"Most fascinating of all was being invited into worlds where myth is real, time is cyclical, and music and sound are altering, metamorphic powers. Performing Beliefs is a remarkable tome written by an illustrious group of anthropologists, musicologists, and ethnomusicologists. In her erudite prologue, Kuss states that 'among indigenous groups, music is mostly an essential form of energy, a kinetic and transformative vessel that communicates with ancestors and the supernatural, heals, manipulates the forces of nature, bonds communities, or reenacts social tensions'."

—Southwest Book Views

"Sure to be an essential reference and research guide for the next generation of ethnomusicologists, Performing Beliefs begins with a masterfully provocative prologue by Kuss and includes fifteen original essays by twelve leading anthropologists and ethnomusicologists on the still-surviving, and in some cases thriving, musical worlds of the indigenous peoples of Latin America."

—Latin American Research Review

"This impressive collection—[framed by] an incisive prologue and a very interesting, 70-page, specialized index for which the entries also serve as a glossary intended 'to draw the Anglophone reader into culture-specific terms of explanation'—makes this volume essential for library collections focused on music, the social sciences, and the humanities. Each essay cites sources that are largely unknown in the United States, providing fresh approaches and updated scholarship in areas that are more often than not ignored by U.S. scholars. Kuss' prologue addresses critical issues .... This series is a clear demonstration of Kuss' scholarly excellence."

—Fontes artis musicae

"Simply put, this is a wonderful—in some respects even an extraordinary—book. From one end to the other, it strikes a series of elegant balances on every level."

—Allan W. Atlas, Distinguished Professor of Music, The Graduate Center, The City University of New York

The music of the peoples of South and Central America, Mexico, and the Caribbean has never received a comprehensive treatment in English until this multi-volume work. Taking a sociocultural and human-centered approach, Music in Latin America and the Caribbean gathers the best scholarship from writers all over the world to cover in depth the musical legacies of indigenous peoples, creoles, African descendants, Iberian colonizers, and other immigrant groups that met and mixed in the New World. Within a history marked by cultural encounters and dislocations, music emerges as the powerful tool that negotiates identities, enacts resistance, performs belief, and challenges received aesthetics. This work, more than two decades in the making, was conceived as part of "The Universe of Music: A History" project, initiated by and developed in cooperation with the International Music Council, with the goals of empowering Latin Americans and Caribbeans to shape their own musical history and emphasizing the role that music plays in human life. The four volumes that constitute this work are structured as parts of a single conception and gather 150 contributions by more than 100 distinguished scholars representing 36 countries.

Volume 1, Performing Beliefs: Indigenous Peoples of South America, Central America, and Mexico, focuses on the inextricable relationships between worldviews and musical experience in the current practices of indigenous groups. Worldviews are built into, among other things, how music is organized and performed, how musical instruments are constructed and when they are played, choreographic formations, the structure of songs, the assignment of gender to instruments, and ritual patterns. Two CDs with 44 recorded examples illustrate the contributions to this rich volume.