Música antigua

'Música antigua: Perspectivas críticas desde América Latina' offers what is, to our knowledge, the first sustained collective reassessment of early music from Latin American perspectives. Rather than treating early music as a stable repertory defined by European periodization or by the historically informed performance movement, the volume approaches it as a contested, dynamic field in which canons, archives, pedagogies, performance practices, and historiographical narratives are continually negotiated. Bringing together scholars from across Latin American and Ibero-American scholarly contexts, the book examines a wide range of subjects: the teaching of music history in the region; Andean archaeomusicology; historical consciousness and early music pedagogy; the impact of the Spanish Black Legend on music historiography; plainchant in Hispanic America; the religious villancico in colonial Hispanic America through big data analysis; villancicos de negro from Puebla; early music institutions in Brazil; and the politics of authenticity in Bolivian mission music archives. Across these case studies, the volume addresses broader questions concerning coloniality, canon formation, archival authority, Indigenous and Afro-descendant agency, cultural memory, and the circulation of musical knowledge. Framed by a prologue by Leonardo Waisman and an epilogue by Miriam Escudero, the volume includes seven chapters in Spanish and two in Portuguese, reflecting the multilingual character of Latin American and Ibero-American musicology. The book contributes to current debates in musicology, ethnomusicology, performance studies, Latin American studies, and cultural history by challenging inherited North Atlantic frameworks and proposing more regionally grounded ways of studying early music. It will be useful as a reference work for researchers, as a methodological aid for scholars working on music history and historiography, and as a teaching resource for undergraduate and graduate courses on early music, Latin American music, colonial music, music historiography, and decolonial approaches to the arts. While academically rigorous, the volume is also relevant to performers, educators, and ensemble directors seeking critical perspectives on early music beyond the traditional European canon.