultures represented. To contemporary Amerindian societies, the jaguar is still an image of power in their own and the spirit worlds. Many of the objects on view, both musical and other wise, are given vital significance by their various jaguar associations. Through an analysis of jaguar and related (puma) imagery, the exhibition provides a conduit to link the past with the present.

--John H. Burkhalter III, musician and independent scholar

Gillett G. Griffin, faculty curator of Pre-Columbian and Native American art