The Course of Mexican Music

The Course of Mexican Music offers a full panoramic view of Mexican music, using history as a point of departure and linking Mexican music across eras, styles and performance traditions. The aim is to understand what music Mexicans view as theirs, and how that music contributed to the creation of Mexico as a nation. In doing so, students learn both repertory and the musicians. The text brings together a full package of resources that students and instructors can use to explore the character, range, and scope of Mexican music from antiquity to the present. It includes a web site that links to audio and video tracks.

Special Features:

  • A complete course—with important resources compiled in one place, many not found in previous works on Mexican music access to 90 audio tracks, and 17 video links, 130 illustrations
  • Comprehensive introduction to musical styles and practices within an historic narrative —folkloric, popular and classical— in Mexico from pre-colonial times to the present
  • Builds upon the basic premise that understanding the relationship between historical circumstance and contemporary practice is critical to understanding the diversity, development and contemporary potency of Mexican music

Janet L. Sturman is Professor of Music in the Fred Fox School of Music and Associate Dean of the Graduate College at the University of Arizona.