![]() Though scholars do not agree on the gender of drummers, it is likely that both men and women in Mexica communities played the teponaztli (Kurath and Martí, p. Later iterations of teponaztli may have had more than two keys (Stevenson, 1976, p. Its slight size belying the breadth of its capabilities, such a teponaztli would have been played using wooden mallets with rubber tips, called olmaiti (literally “rubber hands”), with the instrument sitting on one’s lap, or perhaps mounted on a simple, x-shaped stand or a more elaborate, ceremonial throne. Further study may illuminate specific meanings of the imagery, including the possibility that some of the motifs refer to specific historic dates. Although very worn-evidence of substantial use-traces of depictions of flora and fauna can be seen, including rabbits, birds, and other animals. The artist added low-relief carvings onto only one side of our drum, suggesting that it was likely played with that face outward. The cylindrical shape of this drum is fairly normative in the context of the larger corpus-some teponaztli were created in the shapes of animals. Whereas the huehuetl is larger and more stationary in use, the teponaztli is quite mobile, albeit very heavy. 16), the instrument is distinct from the larger huehuetl drum, which is played by standing the object up on one of its small faces and drumming on the opposite face. Played by striking mallets on its long side, laid out horizontally on one’s lap or on a small stand (Both, 2010, p. Two keys or “tongues” on the top were hollowed out to different degrees in order to produce two distinct tones. The present teponaztli was hollowed out underneath so as to create room for the reverberations which produce its sound. This drum, likely made of extremely dense rosewood, is one of two primary types of percussion instruments in Mexica culture and consistent with those of the broader, Nahuatl-speaking world. We apply the term “Aztec,” a Western portmanteau meaning “people of Aztlan” (a mythical homeland), to a number of Nahuatl-speaking groups which were united under the rulership of the Mexica, a late-arriving but ultimately powerful group in the Valley of Mexico. Known as a teponaztli, such drums were essential to religious, military, and especially royal ceremonies. Positioned just as perfectly as part of an elegant wedding ensemble at the house of a noble family as it would have been in a grand military procession, a community-wide agricultural dance in Tenochtitlan (the ruins of which lie underneath what is now the center of modern-day Mexico City), or a rough-and-tumble sporting event at the Great Ballcourt, study of this horizontal drum reveals a succession of cultural layers, from its initial creation by a Mexica (Aztec) artist to its continued use in the colonial period (Bravo, 2018, p. ![]()
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