A major new project by Philadelphia-based Renaissance wind band Piffaro comes to fruition in May with Eagle & Empire: Music of Colonial Mexico, exploring cultural collision and combination in colonial era Mexico. The concert series opens May 8 with a special performance at Esperanza Arts Center as part of their VOCES series, which is currently spotlighting Indigenous cultural traditions from Latin America and the Caribbean.
Friday’s special performance features a light reception of Indigenous foods before Piffaro’s virtuosic multi-instrumentalists take the stage alongside Grammy Award–winning vocalists and Aztec dancers. The project is supported by The Paul M. Angell Foundation and will be repeated without dancers in Chestnut Hill, Wilmington, Delaware, and New York City.
“Wind bands like ours were a massive part of the soundscape of colonial-era Mexico,” notes Piffaro artistic director Priscilla Herreid. “Letters from the time expressed amazement at the number of Indigenous musicians who’d mastered instruments like the shawm, dulcian, and sackbut – as well as the sheer number of players.” The program reflects this rich musical environment, featuring sacred polyphonic works housed in Mexican collections—including two pieces in Nahuatl from the Valdés Codex—alongside villancicos (a rustic song, often on a Christmas text), jácaras (a poetic song that highlights individual singers), instrumental dances such as the zarabanda, gaita, and the Aztec tocotín, and a chant from one of the earliest Mexican choir books (the Graduale Dominicale of 1576), newly adapted from Latin into Nahuatl.
Priscilla emphasizes the importance of approaching this repertoire with care and collaboration. “This is music from a place that Europeans invaded, that had a completely different culture,” she says. “We can’t do it on our own. I reached out to a Mexicayotl cultural organization here in Philadelphia, Ollin Yoliztli Calmecac (OYC), which uses dance and food as a way of preserving and sharing their living culture. Their co-director, Brujo de la Mancha, has talked with me about the colonial era from his perspective and consulted on the program and language. This music is connected to a living tradition.”
The concert also features an internationally acclaimed roster of vocalists: Grammy Award winners Estelí Gomez and Cecilia Duarte, joined by Nell Snaidas, Jonatan Alvarado, and Andrew Padgett. A wide span of the Americas are represented on stage – Mexico, Uruguay, and Argentina. The singers bring linguistic fluency and interpretive depth to the repertoire. In addition to Latin and Spanish, they’ll sing in the Indigenous language Nahuatl, in which they’ll be coached by Brujo.
Addressing the historical complexities of the program, Herreid is direct: “We’re not pretending that colonization was better than it was. It was messy, imperfect, and often terrible. But it is part of the history of the Americas. Historical accounts tell us that European music was embraced and performed gloriously by the native musicians who learned it, many of whom began composing in this new style themselves. Letters describe the number and skill of instrumentalists, as well as the mixing of European and native instruments together in mass services. From Piffaro’s perspective, this is part of the history of our instruments and this program helps us present a fuller picture of the Renaissance era.”
Brujo reflects on the project’s significance: “Performing the music of colonial Mexico alongside Mexicayotl dance paints a picture of how colonialism shaped the culture and religion of Mexico and North America as we know it today. Something is always lost in translation, across languages and across cultures. We can’t recover what was silenced, but we can honor the gaps.”
