I specialize in the cultural and sonic landscapes of early modern New Spain, focusing on vernacular song traditions across Spanish-speaking territories in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Integrating historical and anthropological methods with the study of literature, religion, and early music paleography, I examine how vocal performance in public festivals reflected and shaped constructions of race and power, while enabling agency and resistance in viceregal societies. My book, Sounding Race, Identity, and Devotion in Puebla de los Ángeles (Oxford University Press), and its companion recording by La Boz Galana and Concerto Scirocco (Outhere Music) are forthcoming in 2026.
I am a musicologist from Mexico with a PhD from Princeton University and a M.A.R. from the Yale Institute of Sacred Music.
Spring 2021 office hours:Monday, 3:00 p.m.–4:00 p.m., Tuesday and Wednesday, 7:00 p.m.–7:30 p.m. by appointment.
Sounding Race Identity and Devotion in Puebla de los Ángeles (Oxford University Press, in press).
Recording Singing in the City of the Angels with ensembles La Boz Galana and Concerto Scirocco (Fuga Libera, set for release on October 2026)
“Ca. 1690: Viceregal Artists Depict Nahua Musicking in Public Festivals,” in Thinking Music: Global Sources for the History of Music Theory ed. by Thomas Christensen, Lester Lu, and Carmel Raz (The University of Chicago Online Publication Service, forthcoming).
“Not Mine: Sor Juana and the Politics and Ethics of Inclusiveness,” in The Oxford Handbook of Global Music History, ed. by Jessica Bissett Perea, Olivia Bloechl, Daniel F. Castro Pantoja, Hedy Law, and Juliana Pistorius (Oxford University Press, submitted).
“Native Song and Dance Affect in Novohispanic Christian Rituals.” InAcoustemologies in Contact: Sounding Subjects and Modes of Listening in Early Modernity, edited by Suzanne G. Cusick and Emily Wilbourne (Cambridge: OpenBook, 2021), 37-64. https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0226
“Reconsideraciones historiográficas sobre el barroco para el estudio de la música virreinal.” InMúsicas coloniales a debate (1492-1898): procesos de intercambio euroamericanos, edited by Javier Marín-López (Madrid: Instituto Complutense de Ciencias Musicales, 2018), 165-182.
“Vivaldi’s Motezuma: The Conquest of Mexico in the Venetian Operatic Stage.” InThe New World in Early Modern Italy, 1492-1750, edited by Elizabeth Horodowich and Lia Markey (Cambridge: Cambridge University, 2017), 288-308. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781316389034.016
“Listening to Nahua Christian Identity in Christmas Villancicos,” American Musicological Society (AMS, Minneapolis, November 2025).
“Nociones Nahuas de lo sagrado en los villancicos en náhuatl del siglo XVII.” V Congreso de Música y Estudios Americanos (MUSAM) de la Sociedad Española de Musicología (SEdeM) “Diálogos transatlánticos: Discursos y estrategias analíticas sobre las músicas iberoamericanas,” Universidad de Valladolid (October 2025).
“A altas e inteligentes voces: Sounds of Blackness in the Christmas Feast in New Spain,” MexicanEast Conference: “Sound,” Brigham Young University (Provo, September 2025).
“Listening to Black Voices in Early Modern New Spain,” AMS (Colorado, November 2023). Medieval and Renaissance Music Conference (Granada, Spain, July 2024).
“Love Poetry in Eucharistic Villancicos in Seventeenth-Century New Spain.” 21st Quinquennial Congress of the International Musicological Society, Athens, Greece (August 2022); Society for Seventeenth-Century Music, Cleveland, Case Western Reserve University (April 2022).
“‘El galán enamorado’: Poesía amatoria en el villancico eucarístico novohispano,” Musicología en transición, X Congreso de la Sociedad Española de Musicología(SEdeM)”, Universidad Internacional de Andalucía (UIA), Baeza, Spain (November 2021).
“Songs in Nahuatl for Christian Rituals in Seventeenth Century New Spain,” Conference in Latin American History & American Historical Association Annual Meeting (New York, January 2020).
“Thomas Gage y la sensibilidad religiosa en el villancico novohispano,” Coloquio International Multidisciplinario Ignacio Jerusalem y su tiempo (Mexico City, November 2019); and Congreso Internacional Celebración y Sonoridad (Morelia, November 2019).
“Native Song and Dance Affect in Seventeenth-Century Christian Festivals in New Spain,” conference Atlantic Crossings: Music from 1492 through the long 18th-Century organized by the Center for Early Music Studies at Boston University (June 2019); and for the panel “Ceremony and Sensation: Music and Intercultural Rituals in Early America” for the Omohundro Institute Annual Conference (Pittsburg, June 2019).
“Pious Indians and Righteous Slaves in Seventeenth-Century Catholic Song,” Society for Seventeenth-Century Music (SSCM, Colorado Boulder, 2018).
“Indian Workers and Black Slaves as Models for Christian Piety in Christmas Villancicos from Puebla in the Early Seventeenth-Century,” American Musicological Society (AMS, Rochester, 2017).
“Redescubriendo el Nuevo Mundo: Narrativas de la música novohispana del siglo XVII,” International Conference “From New Spain to Mexico: The Mexican Musical Universe Between Centenaries (1517-1917), 1st Conference of the MUSAM Study Group of the Spanish Society of Musicology, Universidad Internacional de Andalucía, UIA Spain (Baeza, 2017).
“Un’altra Venezia nel mondo: Moctezuma y la Conquista de México según Vivaldi,” Convengno internazionale Gli Scambi musical fra Italia e Spagna nei secoli XVIII e XIX, Instituto Cervantes, (Rome, 2016).
“Vivaldi’s Motezuma: The Conquest of Mexico in the Venetian Operatic Stage,” Biannual Conference of the Society of Eighteenth-Century Music (SECM, Austin, 2016).
“La realidad divinizada: villancicos de Navidad y la inmanencia sagrada en Puebla de los Ángeles a inicios del siglo XVII,” International Conference New Perspectives on the Villancico and Related Genres in the Iberian World (15th-19th centuries), UIA Spain (Baeza, 2014).
“Divinizing Reality: Christmas Villancicos and the Culture of Sacred Immanence in Early 17th Century Puebla de los Ángeles,” AMS (Milwaukee, 2014).
“Nahua Notions of the Sacred in Seventeenth-Century Christmas Villancicos”
Symposium, Currents in Colonial Ibero American Music Studies, Harvard University (Boston, March 2025)
Conference, Music in the Early Spanish Americas, Performance Spaces, and Archives, The Huntington Library (San Marino, March 2025).
Lecture, “A altas e inteligibles voces: Sounds of Blackness in the Christmas Feast in New Spain”
Musicology Colloquium Series, The University of Pennsylvania Department of Music (Philadelphia, November 2024).
Music and Sound Workshop and The Center for Latin American Studies, The University of Chicago (Chicago, November 2024).
Panelist for the roundtable “Immense Love Brimming: The Power and Persistence of Song and Ritual Celebration,” A Revels Salon (Boston, October 2024).
Panelist for the Endowed Lecture of the Critical Race, Indigeneity, and Ethnicity Committee of the AMS titled “The Shape of Musicology to Come,” AMS meeting (Colorado, November 2023).
Roundtable, “Sound, Rhythm, and Music: Early Modern Aural Culture,” Society for Renaissance and Baroque Hispanic Poetry Conference, University of Illinois (Chicago, September 2023).
Keynote Address, “Listening for Nahua-Christian Identity in Christmas Songs from Seventeenth-Century New Spain.” Annual International Conference Historical Performance: Theory, Practice, and Interdisciplinarity, Indiana University Jacobs School of Music (May 2023).
Roundtable, “Sounding/Voicing/ Embodying Blackness in the Early Modern Iberian World,” Second Annual Conference of the Black Sacred Arts, Yale University (May 2023).
Lecture, “Sources of Polyphonic Music in Cathedrals, Convents, and Indigenous Parishes.” Guest speaker for Spirituality in Song: Mexican Choirbooks of the Newberry Library, Newberry Library (April 2023).
Lecture, “Listening for Nahua-Christian Identity in Christmas Songs from Puebla de los Ángeles.”
Musicology Colloquium, University of Notre Dame (April 2023).
Institute of Sacred Music Colloquium Series, Yale University (April 2023).
Lecture, “Sounds of Race in 17th century New Spain.” Musicology Forum Lecture and Early Modern Studies Institute, University of Southern California (January 2023).
Lecture, “No vaya a Belén Angola, Negro a 4: Gaspar Fernández, Puebla 1611.” Guest Speaker for the Interdisciplinary Symposium Intersections: Black and Indigenous Sound in the Early Atlantic World, supported by the Omohundro Institute, the Washington University in St. Louis Humanities Center, and the Center for Race, Ethnicity and Equity, Virginia Commonwealth University (October 2022).
Roundtable, “Listening for Black Voices: A Conversation on Musicology Today,” Colloquium Recovering Black Performance in Early Modern Iberia, sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities and hosted by Yale University (April 2022).
DEI Pedagogy Workshop, “Diversifying the Canon: Changing the Narrative,” co-organized with Erika Honisch (Stony Brook University), sponsored by the Committee on Diversity and Inclusion, SSCM meeting, Delaware University (April 2022).
Lecture, “Sounds of Race in Seventeenth-Century Puebla de los Ángeles.” Musicology Colloquium Series, Northwestern University (April 2022).
“‘Turu lu neglo y nigliya vamo correndo adorá’: Sounds of Race in Seventeenth-Century Puebla de los Ángeles.”
Region and Enmity: A RaceB4Race Symposium, organized by Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, hosted by Rutgers University (October 2021).
Keynote Address for the Spring meeting of the New England Chapter of the AMS, hosted by Yale University (April 2022).
Moderator, Ovations Offstage Post-Performance Discussion, Sphinx Virtuosi Concert for Portland Ovations presented in partnership with Indigo Arts Alliance at the Merrill Auditorium (March 2022).
Radio Interview, Dos Cuarenta y Cinco, Radio Universidad de Costa Rica (August 2021).
Lecture, “Música(s) y Sociedad(es) en la Nueva España en los siglos XVI y XVII.” Seminario 500 años de música en México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (August 2021).
Lecture, “Sor Juana y el convento como un espacio femenino alternativo.” Seminario 500 años de música en México, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (August 2021).
Guest Speaker, Book Launch Party Acoustemologies in Contact: Sounding Subjects and Modes of Listening in Early Modernity (May 2021).
Guest Speaker, Book Presentation De Nueva España a México: El universo musical mexicano entre centenarios (1517-1917) (Benemérita Universidad Autónoma de Puebla, December 15, 2020).
Panelist Respondent, XV Coloquio de Estudiantes, Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (December 2020).
Lecture, “Reconciling Historical Narratives and Operatic Conventions in Vivaldi’s Motezuma,” Historical Performance Symposium (The Juilliard School, November 19, 2020).
Lecture, “Tracing Indigenous and Black Resistance in New Spanish Devotional Songs,” Historical Performance Symposium (The Juilliard School, November 16, 2020).
Public Talk, “Los motetes para la Virgen de Guadalupe de Ignacio Jerusalem,” Conference series “20 Aniversario del Coro de Cámara UDLAP” (Universidad de las Américas Puebla, October 24, 2020).
Guest Appearance, Episode “Latin America’s Turbulent Colonial History Told Through its Music,” The Early Music Show, BBC Radio 3, Oct 18, 2020.
Roundtable, “Rediscovering the New World: Narratives of New Spanish Music in the Seventeenth Century.” Discussion panel for the Ibero-American Music Study Group, AMS (Rochester, 2017).
