The Inevitable Bandstand: The State Band of Oaxaca and the Politics of Sound

Abstract

The “inevitable bandstand” refers to the music building placed in the central plaza of main towns in Mexico between the late nineteenth and the first half of the twentieth century. Along with statues of national heroes, it is an emblem of order, civic life, and modernity. Charles Heath revives the concept of civil religion as interpreted by Robert Bellah to argue that the Oaxaca state band played a central ideological role in the political and social plans and programs of the state.Bellah's discussion of a civil religion in the United States called attention to the presence of a religious discourse in the political speeches of the country's founding fathers and more recent politicians. This discourse involved the power of God as the guiding force to rule and govern the country. Is it viable to interpret nineteenth-century Mexican liberal patriotic sentiments as the expression of a civil religion? Mexico is well known for being a Catholic country; however, the construction of the nation and the power of the state were only consolidated with the Reform Laws (1867–1869) and the state's secularization. The suppression of the Te Deum in government enthronement ceremonies during the Benito Juárez government illustrates not only the separation of the state from the church but also the separation of government politics from religious ritual. The wording and appearance of fervent nineteenth-century statements about the nation chosen by Heath may sound religious—and indeed religious expressions still are part of our language—but their moral ideology was not to link state policies and programs with a supernatural authority but instead to generate an awareness of the country's struggles to create a sovereign nation and to instill nationalism, forging an identity based upon the diversity of regional cultures. What the author calls the “eclectic repertoires” of the Banda de Música del Estado de Oaxaca's (BME) musical renditions throughout one and a half centuries exemplify this combination of European romantic militarism, heroic values, and Oaxacan or regional Mexican musical compositions (p. 42).The strength and contribution of this book is the author's detailed historiographical work. Heath uses primary sources, periodicals, annual government reports, and texts from politicians and intellectuals of the time (often musicians themselves) such as Justo Sierra, Ignacio Manuel Altamirano, José Vasconcelos, Genaro Vázquez, and Guillermo Rosas Solaegui to account for the state's struggle to modernize government and society and the introduction of social and economic policies and programs, particularly in education and tourism. The BME is made the avatar of that history. Introducing music festivals and popular and regional music as part of a socialist education curriculum was central to the civic calendar of the BME. Under the ideology of mestizaje, Mexican intellectuals imagined social and cultural integration for Latin American societies. Rural education became a priority, and cultural missions trained teachers to encourage regional music and dance in education. The author also discusses the importance of regional music and dances for promoting tourism and economic development. Descriptions of the BME's participation in the Guelaguetza festival are testimonies to the important role that this musical institution plays in the main economic industry of Oaxaca today.The book gives minute detail of government dispositions toward and investments in the growth and improvement of the BME, the band members' labor contracts, and the obligatory and key role that they have played in political and social celebrations, commemorations, and other symbolic events of the official civic calendar. The strong influence of musical directors such as Germán Canseco, Diego Innes, and Amador Pérez Torres is narrated with ethnographic detail. Several descriptions of the music programs are offered, but the reader misses an inventory of the music archive of the BME, which the author had the opportunity to study.The writing is slightly dry but full of information, and it is thus interesting and useful from that point of view. The Inevitable Bandstand is an important book, as it contributes to filling a gap in the modern history of music in Oaxaca City.