Villancicos from Mexico City for the Virgin of Guadalupe

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6 Scopus citations

Abstract

The villancico remains the most emblematic genre of viceregal (colonial) Latin American music, if not the only Spanish Baroque genre to appear regularly on concert programmes and in music history curricula.1 Indeed, over the last decade, performance groups have canonized a small group of villancicos that showcase the more popularizing aspects of the genre, namely stylized representations of social types such as impertinent Castilian ruffians and childlike Christianized Africans.2 Assuming these stereotyped representations of social others to iconically represent social realities in Latin America, or 'local color delights',3 the discourse on the villancico essentializes and exoticizes social issues while side-lining mainstream examples of the repertory and the transatlantic literary culture in which it flourished.4 A case in point would be interpreting Juan Gutiérrez de Padilla's well-known dialect villancico A siolo Flasiquiyo as an historical ethnographic account of Africans in 1653 New Spain, even though its text, similar to many from peninsular Spanish churches, glosses satiric tropes of Africanness that had been enacted on the Madrid stage since the 16th century.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)229-244
Number of pages16
JournalEarly Music
Volume39
Issue number2
DOIs
StatePublished - May 2011

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Music

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