Chapter 1 - Broken Spears and Songs of Sorrow

Summary

From the moment Christopher Columbus used the tinkling of a hawk’s bell to excite the interest of the welcoming Taínos during the First Encounter, music became a weapon of both conquest and resistance in the struggle for America. Here we are introduced to the nightmare of the Spanish conquest as reflected in the recovered Aztec songs of the Cantares mexicanos describing the massacres at Tenochtitlan and Cholula in the 1520s. Following the Spanish mission to Christianize America through the imposition of church music against the holdouts of Indigenous song, the European scramble for the “New World” introduces British explorations of Canada and musical encounters with the Inuits – sometimes against a background of violence, and sometimes in a tenuous moment of peace.