The Course of Mexican Music

A comprehensive set of flashcards covering key vocabulary and concepts related to the Course of Mexican Music.

Banda de viento

Wind band in Oaxaca and in Mexico in general.

CECAM

Music school for Oaxacan indigenous youth.

Cosmopolitan

Worldly, sophisticated and at ease with many cultures.

CONACULTA

Acronym for Mexico's National Council for Culture and the Arts.

Culture

The customs of life, beliefs, and expressions that define one group from another.

Danzón

Nineteenth-century Cuban dance form developed in Mexican dance clubs and popularized in films such as El Salón México.

Daily performance

The execution of daily tasks or work.

Essentialization

Reductionist view of people and their culture; drawing broad generalizations that overlook complexity.

Extra-daily performance

Staged, artistic, or ritual performance.

Immigration

Migration to another country to take up residence.

Indigenous

Native or original to a place; term applied to the groups of people who lived in the Americas prior to the arrival of European explorers.

Integration

To incorporate into the whole.

Mestizaje

Spanish for the process of mixing of ancestries.

Mexican diaspora

Dispersion and settlement of Mexicans in lands outside of Mexico.

Mexicanidad

Spanish for 'Mexicaness'; Mexican identity.

Musicologist

Scholar who studies music history, culture, and production.

Nereidas

Instrumental danzón composed by Amador Pérez Torres, made popular in the film El Salón México.

Performance

The event or process of performing; the presentation of music, drama, or art.

Stereotype

Overly simplified or standardized image of a person or thing.

Ambient sound

Sounds and rhythms of the surrounding environment.

Beat

Constant pulse in the music; what you tap your foot or dance to.

Composition

A work of music, literature, or art; a piece of music.

Compound meter

A metric grouping that can be heard in more than one way.

Crescendo

Gradually getting louder.

Decrescendo

Gradually lessening in volume of the music, growing softer.

Duple meter

Meter that can be felt as two main beats per measure.

Evaristo Aguilar

Living composer and percussionist from the state of Tamaulipas.

Folk music

Music traditionally transmitted by word of mouth and shared as community property.

Four basic properties of music

Pitch, volume, timbre, and rhythm.

Free meter

Free-flowing with no predictable accentuation or regular measure.

Harmony

The simultaneous sounding and combination of tones.

High note

High-pitched tone in music.

Interval

The difference between two musical pitches.

Key

Tonality; often identified with scale or mode.

Lila Downs

Mexican-American singer-songwriter born in Oaxaca in 1968.

Máximo Ramón Ortiz

Nineteenth-century politician and composer who wrote the melody and lyrics for 'Sandunga.'

Melody

Memorable sequence of pitches; the part you can sing or hum.

Meter

The organization of beats into recurrent groups of strong and weak pulses.

Miguel Bernal Jiménez

Twentieth-century composer, organist, and professor known for his contributions to musical life.

Minor chord

Chord based on a minor scale; its discernable quality results from the interval of a minor third.

Mode

Scale-like collection of pitches distinguished by its order of pitches and mood.

Pitch

Tone or note; determined by the vibration rate of the sound wave.

Prelude

Opening or introductory section.

Register

The relative range, high or low, of set pitches, voice or instrument.

Rhythm

Distinctive arrangement of long and short durations of sound.

Scale

The abstracted collection of basic pitches used in a song or piece.

Soundscape

Recording or composition that captures the acoustic experience of an environment.

Strophic form

Compositional form where the same melody is repeated with different lyrics.

Structure, musical

The compositional form of a piece of music; organizational plan of repeated sections.

Timbre

The quality of sound that distinguishes one voice or instrument from another.

Triple meter

Regular pattern of beats measured in groups of three.

Verse and refrain

A song with a chorus that is periodically repeated.