Document

Music and dance

Q: Why is «Music and dance» only in Spanish?

Because «Music and dance» quotes Sahagún, Durán and the codices in their own sixteenth-century words, often folio by folio. A quotation carried across stops being a quotation: it loses the register, the ambiguity and the exact wording someone might want to check against a facsimile. The Spanish page is linked from here.

What was learned in the house of song

What it covers

What was taught in the cuicacalli, which instruments were played, and what the sources say about how song and dance were learned.

The full entry is in Spanish, and here is why

What you have read above is this project's own summary of music and dance. The full entry — the part that rests on the sixteenth-century sources — has not been translated, and that is a decision rather than an omission.

We chose not to touch the primary text. Those sections quote Sahagún, Durán and the codices in their own words, often in sixteenth-century Castilian. A quotation carried across stops being a quotation: it loses the register, the ambiguity and the exact wording someone might want to check against a facsimile.

In Spanish the entry carries:

De dónde vino la música
Los instrumentos
La danza
La casa de canto
Quién preside
El canto tenía géneros, y no son estilos

Read the full entry in the original Spanish → Nahuatl names and terms are identical in both versions.

How to cite this page

Alma Mexica, «Music and dance», The documents. Revised 2026-09-17. https://almamexica.org/en/document/musica-danza/