On Mexican Classical Music

[Toby Esterhase]

http://www.clasicamexico.com/blog/

[Toby Esterhase]

same subject:
http://macuala.blogspot.it/

[guest377]

a little history... its interesting when one listens to Tejano Mexican music...its similar to a polka.   In fact, German influence on music in Mexico is very prominent.
 
from wiki:  The German settlement in Mexico goes back to the times they settled Texas when it was under Spanish rule, but the first permanent settlement of Germans was at Industry, in Austin County, established by Friedrich Ernst and Charles Fordtran in the early 1830s, then under Mexican rule. Ernst wrote a letter to a friend in his native Oldenburg, which was published in the newspaper there. His description of Texas was so influential in attracting German immigrants to that area that he is remembered as "the Father of German Immigration to Texas."

Many Germans, especially Roman Catholics who sided with Mexico, left Texas for the rest of present-day Mexico after the U.S. defeated Mexico in the Mexican–American War in 1848.

In 1865 and 1866, a total of 543 German-speaking people (men, women, and children) were brought from Hamburg specifically to the villages of Santa Elena and Pustunich, in Yucatán.    This was a project of foreign colonization promoted during the Second Mexican Empire, and the reign of Emperor Maximilian I of Mexico, with the governing body of the state of Yucatán. The majority of these people were farmers and craftsmen: wheelwrights, shoemakers, cabinet makers, etc.

Other colonies were established in El Mirador, Veracruz by the German botanist Carls Sartorius,[7] and in the state of Tamaulipas by Baron Juan Raiknitz (Johan von Raknitz), in 1833.[8]

Sartorius's settlement, known as The Hacienda, attracted more than 200 settlers from Darmstadt, Germany. The Hacienda was visited many times by Maximilian I, and Sartorius was made the Minister of Agriculture under the Empire.

In 1890, Porfirio Díaz and Otto von Bismarck collaborated to take advantage of southern Mexico's agricultural potential by sending 450 German families to Soconusco near Tapachula in the southern state of Chiapas. Extensive coffee cultivation quickly made Soconusco one of the most successful German colonies, and between 1895 and 1900, 11,500,000 kg of coffee had been harvested. Fincas (estates) were erected in the Chiapaneco highlands and given German names such as Hamburgo, Bremen, Lübeck, Agrovia, Bismarck, Prussia and Hanover.

About 6,000 Russian Mennonites, who came originally from Northern Germany and the Netherlands, migrated from Canada to northern Mexico in the 1920s.

 Today, there are about 95,000 descendants of Mennonites in Mexico, who have preserved the Plautdietsch dialect. By their community's rules, German Mexican Mennonite men are allowed to speak Spanish, but women must speak only German. The most prosperous Mennonite colonies in Mexico lie in the states of Chihuahua (Cuauhtémoc, Swift Current, Manitoba), Durango (Patos (Nuevo Ideal), Nuevo Hamburgo), Zacatecas (La Honda), Aguascalientes and Campeche.

[shamus]

Thanks dhibbard, never knew that about the German settlements in Mexico. I lived in Bolivia long ago and there were not only Mennonite colonies in the lowlands but also Japanese colonies, very interesting, not really assimilated but contributing a lot, especially in the line of produce, etc. As to foreign influence on the music of Bolivia, not a clue, I know there is not a very big art music community there, only composer I can remember is Alberto Villalpando. The country is essentially two in one, the Andes portion and then the flat chaco that becomes the Amazon basin and the popular music is extremely distinct from each region. Remember Simon and Garfunkel "I'd rather be a hammer than a nail", I was there in the 70s and the highland Bolivians and Peruvians were furious at the "theft" of El Condor Pasa.