Indigenous Cultural Expressions and Methodological Frameworks: Some Thoughts

Abstract

Within the contemporary global world, there appears to be an inevitable lag between the changing factual reality and the concepts and categories scholars use to analyze it, i.e., “indigenous peoples,” “traditional oral expressions,” “ethnicity,” “cultural identity,” and “cultural heritage.” But are these discrepancies insurmountable? This article delves into such mismatches, examining the relentless search for heuristic instruments to deal with the diverse indigenous artistic expressions in their socio-historical and political contexts. It presents some thoughts about the methodological frameworks used to ponder indigenous cultural expressions. The main argument is based on ethnographic research among Zoque and Mayan peoples in the states of Oaxaca and Chiapas in Southern Mexico, while establishing a dialog with ethnographies by other authors on different indigenous regions.

1. Introduction

According to the French historian Marc Bloch, “humans resemble their times more than they do their fathers” [1]. This becomes evident in a variety of ways. Suffice it to observe the range of forms, ideologies, and ideas adopted within contemporary daily life. However, what interests me here are scholars, theoretical discourse, and their social networks. That is, where some such academics search for conceptual frameworks to deal with specific phenomena, others appear to assume the disquieting pretense of living the academic avant-garde through the uncritical accumulation of concepts created for the study of specific cases, but which are considered novel, current, and generalizable. If a given concept or category that presents a solution to the research questions of a scholar is coined by other authors for different contexts, the fact, that they are outside, seems to allow for legitimacy, currency, and validity; if it were different, they would be kept outside academic discussion. At this point, we may recall what Walter D. Mignolo names “traveling theories,” that is, bodies of theory and know-how that move toward other places and that are transformed and transculturated in the process. Their relevance, however, lies in arriving at the critical position from which they are enunciated ([2], p. 246–248).

Sometimes the uncritical course of action that several scholars follow responds to the legitimacy of a Eurocentric discourse, which has provided the core frame for anthropological reflection – as well as that of other disciplines – as Mary Louise Pratt notes. That is, according to this author, there has been a monopolistic use of categories and of “epistemic operations through which the West is strengthened and self-constructed as a single source of generalizable cultural models” [3]. If to this epistemic problem, which Aníbal Quijano has called “the coloniality of knowledge” [4], one may add the fact that “new worlds” never cease to be created ([5], p. 9), the contemporary global world would seem to inextricably guide us toward a lag, as the critical epistemologist Hugo Zemelman [6] has called the mismatch between the factual changing reality and the concepts and categories in which we study it.

Thus, it is appropriate to remember the complexity of the contemporary global world when undertaking research about the types of cultural expression acknowledged as “traditional,” because we either take it for granted or overestimate it by considering it to exist beyond a socio-historic analysis. The context is determined by the market economy characterized, on the one hand, by the flow of communications and people, and on the other, because it creates deep inequalities. Both phenomena have a direct effect on cultural expressions. Therefore, it goes without saying that societies set in motion strategies that allow them to reproduce and modify their diverse cultural expressions – in a broad sense - in the conditions of risk and uncertainty imposed by modernity ([7], p. 133–155). Nevertheless, some scholars consider that these social responses correspond to neoliberalism’s own mechanics, which demand alternative expressions for survival ([8], p. 311–314).

Hence, how do we render accounts of indigenous cultural expressions, within changing contexts and in the interplay between local and global? As researchers are not neutral and possess a site of enunciation, we must build an explanation-understanding that escapes Manichaeism and the overdetermination of the present. For instance, sometimes indigenous societies and their artistic expressions are victimized vis-a-vis globalization, and on the other hand – assuming a quasi-evolutionary perspective -, it is said that it is only valid to think of such societies regarding what they are, given their degree of flexibility and adaptation to the present ([7], p. 11).

Given these stances, we have the obligation of presenting alternative questions, which will guide us toward the understanding of phenomena such as the spectacularization of cultural expressions such as music and the insertion of young indigenous musicians in the industrial music economy, as well as their use of digital technology. Interesting research around this topic is the one undertaken by Héctor López of the Danza de los Voladores (dance of the flyers). This is a ritual that comprises a musical-dancing practice of pre-Hispanic origins, which is presently part of the devotional expressions of many indigenous societies ([9], p. 84–86). Some scholars have approached this practice by focusing on the flyers’ ritual process and its centuries-long persistence, in the costumes they wear or in the performative act, but López touches upon the new uses of this ritual in terms of a paid staging. The author claims that this issue marks the actuality of the original Papantla, Veracruz, flyers, a cultural expression of the Totonacapan of the Mexican Gulf Coast ([9], p. 229–247) and probably the most widespread and studied, as it is part of the representative list of the intangible cultural heritage of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO).

Whereas such acknowledgment by UNESCO is of such an importance that it should not be bypassed given its social, economic, and political –and academic in light of the interest it has sprung among scholars - impacts, what it brings to the fore is the practice of this musical-dancing expression as a means of sustenance for the flyers and the way in which they have entered into the cultural touristic market in search of a more or less steady income. The staging of the flying ritual in fairs, regional gatherings, and tourist spaces has led the performance to opt for a sort of synthesis of the ritual, as well as for the modification of the order or omission of the sones (musical pieces), part of the musical-dancing performance.

Without a doubt, we stand before a multidimensional phenomenon that should take economic diversification into account as a characteristic of indigenous people in the contemporary global world and not simply explain the case by resorting to categories of resistance and cultural heritage explaining that, despite tourism and mercantilization of culture, Totonaco people continue to perform their ritual-dance. We would perhaps be simplifying and romanticizing this practice, and we would somehow be speaking for the performers without listening to the local interpretation regarding how and why they have decided to alter certain aspects of the performance.

Equally, seeking to “speak for” the other has been a constant feature – often implicitly – of the praxis of many academics, through which stereotypes about indigenous peoples have been perpetuated. In this sense, we may remember what Spivak asserted about Western academics who have objectified the colonized subaltern, as a voiceless object of study [10]. In the case of studies concerning the cultural expressions of the Indigenous peoples of Mexico, it is important to reframe those features which have changed within their artistic expressions, so as to escape the focus on those believed to inherit direct cultural continuities with the pre-Hispanic past, defined as such in great measure by the cultural and educational politics of the post-revolutionary state [11].

For many years, an interest took hold in determining the ethnic identity of indigenous groups, without considering the narratives of the individuals involved. Ethnic identity has been a fertile field for academic discussion. Nonetheless, this turns out to be ambiguous, often contradictory, and complex territory, with identities emerging that are as mobile as societies themselves. This is so much the case that the values of a people, it has been convincingly demonstrated, are not consubstantial but are instead modeled in self-other interactions with other people-groups through media such as, for instance, the differing clothing that identity adopts makes its substrate even less graspable ([12], p. 287). Hence Miguel Bartolomé warns that “ethnic phenomena only take on their full visibility in the light of the depths of the historical field in which they have developed”; as such, “ethnic identity cannot be reduced exclusively to the contextual manifestations that express it in any given moment” ([13], p. 449).

Let us move on to a different case.

2. Legitimacy of the different voices

Many years ago, I met Don Gelasio Sánchez†, a Chima Zoque, in San Miguel Chimalapa, Oaxaca, in Southern Mexico. Don Gelasio was a peculiar character. While he was not a musician himself, he knew all the musical repertoire of the region. He was not a mayordomo or part of any ceremonial group, but he knew each one of the ritual phases prescribed for each celebration. According to Don Gelasio, he had forgotten a significant part of the Zoque lexicon, but he was able to communicate in that language to such an extent that, some time ago, an American linguist who was there paid him one peso for each Zoque word he taught her. While I am unable to confirm directly whether or not this happened, what remains true is that, through the years and the comings and goings of several researchers through San Miguel, Don Gelasio has specialized as a kind of “professional informant,” somebody through which access to other interlocutors could be gained ([14], p. 80–81). I asked him to tell me some local stories about music, the mythical origin of animals, and so on. In brief, I wanted him to tell me Zoque myths. Don Gelasio gladly agreed to help me and gave me an appointment at his house. Before that, he asked me to help pay for a worker who would substitute for him in his milpa while he answered my questions.

Once in his home, my host offered me a chair, sat me by a table, took out a recorder, and played a tape in which, years prior, he had recorded a series of narrations in his own voice. He adjusted the volume of the recorder and left the room. I do not remember for how long I remained stunned before the contraption, listening to stories in his taped voice: “The Story of the Dog,” “The Tortoise,” “The Rook,” the lyric of Isthmus sones (musical traditional pieces). I did not know what to do nor how I felt. Many might think that the most appropriate response was to leave the place feeling offended; others would have thanked Don Gelasio for his time and for having shared his stories. In my case, I tried to see the funny side of could be considered my “hazing” in the Chimalapas.

While I let this episode pass as part of the vicissitudes of fieldwork, I was also drawn toward other analytic possibilities. It became evident that Don Gelasio’s actions were not a reaction to any boredom he may have felt vis-à-vis researchers’ questions and visits; during that period of fieldwork, we shared enjoyable conversations on several occasions. Rather, it was a different issue. Don Gelasio was talking to me on my own terms – or in those which, to his mind, passed as such – because he supposed my logic should be like that of the linguist mentioned above. Besides, he was providing me with the information he thought I wanted to know.

Nonetheless, a sort of “asymmetric imaginary” as Renato Rosaldo ([15], p. 67) calls the power relations presented from the perspective of the subject when there are conditions of social inequality present at each encounter, were at play here. Trained in anthropology, with its methodological emphasis on unmediated, in-person sensory experience, I had underestimated the worth of the recording and of this episode. Was the cassette not, however, another equally valid way of presenting and transmitting part of the oral memory of Chima Zoque people? This was especially the case, if this was a place known, during the last three decades, for suffering deep political crises, conflicts, and tensions between local and regional actors, as well as population displacement and land invasion processes.

The previous ethnographic narrative above deserves methodological attention ([15], p. 63). What would be the worth of recorded words? How do we deal with the fact that we are before the appropriation of “modern” technology by members of a society whose musical tradition we consider to be oral? How do we quote this source? To what idea of substantiation should I refer? Are we prepared in academia to explain this type of phenomenon? We are facing a different form of preservation and transmission of memory but, does it have the same legitimacy as if Don Gelasio would have narrated those stories and if I had taped them then and there? Does “tradition” consist straightforwardly of transmitted information? To the last question, Morin responds that “just because cultural transmission involves an exchange of ideas does not mean that traditions themselves are the ideas that their proliferation relies on” ([16], p. 49).

Chima Zoque society has been a site of ongoing agrarian, political, and cultural conflict. Given the complex landscape of the surrounding rainforest, the social sphere of cultural expressions like music often seems to dilute prior agrarian and political conflicts as well as of quarrels among religious denominations. Nevertheless, there are different elaborations of local musical expressions that exactly respond to their convulsive milieus, that is, they are not only immersed in these, but they are in dialog –so to speak - with them. For example, in Santa Maria Chimalapa there is a group of “cultural missions” whose aim is to foster Zoque Cultural Expressions or inventions of what is thought would characterize the “Chima Zoque”. In fact, it is enough to translate songs of the national popular repertoire into that language to be considered Chima Zoque musical expressions.

Likewise, in this municipality, there are versatile soloist musicians who perform diverse repertoires, as well as a Catholic Church committee in charge of organizing the adoration cycle for the saints, which foments certain musical traditions. In San Miguel, the other municipal capital of the Chimalapas, there are versatile musical groups that participate in a variety of social spaces, such as the corridistas, composers, and performers in the Zoque language, besides a handful of musicians devoted to Catholic rituals. Other religious denominations also carry out their own forms of religious service within which music is relevant, but these types of music are not considered traditional, nor of interest to academics, because they are not part of the Catholic ceremonial calendar. While there is an intention of social control, in anthropological terms, of these types of music –as there is in Catholicism -, their aim, as sacred music, is to create a sense of collectivity and shared identity.

In the Chimalapas there are two non-Catholic Churches: The Seventh Day Adventists and the Pentecostals. Together they group a significant number of believers. In this context, music locally deemed “evangelical” or “Protestant” represents one of the most important and vigorous forms of musical expression. In fact, Protestant worship music is the most listened to and produced musical genre in Santa María. Similar to what happens among many other groups around the world, in the Chimalapas the songs of the gospel are combined with traditional musical practices, such that they became local types of music reproduced in group chanting, contributing to the creation of different levels of local identity. All of the music which results from these processes is considered local and regional when placed beside other types of music. For example, in Yucatan, Vargas-Cetina has shown how the music of Mormon worship is considered just as important as the music of religious domains different from Catholicism [17]. An unyielding defense of traditional kinds of music, only considering those that belong to the practice of Catholicism (the festive cycle and adoration of the saints) has encouraged an oftentimes narrow view of present-day indigenous music. This also constitutes a lag since not all music is documented and studied and, moreover, many are denied as in the case of religious music produced beyond Catholic or traditionalist practice. This is precisely a result of prevailing ideas about what indigenous people-groups and cultural practices “should be,” which result in particular form the indigenismo of the post-revolutionary Mexican state, politics toward indigenous peoples, which enforced integration and mestizaje, one of whose consequences was the establishment of a stereotype of indigenous identity: an adherence to tradition, a profound religiosity, which connected pre-Hispanic belief with Catholicism, and a resistance to integration within the nation.

There is nonetheless a great deal of musical production in the Chimalapas generated by musical ensembles and soloist musicians devoted to different religious denominations; in fact, one Pentecostal musical ministry consists of a musical ensemble for evangelization campaigns. Their music has a religious character; however, their musicians know the local repertoires because they have played them in other settings. In addition, a commercial repertoire may be performed during Christian civic events, so long as there is no dancing. The selection is based on local taste and demand: cumbia, salsa, bolero, pop ballads, and duranguense pasito are all included. Likewise, there is yet another element that has contributed to the expansion of local taste for these types of music: women may perform them as soloists –as singers or instrumentalists – as opposed to the performance of “traditional” genres, in which women’s participation has long been restricted. Only recently have young women been permitted to play reed flutes or drums, marimbas, and guitars, as well as perform ritual dances.

Thus, the range of Christian evangelical music available in the Chimalapas and in the Tehuantepec Isthmus is remarkable; this is the most popular form of music both at home and in public spaces. There is a considerable production and circulation of compact discs in the region, covering the music of both devout ensembles and soloists of the different non-Catholic religious denominations. Here the presence of women composers and soloists is significant, presenting a sharp contrast with the forms music takes in Catholic milieus, in which the musical sphere is generally masculine.

It is worth mentioning that in many cases Christian evangelical ensembles have displaced traditional ones. This has generated local internal tension not only because of the numbers of people who have changed their religious affiliation but also because, somehow, the new evangelical ensembles signify the integration of regional music into the market system; thus the incomes many had been able to draw from musical activity have been compromised. A consequence of this in turn is that phonogram editing companies, both in Juchitán and in other close localities, such as La Venta, have increased; musicians choose to record because this is the way to advertise their services and be hired.

A worthwhile case to comprehend the peculiarities of Chima contemporary music is that of Pedro Vázquez, from Los Limones, born in 1942. Vazquez’s family had been seventh day Adventists during the last two generations. As a young man, Pedro set up a musical trio together with two friends, which consisted of two guitars and a requinto; they learned to play some isthmus sones acknowledged as traditional, which they spread through home-made recordings: “La Sandunga,” “La Llorona,” “La Juanita,” “La Petrona,” and “Canción Mixteca.”

The Adventist performers rehearse prior to their presentation, whether it be in the church, in a family gathering, or among friends. Sometimes theirs is a non-paid performance, provided that those requesting the performance practice the same religion, as they consider this to be community service and not a paid activity. Thus, musicians caution that they would not be able to play in celebrations of people who practice a different religion. Vázquez notes that “the groups of the pagan world do make a living with music” whereas they [evangelicals] play music because it is a “joy to praise God.” Like Vázquez, other musicians who abandoned Catholicism got to know the traditional repertoire, besides composing corridos and songs about the problematics surrounding mestizo and Zapotec new – in the 1930s and 1980s - avecindados (more recently arrived residents, many through having occupied and appropriated land) and playing in bars.

Adventist and Pentecostal composers and performers have taken advantage of the recording studios and musical market to edit their phonograms. Whereas these musicians have more economic resources than their Catholic counterparts, it is not only this which has favored the creation, edition, and dissemination of their production, the social ties they have achieved with members of their Church have also been relevant. In contrast, Catholic and traditionalist musicians consider they have lost social spaces and significance due to migration, political divides, social disarticulation, and depreciation of “traditional culture” to the advantage of real or fictitious cultural patterns and values from other parts of the country, and to those promoted by various means of communication.

In accordance with señor Emilio López, from Santa María Chimalapa, “to be a good musician one needs love for music. Nothing else.” However, in everyday life, Zoque Chima interpreters and composers observe something else is indeed needed. To begin with, the times of unease under which they live generate a state of permanent distrust vis-à-vis outsiders and official institutions. On the other hand, inhabitants of Santa María think about Chima musical expressions, that “today all that is lost.” Here, drum, whistles, and reed flutes music were part of every important event. For instance, when a house was built or a community building fixed, authorities made sure there was music and that interpreters were “authentically Chimalapa;” equally, the celebratory repertoire for Christmas, weddings, and even burials has stopped being performed. According to Chima Zoques, the conflicts experienced in the forest since the eighties, together with changes in religious affiliation, have only left small fragments of tradition alive.

Currently, those in charge of the church of San Miguel – where the reed flute and drum are safeguarded – invite children to play these instruments together with rattles during Easter celebrations. But more than to generate “music” in the conventional sense, because the memory of the repertoire of this ensemble has not been locally retained, these instruments are used to produce sound at moments in which noise and bustle are required during the celebration.

We could go on with an unending list of musical moments, repertoires, abandoned instruments, and types of music as well as musicians’ biographies. Importantly, the discourse of loss and an ideal past in the Chimalapas leads to novel forms of expression. In fact, it is not by chance that the composer maestro of San Miguel writes musical pieces in order to teach Zoque Language. The titles of some such tunes are: WaanØ bim angpØn [Sing your Language], Bi tØk angjØ’k yom une [La Migueleña], Bi Mok Yukpa’g PØn [The Peasant], and Bi yangke tsaame [The English]. Nevertheless, it is worth mentioning here, together with Miguel Bartolomé and Alicia Barabas, that currently, linguistic affiliation is not a necessary element to consider oneself Chima, even when it still is a relevant differentiating factor vis-à-vis other societies. For instance, while Chima have had continuous conflict over land with neighboring indigenous Zapotec people, since the Zapotec constitute a dominant group, Chima Zoques have at the same time incorporated and reinvented aspects of Zapotec culture in many cases ([18], p. 238).

A few interpretations of these examples understand broader cultural changes as a cause of identity loss, which put local musical heritage at risk. Or, in contrast, this transformation is dignified as if it were a straightforward result of musicians’ or people’s willingness and agency to bring about creative change and “become modern” as a form of resistance, especially given the symbolic transformations that these changes facilitate. Both analyses are valid but limited; we are then inclined to favor critical anthropological thought from which to offer different explanations or, at least, as a framework to pose pertinent questions. In that regard, a possible helpful viewpoint emphasizes the power relations intrinsic to all societies insofar as tension among subjects, conflict, and dispute are conceptualized according to heterogeneity of collectivities, understanding these acts within given locally accepted conceptual frameworks and practices, from which ethnic groups derive their sense of who they are ([19], p. 203).

3. Searching for “new” cultural indigenous expressions

The first time that I made a trip to the northeastern part of Chiapas, I was aiming to get to know a region that had been affected by the eruption of the nearby Chichomal volcano in 1982. Back then, I and the ethnologist colleagues with whom I took the field trip were worried about the question of “identity” and “interethnic relations”; I was particularly interested in “indigenous music.” The “reality” of the towns I visited during that trip was overwhelming in terms of what “the” Zoque people had to offer me as a possible research topic, beyond the dismay that their poverty and marginality provoked in me. I was attracted by a series of elements such as the Zoque’s ways of remembering the eruption; the role of musicians in mediating local conflicts and power struggles; the food; the milpa; the pathways people trod through the landscape; the readiness of people to talk and share their stories. Hence, I returned, again and again, many more times.

Throughout that trajectory I got to know several people; I stayed in their homes, had many, many deep conversations, and left some connections in the “field” aside because, wrongly, I thought that as I was interested in “traditional” music, I should not establish contact with the non-Catholic population. Therefore, I lost the opportunity to have a relationship with the Catholics’ “others” (although researching as a nonbeliever, ultimately these interlocutors were equally as “other” to me as Catholics themselves).

Furthermore, the choice of a research problem to investigate – with the level of individual preference and constrained practical possibilities this implies – may predetermine the individuals involved. One thus runs the risk of fracturing knowledge before we begin. My interest in music led me to establish initial relationships with musicians and practically only with them, leaving aside whole groups of people. Initially, I did not approach their wives and children; by the same token, I even placed myself, without noticing, in closer proximity to older than to younger people.

Years later, my institution, the Instituto Nacional de Antropología e Historia (INAH) initiated the National Project of Ethnography of Mexican Indigenous Peoples (PNERIM, acronym in Spanish), in which I participated as a researcher. Together with several colleagues, I formed part of the “Chiapas team.” I spent some periods of fieldwork in other regions and, once more, in the Zoque area. Reflecting on discussions within the PNERIM and subsequent visits to the different Zoque localities, I realized that, when it came to “choosing” my research subjects, I had not considered the younger population of these fieldworkers’ towns, even when they make up the most vulnerable group in different areas of local and regional life, specifically regarding access to land. At the same time, a reflexive approach began to take hold within the PNERIM more broadly, in which researchers started to question our roles as academics both in documenting the indigenous populations’ lived experiences and in developing potential collaborations with them – even if the latter idea more an intention than a reality. At the very least, there now exists a greater effort to understand-interpret whom we are talking to and of whom.

Zoque musicians in Chiapas have explicit concerns regarding their role in a constantly changing social context, in a society that is spatially and territorially moving, and which demonstrates itself to be highly open to the music of others. Zoque musicians assert that “the cowa (traditional Zoque drum) has a spirit” and that playing it links them to their ancestors. Nevertheless, they also ascertain that “we see how our culture is modifiable.” Some others express a different type of discourse: “I am not interested in dances. They will not produce any money. I want to go to the university […]. I want to have my own car,” remarks a young man from the Selva Negra in Chiapas. By contrast, other young people, responding to these words, state: “If you break with your origins, if you break with those who know the music and dancing tradition, you are lost.”

This last testimony represents the parable of the discourse in defense of traditional knowledge. But beyond that, we are confronted with the meaning that the collectivity bestows on its existence ([20], p. 35), such that the new musical proposals are not esthetically illegitimate for these subjects; rather, they constitute processes of adaptation within the sound discourse appropriate to new social contexts. We may not, therefore, conceptualize these transformations in terms of a principle of straightforward linear causality in which music evolves toward “modern” forms.

Therefore – bye the bye - the dichotomy of tradition/modernity is not useful because both categories are not mutually exclusive as result of the same historic processes [11, 17]. Consequently, its use must be presented in a critical way; we are obliged to refuse any simplification of the complex interlapping practices that constitute the current indigenous musical world. That is, in the terms described by Mignolo, the importance lies not in what is thought as such, but in the positionality from which, and time in which, one is thinking ([21], p. 22). Processes of musical creation are linked to collective memory and, therefore, are dynamic, consistent with new realities, and characterized by the coexistence of several distinct musical traditions. Thus, several young people of Zoque background, of the Sierra de Pantepec in Chiapas, have created a ska group called “la sexta vocal” (the sixth vowel) – a reference to the vowel ü which exists in the Zoque language. One of this band’s pieces is called cowatayu (drums) as a reference to the musical ensembles of these instruments, used in a wide traditional repertoire. Their first recording was called O’de mambuxü (Zoque dream), a name which references the importance of oneiric expression in the life of Zoque people who live in the foothills of the volcano El Chichonal.

The interpretation usually arrived at by the scholars who study youth musical movements in Chiapas – especially those situated in the Los Altos region – is centered on ideas about youth, modernity, about a generational gap; resistance, identity, and hybridity; so-called “Indigenous modernities”; and amid the cultural influence of an ambiguous, stereotyped West. These things, supposedly, are opposed to indigenous cultural expressions. It is often said, for example, that use of and access to technology serve to distinguish what is not indigenous culture, which is in turn presumed to be archaic rather than “modern” ([22], p. 27). In this sense, it is worth mentioning recent discussions about indigeneity and modernity among first peoples in other contexts, such as the texts assembled by Levine and Robinson on the topic of music and modernity among first peoples in the United States and Canada. Arguing for the existence of multiple and diverse modernities, Levine and Robinson contend that “the idea of juxtaposing the word modernity with indigenous or first peoples infers a sort of incongruity […] as if native peoples cannot be at once indigenous and modern.” From an indigenous perspective, they are always modern ([23], p. xiii–xiv). indigenous musicians employ technologies in their compositions, “and their works are Native” ([23], p. xiv).

Facing these issues, we may ask ourselves: is it helpful to talk about a “youth” category in such a context, or is this a category that we impose from a certain outside perspective about what, in our experience, constitutes the “stages” in the social life of an individual? Does there exist a cultural (social, political, and economic) way of “being Zoque” that allows us, in turn, to construct other meanings of “being young” on the basis of these indigenous people’s experiences of their own lives? In light of these questions, I would question whom it is that we see as “indigenous” and as “young,” and whether the (evidently colonialist) concept of “indigenous music” operates to account for the socio-cultural configurations we actually encounter in our research. Given the foundational status of “indigenous music” within Mexican ethnomusicology, it is indispensable to approach this concept with critical intent.

These queries are related to the fact that scholarship may indirectly feed stereotypes; for instance, in scholars’ surprise at being confronted in the field with “new” cultural aspects, and newer generations of anthropologists’ refusal to restrict themselves to what is considered traditional, within a democratic paradigm in which all fields and phenomena are judged worthy of anthropological analysis ([5], p. 9). What is surprising is the astonishment of some colleagues about the recent turn to “urban” musical expressions, given that Urban anthropology began to bear root since the 1930s. Even within this change of scholarly focus, however, it is considered that the urban, the city, must constitute the sphere of novelty, of newness, of the modern. This is part of the agonizing career toward feeling current, “modern”; the overvaluing of what is “modern” and “global” determines a certain pathway of knowledge.

Such is the case of ethno-rock groups of Los Altos in Chiapas like Sak Tsevul or Vayijel [guardian animal], and Lumaltok, who contend that to play rock “is to preserve identity in a multicultural world.” But furthermore, some scholars have praised these types of music, astonished by their “Indigenous modernity” and use of technology – implying stereotypes concerning modernity, and defining the new in opposition to the old as if societies occupied successive evolutionary stages. These attitudes imply that Tsotsil and Tseltal youth are somehow less “modern,” in turn reinforcing Eurocentrism and the fetishization of the West as a unique civilizing model, as if Western paradigms for knowledge production exist at the center, and dismissing or marginalizing the knowledge of African or indigenous Peoples ([24], p. 4).

Despite the support, these ensembles have obtained from public institutions and academia – and the support the latter has tended to give to syncretic Catholic traditions over and above other religious denominations – in Chiapas, there is a Christian musical movement based on ethno-rock. Alan Llano has documented some Christian musical groups formed by indigenous musicians who inhabit the margins of San Cristobal de las Casas. These groups perform a combination of praising music and Christian worship performed in Tseltal and Tsotsil, in agreement with the cultural and musical movement ([25], p. 129) called “ethno-rock” or ethno-rock Maya Tsotsil by their managers and academia, while social actors call this bat’si rock or Tsotsil rock.

4. Final thoughts: critical visions

Many researchers of cultural expressions are interested in processes through which indigenous identities in the contemporary global world are transformed and re-forged. Whereas the possibilities for making theory and having results are multiple ([6], p. 9), the rhythm of social reality is not the same as that of conceptual construction, says Zemelman, and at this point, we return to the idea of “lag,” which references how we use concepts “thinking they have a clear meaning, and they do not. This presents the need for a constant re-signification […] which is also a fundamental task of the social sciences” ([6], p. 1). Concepts that were coined in or for other contexts ([6], p. 2) – such as traditional or tradition, nontraditional, modern, and the idea itself of indigenous music, orality, change, continuity, identity, costume, resistance, patrimony, world vision, and musical culture – are sometimes used without “second thoughts” [6].

For instance, we sometimes use the notion of musical culture to refer to a traditional repertoire in specific geographies, in brief, to the music of “others.” Power relations are inherent to processes of musical creation, and it is interesting, for example, that sometimes our interlocutors have appropriated these notions, resignifying them or incorporating them within strategic heritage discourses for negotiation with government institutions. This recalls what Linda Tuhiwai Smith has documented among the mãori in New Zealand, for whom the notion of the “researcher” embodies a persona non grata – somebody to distrust, in the knowledge that research does not constitute an innocent or disinterested academic exercise, but one which both operates within and perpetuates certain political and social conditions ([26], p. 22).

My intention is not to exhaust this discussion within this chapter, nor to reduce it, but to present an invitation for critical reflection on the existing analytic topography of indigenous cultural expressions – if we can term them as such. Likewise, I have sought to highlight the relevance of updating, reflecting, and contributing to the scientific debate about theoretical and methodological paradigms that have underpinned the study of traditional types of music. I have dealt in particular with the analysis of that which we have called “indigenous music” in the complex contemporary world; it seems important to me to mention the fact that there is no inclusive debate around the diverse perspectives nor of the diverse social actors – evidently, the musicians themselves – that address the issue of music as a part and consequence of societies in constant transformation. The idea itself of indigenous cultural expressions constitutes another form of mismatch facing the great complexity and diversity offered by the musical expressions of contemporary indigenous people.

Finally, it is worth mentioning that ethnographic work continues to be vital to understand the differentiated contexts in which artists perform. Therefore, beyond turning to the epistemologies of the global South to decolonize knowledge, I would like to stress the need to build an ethnography from “below,” which not only includes the “Other” – that has been done – but an ethnography that will build together with those subjects present in our study regions. Then we may see how indigenous and modern memories confront one another; and the extent to which these epistemes may resonate together.

This constitutes the construction and nourishing of languages in common. Ethnography thus understood could solve this competition to be continuously updated, because factuality should lead us to the creation of ad hoc concepts and categories in a critical way. This should also work toward situated knowledge [27] and a concern for reflexivity; continuously questioning researchers’ roles, in recognition of the fact that reflexivity is an epistemological problem that lies in the way knowledge is created, and in who the subjects with whom we are creating a possible dialog are. In sum, we aim not only to disseminate knowledge but to co-construct it.