Mission through Music: Jesuit Practices and Postcolonial AftereffectsThe project analyses the import of European music into Early Modern Latin America by the Jesuit missionaries. It then explores the effects on colonial and European musical cultures and t

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Mission through Music: Jesuit Practices and Postcolonial Aftereffects.Bolivian Baroque, Missa Mexicana, Les Chemins du Baroque: CDs like these present „Latin American Baroque Music“ which seems to unite postmodern European longings for authenticity and passion with predictable Baroque music, emphasized by the experiments of historically informed performance practice. This music, a postmodern construction, serves a double function: it shows colonial musical worlds which never existed in the form we like to listen to them today and it represents an option of postcolonial identity construction in Latin America.At the origin of this complex situation are the Jesuits who performed their missionary work with the aid of music. Music served to alleviate the danger of the first contact with the heathens. It made the communication with prospective Christians easier, but it also transmitted values, knowledge and religious beliefs. European music was part of the overall strategy of cultural hybris exercised by the catholic conquistadors. The missionaries, working as their rear-guard, did not take note of any prehispanic music or decided against reporting about it. In some regions hybrid forms of music were encouraged by practices of accommodation and inculturation, but in many areas, the existing music was subsequently replaced functionally by European music. The missionaries¿ successes were transmitted to Europe via their reports and letters, most of which were printed, widely read and disseminated. The exoticist elements of their narration penetrated European musical cultures, establishing a reception pattern of longue durée leading all the way into the 21st century. In the last chapter, the research project will make use of postcolonial approaches to confront the near complete lack of contemporary reports from Latin Americans; this void will then be explored in its significance for the postmodern construction of musical worlds.