Aztec Games, Music and Performance

In Late Postclassic central Mexico (about 1300–1521), games and performance brought people together in courts, ballcourts, youth halls and public ceremonies. The Mexica-led Triple Alliance ruled from 1428 until the Spanish invasion of 1521. Nahua is a broad term for Nahuatl-speaking peoples, including the Mexica. The main written descriptions here come from the Florentine Codex, completed in 1577 by Franciscan friar Bernardino de Sahagún with Nahua elders, authors and artists. It records remembered Mexica practices as well as activities observed under colonial rule.

On this page5 sections

Ballgames at court

Sahagún describes tlachtli, the rubber-ball game, as a noble recreation. A player faced a long court between two smooth walls. In the account, the court was about 40 or 50 feet long and 20 or 30 feet across, with a line down its floor. Stone rings with openings stood high on the opposite walls. A player who sent the ball through an opening won the match. The solid rubber ball bounced without being inflated; players struck it with their hips or buttocks rather than their hands. Sahagún says they wore gloves and a leather belt over the buttocks for play.

The ballgame was also a contest of wealth and status. A ruler could keep balls ready and bring skilled players to compete in his presence and on his behalf against other nobles. The stakes named in the Codex range from gold beads and turquoise to fine cloaks, cacao, houses and cultivated fields. The match therefore joined athletic skill to elite patronage: a player might win precious goods, while a ruler displayed his resources and command of accomplished competitors.

Patolli and shooting games

Patolli offered another kind of competition. Sahagún describes two lords throwing four large beans, each pierced with a hole, onto a reed mat marked with a figure. He compares the game to dice and to board games familiar to his Spanish readers. The Codex names gold beads, precious stones and fine turquoise among the wagers. It also describes a dramatic throw: if a bean landed upright on its thicker end, players treated the result as an omen, and the thrower could take all the costly stakes.

The same account records archery and dart shooting, blowguns and bird nets. Nobles shot arrows and darts; a blowgun fired small pellets at birds, while nets caught them. These activities called on aim and control as well as luck. They placed hunting skills alongside court games in descriptions of a ruler’s recreation.

Drums and their sound

A teponaztli is a horizontal wooden slit drum. A surviving Mexica example at the Metropolitan Museum of Art dates to the 15th–16th century. Its hollow underside lets the sound resonate; two tongues cut into its top produce different tones when a musician strikes them with mallets. The player could rest the drum on a lap or support it on a stand. A larger drum, the huehuetl, stood upright and was played on its upper face. The distinct shapes and tones let musicians supply different rhythmic parts.

These drums accompanied settings beyond formal worship. Museum descriptions connect the teponaztli with royal ceremony, military processions, agricultural dances, weddings and games at the Great Ballcourt. Sahagún describes this performance during Tlaxochimaco, a festival honoring Huitzilopochtli, the war god. Musicians and singers stood beside a round altar while nobles and women danced together, holding hands. Song and drum organized the group’s movement as part of a named religious occasion.

Singers, young people and public duties

The Codex treats singing as a skilled craft. Its portrait of a good singer describes a clear voice, the ability to raise and lower the pitch, hold a note and compose or shape songs. At court, a ruler might sing or listen to songs; jesters also used jokes and stories to entertain him. Musical ability had a public audience and could serve the ruler as well as the performers.

A palace account calls a hall the cuicacalli, or “house of song.” Youth leaders and instructors gathered there while awaiting the ruler’s orders for public work. At sunset, young men went to the hall to sing and dance. They wore net-like cloaks and feather crests, and their coordinated performance linked practice with service to the community and court. This account adds a daily setting to the more formal festival: performance was part of how young people appeared and acted together in public life.

Games in the colonial record

In the same passage that describes patolli and the ballgame, Sahagún says people had abandoned both amid suspicions about their idolatrous associations. The teponaztli, by contrast, remained in use during the colonial period. The Metropolitan Museum notes an iron band on its example, likely added then to keep the wood from splitting, and says Spanish priests incorporated drums into Christian public celebrations and worship. This particular drum may have helped carry Mexica performance into those new ceremonies.

For related observances and public ceremonies, see ceremonies. For the wider setting of household work and community life, see Daily Life in the Aztec World.