Various Artists - Modern Mayan: Chiapas 1 / Various - COMPACT DISCS [CD]

Produced and recorded by Henrietta Yurchenco. Rabinal Achi is one of the few pre-Columbian literary works to survive the Conquest, a tragic story of epic proportions that, like other pre-Hispanic dramas, employed song, dance, mime, masks and declamation. Baile de las Canastas (Dance of the Baskets) celebrates the change from a semi-nomadic hunters' society to an agricultural civilization. Today it is performed as a series of set scenes using masks, dance, music, dialogue, and mime. The performance takes it's name from the tall baskets worn by the dancers.

The songs and dances heard today in Mexico are a complex mixture, with their origins in both indigenous and European music. That music was a vigorous art prior to the arrival of the Spaniards may be inferred from the impressive collections of pre-Columbian musical instruments to be seen in museums throughout the world. Music held a far more important place in ancient Mexico than in many contemporaneous cultures in other parts of the world... Charles M. Bogert and Martha R. Bogert.

Produced and recorded by Jacques Jangoux. InchThe music presented in this album is typical of rural Guatemala. Most of the inhabitants of this area are Indians of Mayan descent, but almost everywhere in the Guatemalan countryside one can also find Ladinos persons, of whatever descent, who speak Spanish in their homes and have adopted the Ladino way of life, which is mostly Spanish. It is not completely Spanish, however, because both the cultures of rural Guatemala are the result of the confrontation over several centuries of two very different civilizations, the indigenous Mayan, and the Western, introduced by the Spanish in the 16th century. Both cultures have borrowed traits from the other, and this is nowhere more evident than in their music, which is a mixture of European, Indian, and perhaps also African elements...Inch Jacques Jangoux.