sounders

SOUNDERS* FROM ANCIENT MEXICO**
* Artifacts to make sounds. ** Actual Zone from South of US to Nicaragua.

Clay triple flute copy from my teacher and friend:
Mario Cortés Vergara
Texcoco, Edo. de Mex.
Libertad #15 Mexico, CP 56130
Tel. Nal. 01-(595)-46731
mctlapitzali@yahoo.com.mx

The singular, fine and diverse organology from ancient Mexico was developed during several millenniums. Its utilization and fomentation was a central matter of state and sound government, at the highest levels in administration, religion and military. It was utilized in all kind of events, celebrations and multiple social festivities, in harmonic union with dancing, singing, literature, poetry, etc., from the greatest ceremonial centers to the smallest and dispersed communities and even in those considered undeveloped and nomads. Its utilization had a fundamental role in all their regional "music" and in other vital social and personal activities. Fundamentally, it was used:

To honor and to speak with their Gods;
To announce regulated and periodic events and to give notice of dangers, attacks and vigilance;
To live with nature and to communicate with other biological beings;
To transmit orders and signals and to molest the enemy ears during wars and battles;
To realize communications at short and long distances;
To improve the physical and mental heath of persons;
To make magic and shamans effects and in all their ritual settings;
To promote and to thank good productive activities as harvesting, hunting, craftsmanship, etc.;
To imitate animal sounds, for calling, training and hunting;
To imitate natural sounds with several porpoises;
To promote sells from commercial travelers;
To play in sports, games and pleasure;
Daily rituals, as those required to take a bath in a "temazcal" and to make an artifact or to make love;
In this life and in the other. It was a frequent companion in tombs.

Those who made and used the sounders were educated at the highest level and were watched with rigor. If they did not acted well they were sacrificed, because if they did not had theirs sounds there were not festivities, celebrations and good performance, and that was not allowed.

Unfortunately, the rich Mexican organology was destroyed, forbidden, proscribed, substituted and forgotten since the Conquest and the Colony, five centuries ago. That historic global policy has been continued until now with effectiveness, as if there were not the Independence and the Revolution neither the letters of our laws to research and to promote the diverse prehispanic and indigenous cultures. From an auto sufficiency situation in organology it have become to an almost total dependency from the exterior to obtain professional musical instruments and devises, much of their music and those that generate it. They (those with power to do it) opened the frontiers to imports of all kind of goods and services, including much induced musical scrap, but they impeded the resurgence of Mexican sounders and the benefits from its development and fomentation.

Actually, the only interested to rescue these ancient traditions are a few artisans, musicians, and dancers that still make or use Mexican sounders and a researcher that makes studies on aerophones:.

Roberto Velázquez Cabrera
Investigador independiente