ABSTRACT
This chapter summarizes some important historical and contemporary aspects of the most wide-spread kind of festival in the Andes, the patron-saint festival. It demonstrates how the performance of music and dances in these festivals are powerful ways to immerse participants in a history told from within. In these festivals musicians, dancers, and other performers make visible, audible, and palpable stories about the local and regional past and present while envisioning the future. The chapter presents two cases, one from the Mantaro Valley region of the Central Peruvian Andes and the other from the Cusco region in the southeastern Peruvian Andes.
