The Sounds of Mexican Secularism. Religion, Music Education, and the Creation of Peasant Culture in Mexico’s Post-revolutionary School Reform

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Abstract

In this paper, I analyze how peasant religion was depicted in the music education policies of the Ministry of Education in Mexico during the 1920s and 1930s. Established in 1921, the Federal Ministry of Education aimed to embed the importance of peasants in revolutionary culture by including elements of peasant string music into its music education curriculum for federally managed rural schools. Through the work of entomusicologists and music educators like Gerónimo Baquiro Foster and Rafael M. Saavedra, I explore how the very notion of peasant culture was produce using a particular concept of arts and aesthetics that focuses on creativity and secular performance as central values, problematizing the religious elements of music as a traditional remnant to eliminate.

Author

• Marino Miranda Noriega, University of Wisconsin - Madison