As an alternative view, Stein sees Hispanic music as a web instead of a timeline.

“I don’t like to use the words ‘progression’ or ‘evolution,’ because that implies that things went from worse to better, or from somehow unsophisticated to sophisticated, and we don’t want to think that way,” she said. "But it’s interesting to think about the many crossings back and forth between high culture and traditional culture or art music and vernacular, more folk music … There’s definitely what I like to think of as a cultural amalgamation.”

When walking through a city in Peru, Stein experienced an illustration of this concept in an encounter with a street musician playing folk music on a Baroque-era harp.

“(There is a) crossing of traditions,” Stein said, “and in some of what we think of as popular or modern folk music of Mexico and Latin America, there are Baroque techniques and rhythms that have survived and flourished in slightly new ways.”