“Mi Alma Cantará”: Tracing Issues in Music Education within the Colonial and Contemporary Latin American Church

Author(s)

Kerry DiGiacomo, Liberty UniversityFollow

Publication Date

Spring 4-22-2015

School

School of Music; College of Arts and Sciences

Major

Spanish; Music: World Cultures

Keywords

Latin America, church, worship, music, Spanish, indigenous agency, reduccion, comunidad evangelica de base, grassroots worship movement, corito, colonization, music education, ethnomusicology

Disciplines

Christian Denominations and Sects | Christianity | Composition | Ethnomusicology | Latin American Languages and Societies | Liturgy and Worship | Missions and World Christianity | Music Education

Recommended Citation

DiGiacomo, Kerry, "“Mi Alma Cantará”: Tracing Issues in Music Education within the Colonial and Contemporary Latin American Church" (2015). Senior Honors Theses. 528.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/honors/528

Abstract

Music education and institutionalized Christianity have been criticized by historians and ethnomusicologists for their role in the domination and transformation of indigenous Latin American cultures since the late 15th century. However, indigenous peoples, including Amerindians as well as more recent mestizo and Ladino people groups, have also taken an active role in transforming European musics to reflect an emic understanding of their own cultural identity. Music education within the Latin American church has provided an interface for these complex interactions between foreign and native cultural influences. This paper will explore the connections between colonial and contemporary-era music education movements in the Latin American church by tracing the themes of agency, leadership, composition, and community, in order to demonstrate the crucial role that indigenous people groups have played at the intersection of faith and education in the continuous creation of their own music culture.