Music in Mexican Catholicism

FAIN: FA-54978-10

Lorenzo Francisco Candelaria
Purchase College, SUNY (Austin, TX 78712-0100)

Music in Mexican Catholicism is a scholarly monograph that posits a central role for Roman Catholicism in the creation of Mexican identity and explores how music has shaped and projected a collective religious consciousness among people from diverse educational, socioeconomic, and political backgrounds throughout Mexico. This book offers a balanced consideration of music in the progressive and conservative sociopolitical trends of Mexican Catholicism from the sixteenth century to the present and culminates with an examination of the roles and styles of Mexican Catholic music in a post-Vatican II world that is witnessing Mexico shift away from its early Catholic roots toward a modern Socialist identity. Throughout this study, music is at the center of a complex and fiercely negotiated process of religious enculturation that is key to understanding the cultural identity of Mexico's people and their progeny in the largest and fastest-growing minority group in the United States.