Christine Labroche asked:

>Secondly, and more important to me, a request.  Could someone - Bill Hong
>and Mauricio V. Cartagena - tell us more about American (right?) Baroque?
>I found their double report on "La Purpura ...  " quite enticing, and I had
>filed Bill Hong's first challenging post for future reference.

Coming into this late, after a few days away from the List, I don't
have much to add to Mauricio's fine reply.  Much of what I've learned has
tended to come from various recording notes, and I certainly don't have the
geographic advantage of being in Peru.  But my feeling is that the extent
of the "American Baroque" is still mostly to be discovered and/or recorded.

Whether the evolution of this music comes under the purview of "ethno-
musicology", I do find it quite interesting in the context of what was
happening in the Americas at that time.  Could such interesting music also
have been the inevitable by-product of conquest, slavery, and religious
bigotry (keeping in mind that at the same time, there was the gradual
abolition of native practices such as human sacrifice)? Certainly the
impact on "Western" (using that word again) culture, cuisine etc.  has been
profound, and no less so than say, the crossovers between Italy and other
parts of Europe in past centuries.

Christine Labroche also asked earlier:

>(First of all, a language query.  Why do so many list-members use the term
>"the Western hemisphere' when they mean, I think, the Americas? Parts of
>France, most of Spain and Britain, Portugal, several African countries,
>Ireland, Iceland, Greenland, and several Pacific islands, at least,.  are
>in the W.  hemisphere too, aren't they??)

Sorry.  Was trying to accomodate (to the extent I could) those folks in
Europe and elsewhere who continue to think that the Americas really belong
on another PLANET, let alone being lumped with them in same hemisphere:-).

Bill H.