ABSTRACT
It is an early evening in mid-June 1993 in the highland village of Irupata, in the eastern range of the Bolivian Andes that runs through the northern region of the department of Potosí. This rural community, home to Quechua-speaking peasant farmers, has been the host all day to a music festival in honor of the third anniversary of the radio station Mallku Kiririya, built by the Bolivian NGO Taypikala with financial support from French and German foundations. Since early afternoon, a series of musical groups representing different communities in the surrounding countryside has taken the stage inside the large hall built adjacent to the radio’s control room and small studio, while hundreds of spectators, mostly people from the same communities, but also including invited dignitaries and politicians from urban centers in the region, crowd the hall to watch. Each performing group, consisting of troupes of adult men playing consorts of wind instruments such as panpipes or duct flutes, or mixed groups of teenage girls singing accompanied by boys playing stringed instruments, has given a display of colorful indigenous clothing and textiles while playing autochthonous musical instruments and singing songs in the Quechua or Aymara languages. All afternoon a group of judges consisting mostly of visiting dignitaries from outside the community has sat near the stage, carefully observing the performances and rating each performing group. Now in the early evening the winners are finally announced and the prizes of agricultural implements, rubber sandals made from discarded automobile tires, and bags of coca are distributed, and the winning groups are asked to return to the stage and spontaneously perform again, representing the best of local indigenous music and culture. The members of one of the winning groups have, however, subsequent to their performance earlier in the day, already changed out of their colorful “peasant” clothing back into their everyday clothes. Not having time to change back into their festive dress, the young men in the group take the stage to play their encore wearing blue jeans or slacks of synthetic cloth bought in stores in the nearby mining town of Llallagua, instead of the pants of black or white homespun with delicate embroidery around the cuffs, and without the many woven scarves, carrying cloths, belts, small pouches for carrying coca,
and other decorations they had worn during their competition performance. The young women singers in the group are similarly less adorned than in their earlier performance, their many decorative textiles having already been safely stowed away. While their clothes are now different, the group performs again one of the songs they presented earlier in the day. The song text includes the line in Quechua “Ñawpa kulturasninchista ni qunqakusunchu”—“Let’s not forget our ancient cultures.” No one seems to note the costume change; or if they have noticed it, no one openly comments on it.
