Music of Peru Review Article

Review Author(s): Kathleen O'Connor Review by: Kathleen O'Connor Source: Ethnomusicology, Vol. 41, No. 3 (Autumn, 1997), pp. 577-579 Published by: University of Illinois Press on behalf of Society for Ethnomusicology Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/852772 Accessed: 08-02-2016 03:41 UTC Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/ info/about/policies/terms.jsp JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. University of Illinois Press and Society for Ethnomusicology are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Ethnomusicology. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 129.108.148.6 on Mon, 08 Feb 2016 03:41:28 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions VOL.41, No. 3 ETHNOMUSICOLOGY FALL1997 Recording Reviews Traditional Music of Peru: 1: Festivals of Cusco; 2: The Mantaro Valley; 3: Cajamarca and the Colca Valley; 4: Lambayeque. Pro- duced in collaboration with the Archives of Traditional Andean Music, Lima, Peru (1 and 2) and the Archives of Traditional Andean Music of the Riva-AgiieroInstitute of the Catholic University of Peru (3 and 4). Series complied and edited by RAUfLR. ROMERO.Smithsonian/Folkways SF CD 40466 (1), 49467 (2), 40468 (3), and 40469 (4). Four compact disks sold separately with notes by GISELACANEPA-KOCH, RAUjL ROMERO, and LEONIDASCASAS ROQUE, translated by BENJAMIN LIU and CARMEN WESSON;photos. These four compact discs featuring music from various regions of Peru are the first in a planned series of five. The final CD is due out later this year and will feature the music of the Andes Region. The music on the CDs consists primarily of examples from annual festivals that honor the patron saints of particular villages and that represent the most important context for traditional music performance. Peruvian religious festivals follow the centuries-old tradition of the Inkas, who held religious festivals once a month. For indigenous participants, these festivals reinforce a sense of community as well as bolster good relations and reci- procity with the patron deities, who are portrayed in the festivals as Catholic saints in the syncretic tradition of the local Catholic culture. At the same time, festivals and their objects of veneration also represent the continua- tion of pre-Columbian worship of indigenous deities, for instance Pacha Mama (syncretized with the Virgen del Carmen of Paucartambo) and Supay, the deity of the mines (syncretized with the Christian Devil). While traditional music in Peru represents a hybrid of Hispanic and indigenous origins and genres, the music on the Smithsonian/Folkways CD sounds considerably more Amerindianthan Hispanic. Even where European instruments are used, for example, the saxophones of the Mantaro Valley, the performers make the sounds their own. Festival dances and costumes feature archetypal figures from indigenous religions, often overlaid with Catholic identities, and the music featured on these CDs is primarily used ? 1997 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois 577 This content downloaded from 129.108.148.6 on Mon, 08 Feb 2016 03:41:28 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions 578 Ethnomusicology, Fall 1997 to accompany such dances. The music in Traditional Music of Peru may thus be regarded as strongly indigenous in origin regardless of its syncretic aspects, origins that are downplayed in the notes. The credits in the booklet notes suggest that the recordings on the CDs were culled from the collection at the Archives of TraditionalAndean Music in Lima. The original recordists and collectors are not identified, which is a shame, and their absence may explain the peculiar sense of distance from the music and performers which is reflected in the notes. These notes are lengthy and lavish, but curiously, they miss the opportunity to discuss indigenous culture to any meaningful extent, and a listener-reader is left with no real sense of who is performing the music. For example, the notes include photographs of the Mantaro Valley saxophonists, but nothing on where the saxophones came from, who brought them, how and by whom they were incorporated into "traditional" Peruvian music, or why they became so meaningful. Neither do the notes discuss the ethnicity of the performers. The overall gloss of the notes suggests that the music and the people performing it are mestizo, a mixed-race ethnicity which is associ- ated primarilywith Spanish-languagetraditions, but the music itself as well as the photographs of the people indicate otherwise. For example, although the notes unequivocally declare the music to be mestizo, many of the song titles and texts are in the Amerindian language, Quechua, which is spoken by Indians, an apparent contradiction of the mestizaje of the music. This equivocation is problematic because of the continued sociopolitical marginalization of Amerindian peoples in Latin America. The approximately 100 selections on the four CDs are faded in and out, providing the impression that they comprise an ethnographic sampler that, although valuable, tried to do too much. In one example, a song fades out before the lyrics printed in the notes have been performed. However, since most of this music accompanies dance and is therefore quite repetitive, the truncated examples represent an understandable and legitimate production choice. Overall, the breadth of the collection contributes to its value as an educational tool. The series would have benefited from a dedicated copy editor, as the notes are plagued by typographical errors, particularly on the second CD. Spellings are inconsistent: Cuzco is spelled two different ways on one page alone (Cusco and Cuzco); the Quechua flute is called pinkullo on CDs 1, 3, and 4 and pincullo on CD 2. Translations are sometimes inaccurate, for example, china (CD 3, no. 23) does not mean "Chinese" but rather "ser- vant" or "wife." Other small criticisms include a perennial one for this reviewer: the lack of printed lyrics. The space allocated to the notes indicates a budget This content downloaded from 129.108.148.6 on Mon, 08 Feb 2016 03:41:28 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions Recording Reviews 579 sufficient for the transcription and translation of lyrics, and the importance of providing these ought to be self-evident in an ethnographic recording. Notwithstanding these criticisms, Traditional Music of Peru contains stunning musical material. Particularly pleasing is CD 4, specifically the children's voices in tracks 10 and 19; the marineras on tracks 14-16 (marineras are often an expression of criollismo and contain many Afro- Peruvian elements, particularly in the rhythms-elements that are unac- knowledged in the notes); the solo song on track 5 in Spanish and Quechua-very evocative and moving, in the descending pentatonic scale typical of indigenous music in Peru; the virtuosic performances on the clarin on CD 3 from Cajamarcaand the Colca Valley; and the singing of a young woman (CD 1, track 24)-so typical of the favored vocal aesthetic in these areas, which sounds like the singing of little girls. Traditional Music of Peru covers a lot of territory and offers an excellent representative sam- pling of Peruvian music. Kathleen O'Connor The University of Texas at Austin MUSICA SVECIAE--Folk Music in Sweden. 1994-97. Produced by ANNA FRISK. Caprice Records. 25 compact discs. Photos and texts in Swed- ish, English, and Finnish. MUSICA SVECIAE-Folk Music in Sweden is a series with an ambitious goal: to document, preserve, and present Sweden's folk music heritage. This is to be done on twenty-five CDs, of which eighteen have so far been released. The remaining seven are expected during 1997. Folk Music in Swe- den is only one part of MUSICASVECIAE, "Sweden's national encyclopaedia of music," as it is described on the back cover of the series catalogue, which began as a documentation of Swedish art music. At the completion of the project in 1994, with over a hundred CDs in the series, the Royal Swedish Academy of Music took the initiative to include folk music in the "ency- clopedia." Folk Music in Sweden was conceived as a joint venture between Swed- ish Radio's Channel 2, the Swedish Centre for Folk Song and Folk Music Research, the Royal Swedish Academy of Music, and Caprice Records. The series combines new and old recordings, the latter mostly transferred from LPs previously released by Swedish Radio's Channel 2 and the Centre for Folk Song and Folk Music Research. The Centre has also included selections taken from its recording archive. The CDs focus on different themes and seem to be released in no specific order-a jazz release comes after a sample collection of traditional folk music and is followed by an ethnographic re- This content downloaded from 129.108.148.6 on Mon, 08 Feb 2016 03:41:28 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions.

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