A history of the Aztec dance

The Aztec dance

Among the Aztecs music, song, and dance played a very important role. Centuries before the European conquest flourished a rich music culture in the Aztec capital Tenochtitlan and the centers of neighboring kingships in the Valley of Mexico and beyond. Aztec musical thought was of a high philosophical level. Musical sounds, song, and dance movements were of religious meaning and often accompanied ritual acts, such as offerings and sacrifices. Music and dance were understood as sacrificial gifts to the gods. Interestingly, there was no Aztec word for music. Music was the “art of song” (cuicatlamatiliztli) and musicians did not play but “sang” on their instruments. To dance was “to sing with the feet”.

The musical practice flourished among various groups of the Aztec society. There was music performed by the commoners in each household and in local township festivities, but also in certain ceremonies in the heart of the Aztec temple precinct, such as in the “sowing of the rattles” (ayacachpixollo). The commoners had various kinds of rattles and small whistles, which were used in household worship. A group of old men, which were the leaders of the local townships, played drums. Different whistles were used by the hunters to attract game.

The Aztecs didn’t start out as powerful people. The Nahuatl-speaking peoples began as poor hunter-gatherers in northern Mexico, in a place known to them as Aztlan. Sometime around A.D. 1111, they left Aztlan, told by their war god Huitzilopochtli that they would have to find a new home. The god would send them a sign when they reached their new homeland.

Scholars believe the Aztecs wandered for generations, heading ever southward. Backward and poor, other more settled people didn’t want the Aztecs to settle near them and drove them on. Finally, around A.D. 1325, they saw the god’s sign—the eagle perched on a cactus eating a serpent on an island in Lake Texcoco, or so the legend has it. The city established by the Aztecs, Tenochtitlan, grew to become the capital of their empire.

Fortunately, the site was a strong, strategic area with good sources of food and clean water. The Aztecs began to build the canals and dikes necessary for their form of agriculture and to control water levels. They build causeways linking the island to the shore. Because of the island’s location, commerce with other cities around the lakes was easily be carried out via canoes and boats.

Through marriage alliances with ruling families in other city-states, the Aztecs began to build their political base. They became fierce warriors and skillful diplomats. Throughout the late 1300s and early 1400s, the Aztecs began to grow in political power. In 1428, the Aztec ruler Itzcoatl formed alliances with the nearby cities of Tlacopan and Texcoco, creating the Triple Alliance that ruled until the coming of the Spanish in 1519.

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