Music: Chokopul's Travels

From one Mexican village to another this winter a white man traveled, asking for and intently listening to music. A swart Mexican accompanied him, explained to Aztecs and Tarascans that it was their own native music the stranger wanted to hear, not the imported hodge-podge played in Mexican cities. The stranger was interested in the rude, primitive sounds made by the chirimia (clay pipe), the marimba made of gourds, the teponaztle, which is the Mexican Indians' drum, the noisy basis for all their music. Indians took to calling the white man Chokopul...