Visionaries in Mexico have sought ways to look beyond the stars for millennia. Ancient civilizations like the Maya and Aztecs designed their cities as gigantic star maps, orienting their buildings to mark equinoxes, solstices, and zenith passages. This inquisitive form of meaning-making through art has long been endangered—first by Spanish colonizers; then by the Mexican government’s throttling of artistic expression in the late 20th century; and now by the violent anti-Mexican sentiments of the present day propagated by U.S. President Donald Trump. And through it all, the Mexican spirit of astral curiosity has continued to inform the artistic brilliance of sculptors, writers, painters, and especially musicians in Mexico.

In the 1970s, ’80s, and ’90s, artists from around the country were deeply engaged in the project of bringing forgotten Mexican instrumentation into the many worlds of experimental music. As Carlos “Tropicaza” Icaza says in the liner notes of Light in the Attic’s A La Altura: Visionary Mexican Music 1977-1999 - Volumes 1 & 2, it was a moment in which musicians were “search[ing] for a Mexican musical root” by integrating ideas from the contemporary worlds of classical minimalism, ambient music, new age, free improv, and electro-acoustic composition with the incorporation of Pre-Colombian instrumentation.