Music of Mexico

The music of Mexico reflects the nation's rich cultural heritage, shaped by diverse influences and a wide variety of genres and performance styles. European, Indigenous, and African traditions have all contributed uniquely to its musical identity. Since the 19th century, music has also served as a form of national expression.

In the 21st century, Mexico has ranked as the world's tenth-largest recorded music market and the largest in the Spanish-speaking world, according to IFPI's 2024 and 2002 reports.

The foundation of Mexican music comes from its indigenous sounds and heritage. The original inhabitants of the land used drums (such as the teponaztli), flutes, rattles, conches as trumpets and their voices to make music and dances. This ancient music is still played in some parts of Mexico. However, much of the traditional contemporary music of Mexico was written during and after the Spanish colonial period, using many Old World influenced instruments. Many traditional instruments, such as the Mexican vihuela used in Mariachi music, were adapted from their old-world predecessors and are now considered very Mexican.

There existed regional and local musical traditions in the colonial period and earlier, but national music began to develop in the nineteenth century, often with patriotic themes of national defense and against foreign invaders. Conservative general and president Antonio López de Santa Anna brought a Catalan music master, Jaime Nunó, from nearby Cuba to create a network of military bands on a national scale. He composed the music for the Mexican national anthem. During the French Intervention in Mexico, which placed Maximilian of Habsburg on the throne of the French empire in Mexico, many musicians accompanied his entourage and he established the National Conservatory of Music in 1866.

Liberal President Benito Juárez saw the need to create military bands. Village brass bands proliferated in the late nineteenth century, with concerts in town squares, often on a central kiosk. During the Porfiriato, musical styles expanded, with Mexican national music, cosmopolitan music brought by foreign elites, and European regional music such as polkas, mazurkas, and waltzes, as well as opera overtures. Musicians had access to and used sheet music, indicating musical literacy. In some indigenous regions, new music and bands helped bring a level of unity. In Oaxaca, a waltz, "Dios nunca muere" (God never dies) became the state's anthem, linking regional patriotism with God. A variety of musical styles from elsewhere were incorporated into Mexican popular music in the nineteenth. Music, dance, and poetry flourished in the Porfiriato. Mexico's National Conservatory of Music was strongly influenced by Italian masters, who gave way to French influence at the turn of the twentieth century.

Following the Revolution, Venustiano Carranza, leader of the winning Constitutionalist faction of the Revolution, mandated that the National Conservatory "recover the national" in its musical education, abandoning rather than privileging foreign music. Younger Mexican composers emerged, including Carlos Chávez, Silvestre Revueltas, and Luis Sandi, who developed Mexican "art music." Chávez was a prolific composer and one who embraced creating Mexican orchestral music drawing on revolutionary corridos, and composed an Aztec-themed ballet. He became the director of the National Conservatory of Music, which became affiliated with the Ministry of Education (SEP). Revueltas composed music for the new, emerging Mexican cinema, and Sandi created choral works, creating music for civic events, as well as incorporating indigenous music from the Yaqui and Maya regions in his compositions. Chávez is seen as the driving force behind the split between of Mexican art music and traditional styles, privileging art music. However, traditional or folkloric music continues to be popular, and the Ballet Folklórico de México, established in 1952, performs regularly at Bellas Artes.

Northern traditional music or Norteño was highly influenced by immigrants from Germany, Poland, and Czechia to northern Mexico and the southwestern United States in the mid 1800s, the instruments and musical styles of the Central European immigrants were adopted to Mexican folk music, the accordion becoming especially popular and is still frequently used. There are many styles of northern mexican folk music, among the most popular being Ranchera, Corrido, Huapango, Chotís, Polka, Redova, Cumbia and Banda. Norteño folk music is some of the most popular music in and out of Mexico, with Corridos and Rancheras being specifically popular in Chile, Colombia, United States, Central America and Spain.

The folklore in central Mexico retains strong spanish Influence which can be seen in the amount of colonial cities in this region like Guanajuato, San Miguel de Allende and Zacatecas and also the instruments utilized in the folk music such as guitars, violins and vihuelas. The most iconic figure from central Mexico is the Mexican charro, a kind of horseman originated in Jalisco in the early 1900s. In Central Mexico, The most characteristic style of folk music is Mariachi, a style which is played by a group consisting of five or more musicians who wear charro suits and play various instruments such as the violin, the vihuela, guitar, a guitarrón and a trumpet with lyricism usually being about love, betrayal, death, politics, revolutionary heroes and country life.