Abstract
Music has long been one of the ways people signal their beliefs, identity, and culture. In the public sphere, music can serve to maintain a people’s religious and cultural practices despite the pressures that incur societal change: environment, colonialism, diasporic movement, economics, the introduction of other religions, and so forth. Through the continual performance of particular, specific musics in their appropriate ritual and spiritual settings, the Quechua, Aymara, and Chipaya peoples of Peru’s Altiplano region have retained much of their pre-Columbian cosmology and identity. The foundational concept of indigenous Andean cosmology is the idea of duality– more specifically, a gendered duality– and many of those dualities are represented in musical aspects of Andean cultures, including melodic structure, musical instruments, performance practice, and music’s role in public festivals and daily life. Many of those beliefs are expressed through and adapted to modern Christianity and social systems, as Andean indigenous religious practices were incorporated into Catholic ritual and expression. The syncretic nature of both Andean religious practice and music performance has helped the indigenous peoples to maintain their dualistic worldview and, by extension, their cultural identity.
Presenters
Cara SchrefflerAssistant Professor, Music, Rocky Mountain College, Montana, United States
Details
Presentation Type
Paper Presentation in a Themed Session
Theme
KEYWORDS
Music, Identity, Syncretism, Andean, Public performance, Cosmology, Spirituality
