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The conch trumpet

Aztec conch player, Codex Magliabecchiano

Aztec musicians were named for the instruments they played - a shell trumpet blower was a ‘quiquizoani’ - and this gives us some idea of how specialised and highly developed musical practice was. (Written/compiled by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore)

There were 7 different kinds of conch, the largest of which were called ‘quiquiztli’. The instrument had sacred and ancient associations - with the sea, with the call to prayer, with the underworld, with the moon, with fertility, with the wind god Ehécatl, who had the power to blow life into a void, just as the blower blows life into an object (the conch) that would otherwise remain ‘lifeless’ for ever. Its haunting sound harked back to ‘the primordial blast of the world produced in the underworld by Quetzalcóatl heralding the creation of humankind’ (Patrick Johansson).

The conch trumpet was a timekeeping and announcing instrument, blown regularly four times during the day and five times during the night***; it can be seen clearly being played at the front of a procession in the main image (top), from the Codex Magliabecchiano (note, by the way, that we can tell the sounds were deep thanks to the dark grey sound marks shown coming from the conch!)

Conch shell horns were also part of military equipment: blown perhaps in a similar fashion to more modern (brass) bugles as calls for battle to begin when the Aztec army engaged in actual combat.

Offerings to the god of rain, Tlaloc, discovered in recent years at the Templo Mayor site in Mexico City, often contained ‘symbolic references to music, fertility and plants’ (Eduardo Matos Moctezuma), including several conch shells. Can you spot them in Picture 3?

Conch blowing has quite a pedigree even today: in Florida, where the art is ‘deeply entwined in Key West’s heritage and tradition’, there is an annual contest, during which ‘entrants are judged on the quality, duration and loudness, and novelty of the sound they produce...’

Internationally, professional musicians have taken up the conch and developed it as a creative solo and ensemble instrument. Listen to evocative conch sounds as recorded by Steve Turre and Tommy Adolfsson (follow links below).

If you visit the website of the International Study Group on Music Archaeology (’Now listen...’, below) you can hear a VERY atmospheric recording of actual Aztec instruments (shell trumpet, ceramic tubular trumpet and flutes) found at the Templo Mayor site, and played by our friend Arnd Adje Both and the group Tribu... (NOTE: ISGMA have moved some of these recordings, but at least one conch recording is still on the site...)

*** In fact, the Florentine Codex - the source of this long established ‘fact’ - is ambiguous on this point. The relevant section in Book 2, though titled ‘A DECLARATION OF HOW THE SUN WAS SERVED, AND OF HOW MANY TIMES TRUMPETS WERE BLOWN DURING THE DAY AND DURING THE NIGHT, AND OF HOW MANY TIMES INCENSE WAS OFFERED’, in fact specifically only refers to the latter -
And thus was incense offered: it was four times during the day and it was five times during the night...

Picture sources:-
• Procession (Codex Magliabecchiano) scanned from our facsimile edition published by ADEVA, Graz, Austria, 1970
• Drawing of Quetzalcóatl by Miguel Covarrubias scanned from Alfonso Caso’s book ‘The Aztecs: People of the Sun’ (Norman, University of Oklahoma Press, 1958)
• Photos from the Museum of Xalapa and Templo Mayor Museum by Ian Mursell/Mexicolore
• Conch blowing contest image taken from the Old Island Restoration Foundation website (link below)

Guess...

...how we can tell the sound of the conch is DEEP?

Find out

Aztec limerick no. 26 (Ode to shell trumpets)
Each blast from a conch shell at dawn
Marked the time Tonatiuh was reborn.
From a signal for battle
To the badge of Ehecatl.
Primordial breath - every morn...