The music of the ancient Mayan courts is described throughout native and Spanish 16th-century texts and is depicted in the art of the Classic Period (200–900 AD). The Maya played instruments such as trumpets, flutes, whistles, and drums, and used music to accompany funerals, celebrations, and other rituals. Although no written music has survived, archaeologists have excavated musical instruments and painted and carved depictions of the ancient Maya that show how music was a complex element of societal and religious structure. Most of the music itself disappeared after the dissolution of the Maya courts following the Spanish Conquest. Some Mayan music has prevailed, however, and has been fused with Spanish influences.

Important archaeological evidence of pre-Columbian Maya aerophones has been found in locations such as Tabasco, Campeche, and Jaina. Clay whistles were found in Jaina from burial sites. These whistles have mouthpieces in quadrangular, rectangular, ellipsoidal and conical shapes. Several whistles are shaped like human faces, and some are shaped like animals representing Mayan deities.

Aside from wind and percussive instruments there was not a wide variety of instruments used in classic Mayan music, as stringed instruments such as guitars were not invented in the region. Deceased rulers were often buried with musical instruments to help them pass through the underworld and to eventually be reborn.

There were several different types of Mayan trumpets. Some were made of clay and were relatively short, and wooden trumpets were much longer. A wall painting dating from c. 775 CE found at the Bonampak ceremonial complex in the dense jungles of Chiapas depicts twin trumpeters standing side by side in a 12-man orchestra. This, and other artistic depictions of Mayan trumpeters depict the lips of the players being held very tightly over the mouthpiece, suggesting that the wooden trumpets were used to blow higher overtones. While the use of clay trumpets gradually diminished, the use of wooden trumpets persisted. "Long thin trumpets of hollow wood with long twisted gourds at the ends" still existed by the time Diego de Landa wrote his Relación in 1566.

The Maya used many different types of flutes, some much like modern flutes and others very different. A common type of Mayan flute had a goitre chamber on the side which was used to deflect the air going into the instrument from taking a straight path. This caused the instrument to produce a sound more closely resembling that of an oboe. Another type of flute used was a tube flute which was capable of producing 3 note chords, a role not commonly fulfilled by wind instruments. The Maya also played the Ocarina, a small, whistle-sized Vessel flute. Depending on their construction, ocarinas were capable of producing five different pitches by way of four or five holes in the instrument. Certain studies and excavation reports of ancient Maya sites speculate that ocarinas were played during small cult rituals and burial ceremonies. Larger flutes were capable of producing more pitches. The Dresden Codex, a book that dates to the thirteenth or fourteenth century which contains 78 pages of ancient Maya hieroglyphs, depicts images of people playing drums and flutes. Template 34 of the Dresden Codex depicts the flute as an instrument associated with a fertility or thanksgiving ritual.

Mayan percussion commonly consisted of drums and rattles. Two of the three surviving pre-Columbian Mayan manuscripts in European libraries discuss the kayum, an upright single-headed cylindrical or kettle-shaped drum, played barehanded. The top and bottom panels in side 63 (34) of the Dresden Manuscript depict deities playing drums whose clay frames look like two arms of a candelabra. The arms are covered by a tied hide, and the base joining the two arms is filled with water, enabling the player to adjust the pitch of the drum. The Dresden Manuscript also shows an image of a deity shaking a large perforated rattle and another playing an end-blown flute. Glyphs that represent musical sound from both the drum and flute.

Large vertical drums (which the Aztecs called huehuetl) were made of wood and did not survive. The much lower standing kettle drums that have been found - often shaped like a bulbous jar on a pedestal, single or double - are earthenware. In depictions, the membrane is sometimes shown to consist of a jaguar pelt. In the Late-Postclassic Dresden Codex (34a), the drum connects to an open resonance chamber without membrane. Another type of kettle drum was portable and held under the arm. The horizontal slit-drums (tun, Aztec teponaztli) appear only after the close of the Classic Period, probably under Toltec influence. In addition there were tortoiseshell and turtleshell drums played with the hand (Herrera), or with a stick such as a deer antler. Metal instruments generally had no place in Classic Mayan music. The exception to this were pellet-bell rattles, which represented the god of death. The hundred golden pellet-bell rattles found in 1926 at the Sacred Well at Chichen-Itza were brought to the site from afar. The Dresden and Madrid manuscripts depict gods ornamented with jingles.

Theatrical events, dance, ritual, and, to a lesser extent, even warfare would have been unthinkable without musical support. Therefore, the musical director in Yucatán, the holpop, was held in high esteem. Maya dictionaries, both ancient and more recent, contain many words and distinctions related to music, such as, for example, Chʼortiʼ lahb "stroke [a drum] with the dexterity of a tortilla maker."