page_title: Muisca art
section_title: Music and dance
hierarchical_section_title: Muisca art / Muisca art / Music and dance
caption_attribution_description: English: Golden trumpet made by the Muisca, in the exhibition in the Museo del Oro, Bogotá
context_page_description: The Muisca established one of the four grand civilisations of the pre-Columbian Americas on the Altiplano Cundiboyacense in present-day central Colombia. Their various forms of art have been described in detail and include pottery, textiles, body art, hieroglyphs and rock art. While their architecture was modest compared to the Inca, Aztec and Maya civilisations, the Muisca are best known for their skilled goldworking. The Museo del Oro in the Colombian capital Bogotá houses the biggest collection of golden objects in the world, from various Colombian cultures including the Muisca.
  The first art in the Eastern Ranges of the Colombian Andes goes back several millennia. Although this predates the Muisca civilisation, whose onset is commonly set at 800 AD, nevertheless, some of these styles persevered through the ages.
  During the preceramic era, the people of the highlands produced petrographs and petroglyphs representing their deities, the abundant flora and fauna of the area, abstract motives and anthropomorphic or anthropo-zoomorphic elements.
context_section_description: The Muisca played music, sang and danced mainly as part of religious, burial and initiation rituals, with harvests and sowing and after the victory in battles. Also during the construction of their houses, the Muisca performed music and dances. The early Spanish chronicles noted that the music and singing was monotonous and sad. As musical instruments they used drums, flutes made of shells or ceramics, trumpets of gold, zampoñas and ocarinas. At the rituals, the people would be dressed in feathers, animal skins (mainly jaguar) and decorated their bodies with paint. At the dances the women and men held hands and both the commoners and the higher social classes participated in these activities. The main deities associated with the dances were Huitaca and Nencatacoa.
caption: Trumpets were made of ceramics or of gold as in this case in the Muisca exhibition of the Museo del Oro
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