Written Sources for Indian Music until 1882

Abstract

lthough not widely reviewed when in 1882 Breitkopf und Hartel published Theodore Baker's Leipzig dissertation, Uber die Musik der nordamerikanischen Wilden, it soon came to be accepted on both sides of the Atlantic as definitive survey of the prior literature as well as record of close personal research. In this paper, Baker's sources are reassessed and new material not known by him is for the first time evaluated in an ethnomusicological context. For access to rare materials, printed and manuscript, I thank the administrators and staff of the British Museum, Bibliotheque nationale, Newberry Library, Yale University Library, and Bancroft Library. As early as 1496 Christopher Columbus commissioned Ram6n Pane, Catalonian cleric who had learned the language of Hispaniola,1 to describe Taino life. Pane mentioned Hispaniola drum called mayohavau. Made of stout hollowed-out tree trunk something less than four feet long and two feet in diameter, this slit-drum had two keys that reminded him of blacksmith's tongs. To its accompaniment the Tainos on the island sang their religious chants. Its sound carried a league and half.2 Gonzalo Fernandez de Oviedo (1478-1557), polite musician brought up at the Spanish court in Prince John's company and within constant earshot of so famous composer as Juan de Anchieta, met this same Haitian congener of the Aztec teponaztli on the island of Hispaniola in 1515, and made drawing of it to accompany his precise description in Book V, chapter 1, of his monumental Historia general y natural de las Indias.3 In his experience, the Hispaniola islanders followed the peculiarly Mayan custom reported by Bartolome Jose Granado y Baeza4 of placing the instrument on the ground rather than on wooden trestle. Their reason was that the sound carried farther.5 Oviedo's drawing was first published in Spain at folio 46v, column 2, of his La historia general de las Indias (Seville: Juan Cromberger, 1535), and in Italy at folio 112v of the Italian translation published in Giovanni Battista Ramusio's Terzo Volume delle Navigationi et Viaggi (Venice: Stamperia de Giunti, 1556). The term areito was used in Hispaniola for the call-andresponse dance song sung to the accompaniment of this two-keyed slit-drum. First met in European publication around 1510,6 the term areito soon became indigenized in Spanish exploration literature to mean any New World