Panpipes & Ponchos

Melodious panpipes and kena flutes. The shimmering strums of a charango. Poncho-clad musicians playing "El C�ndor Pasa" at subway stops or street corners while selling their recordings. These sounds and images no doubt come to mind for many "world music" fans when they recall their early
encounters with Andean music groups. Ensembles of this type -- -known as "Andean conjuntos" or "pan-Andean bands" -- have long formed part of the world music circuit in the Global North. In the major cities of Latin America, too, Andean conjuntos have been present in the local music scene for decades,
not only in Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador (i.e., in the Andean countries), but also in Argentina, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico. It is solely in Bolivia, however, that the Andean conjunto has represented the preeminent folkloric-popular music ensemble configuration for interpreting national musical
genres from the late 1960s onward.

Despite its frequent association with indigenous villages, the music of Andean conjuntos bears little resemblance to the indigenous musical expressions of the Southern Andes. Created by urban criollo and mestizo folkloric artists, the Andean conjunto tradition represents a form of mass-mediated
folkloric music, one that is only loosely based on indigenous musical practices. Panpipes & Ponchos reveals that in the early-to-mid 20th century, a diverse range of musicians and ensembles, including estudiantinas, female vocal duos, bolero trios, art-classical composers, and mestizo panpipe
groups, laid the groundwork for the Andean conjunto format to eventually take root in the Bolivian folklore scene amid the boom decade of the 1960s. Author Fernando Rios analyzes local musical trends in conjunction with government initiatives in nation-building and the ideologies of indigenismo and
mestizaje. Beyond the local level, Rios also examines key developments in Bolivian national musical practices through their transnational links with trends in Peru, Argentina, Chile, Mexico, and France. As the first book-length study that chronicles how Bolivia's folkloric music movement
articulated, on the one hand, with Bolivian state projects, and on the other, with transnational artistic currents, for the pivotal era spanning the 1920s to 1960s, Panpipes & Ponchos offers new perspectives on the Andean conjunto's emergence as Bolivia's favored ensemble line-up in the field of
national folkloric-popular music.

"For several decades now, the Andean conjunto has been the preeminent format for 'Andean folk music' groups in the major cities of the world. Easily identified through the musicians' colorful ponchos and indigenous-associated instruments such as the panpipe, these 4-6 member ensembles interpret the music of the Andes in a style that bears little resemblance to traditional indigenous music, notwithstanding the efforts of "world music" labels to market their recordings as if they accurately reproduce indigenous expressions. Developed mainly by criollo and mestizo musicians, the Andean conjunto tradition has taken root in many Latin American countries, from Argentina to Mexico, but it is only in Bolivia that mainstream society has long regarded ensembles in this mold as exemplars of national folkloric music. As this book reveals, Bolivia's adoption of the Andean conjunto as a national musical expression in the late 1960s represents the culmination of over four decades of local folkloric activities that at various points articulated with transnational artistic currents, especially those emanating from Argentina, Chile, France, Mexico, and Peru, as well as with Bolivian state initiatives and nation-building projects. By elucidating these connections through an examination of La Paz city's musical scene from the 1920s to 1960s, this book not only sheds light on the rise of a prominent manifestation of Bolivian national culture, but also also offers the first detailed historical study of the Bolivian folkloric music movement that documents how it developed in dialogue with Bolivian state projects and transnational artistic trends in this period"--

"Fernando Rios' meticulously researched and fascinating history is an indispensable resource for understanding how Andean folk music came to take the world by storm. Although powerfully invoking ideas and images of indigenous Andean culture, Panpipes and Ponchos demonstrates that the conjunto (with
its standard line-up of kena flute, charango, guitar, bombo drum, and later panpipes) was thoroughly transnational, middle class, and rooted in Bolivia's turbulent twentieth-century history." -- Henry Stobart, Royal Holloway University of London, author of Music and the Poetics of Production in the
Bolivian Andes

"Fernando Rios is the preeminent historian of what the world knows today as 'Andean music.' In this meticulously researched and theoretically profound book, he offers a model of well-crafted historical ethnomusicology: deeply grounded in the details of Bolivian musical nationalism and its
transnational connections, yet offering broad insights about the intersections of music, ethnicity, class, and politics in Latin America in the twentieth century." -- Jonathan Ritter, Associate Professor of Ethnomusicology, University of California Riverside