In the seventeenth century, chronicler Gonzalez de Najera described the music as “more sad than happy” and the instruments as basic drums and flutes made of the shin bones of Spaniards and other native enemies. There are no long notes in Mapuche music and the scales and melodic schemes of their music have no relation to the panphonic Andean music. The technique of playing these instruments has been preserved from generation to generation and melodies are formed by linking periods. Unlike the Andean peoples, the Mapuches did not develop a theoretical musical system, but in practice one is imposed by the limitations of their instruments. In 1777, he published a document in Westphalia that contains 19 Mapuche songs accompanied by European-style music. Jesuit priest Bernardo Havestadt came to Chile in 1748 and worked as missionary in La Mocha Concepción, Rere and Santa Fe. The same method was used in Chile by Jesuit priests. De Ore, realizing that these skills could be used as an evangelization and religious indoctrination tool, proposed that Christian prayers should have been taught in the native language and sung to native or European tunes. The Franciscan missionary Geronimo de Ore ( Lima, Peru, circa 1598) noted that Mapuche children learned songs from a very young age and demonstrated excellent memory and sense of rhythm. Mapuche music today, despite the influence of Christianity, is still an expression of faith, hopes or fears to the traditional gods, because the conquest did not change the spirit of these peoples, even though it introduced new cultural elements.

Historian Samuel Marti writes that the Mapuche “do not dance or sing to demonstrate knowledge and skill, or to entertain spectators, but to honour their gods”. Spanish chroniclers observed their musical rituals with interest, and their observations have allowed historians to compare this early music with the Mapuche music of the modern day. The Mapuche were never conquered by the Incas, so their music and musical instruments differ from the northern cultures that fell under Andean influence. The Mapuche people were the main indigenous people populating the region running from Copiapó in the north to Chiloé in the south. It is also believed that the Incas were the first American people to develop some kind of formal music education. Inca music was formed by elements of Nazca, Chimú, Colla – Aymara and other cultures. Like the Aztecs and Romans, the Incas took the knowledge and traditions of the cultures they found and incorporated them into their own. Sociologist Carlos Keller has compared the Inca occupation of the Andean region with the Roman occupation of Greece or the Aztec conquest of the Maya. Scientific research into remains left by the Nazca and Mochica peoples has shown the existence of complex theoretical musical systems, with the presence of minor intervals, semitones, chromaticism and musical scales of five, six, seven and eight notes, equivalent to contemporaneous cultures in Asia and Europe. However, music existed in the Americas for centuries before European conquest, and many of the characteristics and instruments of pre-Hispanic music have formed part of the folkloric and musical tradition of Chile and of Latin America.Īrchaeological excavations have unearthed many musical instruments showing the existence of a variety of musical cultures in the area long before even the Inca period. Prior to the arrival of the European conquerors, the modern national borders that make up the Americas did not exist, so one cannot refer to music from 'Chile', or any other South American country, from this time. Distribution of the pre-Hispanic people of Chile, Easter Island not included

Small andean stringed instruments