South America is a remarkably musical and religious continent. All of its countries show vigorous popular and indigenous traditions, which have music and dance as its core. Catholicism is the predominant official religion in all of South America, but the continental religious scenarios are diverse and constantly changing, especially with the recent growth of evangelic churches and with the development of many alternative religions, most of them derived from local and syncretic practices. One common trait in the majority of these South American religious practices is the role of music in religiosity in communicating with spiritual beings.

The centrality of music in South American sacred rituals has been indicated not only by ethnological and ethnohistorical research, but also by archeological evidences of pre-Columbian musical instruments. During the last decades, the knowledge about South American pre-Columbian societies has changed...