“There are no songs of ours in the water”: Voice and Place in Two Compositions from the Cantares mexicanos

This article argues that the “Michcuicatl” and “Atequilizcuicatl,” two works contained in the sixteenth-century Cantares mexicanos, reflect both thematically and formally on the aftermath of the invasion of Tenochtitlan and the subsequent political, social, and cultural changes in the Valley of Mexico under Spanish rule. This analysis reads the watery motifs of the two compositions in parallel to the lyric voices that regularly change in each piece, marking shifting relationships between the songs and the voices that intone them.