Postlude

This chapter offers a brief overview of post-1970 trends in Bolivian Andean conjunto music, focusing on the careers and legacies of the ensembles Savia Andina and Los Kjarkas, especially the latter group. In the 1980s and 1990s, Los Kjarkas played a major role in establishing Cochabamba as the new headquarters for Bolivia’s most popular Andean conjuntos, not only through their own musical activities, but also by generating popular spin-off ensembles (e.g., Proyección, Fortaleza) In the 2010s, Ch’ila Jatun—an Andean conjunto formed by the sons and nephews of Los Kjarkas—rose to the summit of the Bolivian folkloric-popular music scene, with an interpretive approach that drew extensively on the musical practices of Los Kjarkas. Besides the previously mentioned ensembles, this chapter discusses the music-dance genres known as the chuntunqui and caporal-saya (problematically termed “saya”), which first became staples of the Andean conjunto repertoire in the 1980s and 1990s, respectively.

Los Jairas, Peña Naira, and the Folklore Boom

The musical activities that Los Jairas—the band that scholars and local musicians widely credit with canonizing Bolivia’s Andean conjunto tradition—undertook from 1966 to 1969 represents the main subject of this chapter. Notwithstanding Los Jairas’ indisputably crucial role in popularizing the Andean conjunto format in the Bolivian setting, the ensemble’s musical practices did not represent a radically new direction at the time for the Bolivian folklore scene, as they closely resembled the interpretive approaches of earlier musical acts such as Conjunto 31 de Octubre. The 1966–1969 conjuncture within which Los Jairas’ career unfolded in Bolivia, however, afforded urban La Paz–based folkloric musicians with considerably greater opportunities than had been available to local criollo-mestizo artists in earlier periods. Through a detailed look at the trajectory of Los Jairas, this chapter illuminates how the band members successfully navigated these opportunities and thereby fostered the rise of the Andean conjunto tradition as a paramount form of Bolivian folkloric-popular music. This chapter also discusses numerous additional facets of the Bolivian folkloric music movement in this critical period, including the emergence and expansion of the peña scene and its significant impact on contemporaneous and future trends in música folklórica nacional.

1965

By narrowing the focus to the major events and happenings involving Bolivian musical folklorization that occurred in 1965 (e.g., Bolivian folklore delegation’s unexpected success at Argentina’s First Latin American Folklore Festival, the expansion of the local recording industry, the Bolivian state’s increased support for cultural tourism), and explaining the ways in which the Barrientos-Ovando administration’s populism resembled the approaches of the recently ousted MNR governments, this chapter sheds light on the intertwined local and translocal factors that made this year such a pivotal conjuncture for Bolivia’s folkloric music movement. It also reveals that by 1965 the conditions were strongly favorable in La Paz city and other Bolivian metropolitan centers (especially Cochabamba) for the rise to stardom of a locally based criollo-mestizo folklore band whose performance practices foregrounded signifiers of Andean indigeneity, a niche that the band Los Jairas would fill the following year.

Introduction

The opening section of this chapter introduces the reader to the Andean conjunto tradition, especially its Bolivian variant, and lays out the book’s three major contributions. The second section discusses the folklorization process, and explains how it relates to the major case studies that the book covers. The final two sections of this chapter provide historical background on pre–20th-century La Paz. The first one discusses the Bolivian state’s antagonistic relationship with the indigenous population from the founding of the Republic of Bolivia (1825) to the late 19th century. The concluding section, after explaining how the central district of La Paz city was segregated along ethnic lines, provides an overview of the forms of musical expression that criollo (“white”), mestizo, and indigenous people practiced in urban La Paz in the 19th century.

State-Sponsored Folklorization of Music-Dance Traditions in the MNR Era

Bolivia’s “revolutionary nationalism” epoch (1952–1964) saw a remarkable upsurge in the number, scope, and variety of state-sponsored folkloric music-dance events involving criollo-mestizo, cholo-mestizo, and indigenous performers. It was also in the years of MNR rule that Bolivia obtained a state-funded folkloric ballet company and fully operational Department of Folklore. The 1952–1964 MNR era thus represents not only a time of momentous political, social, and economic change for Bolivia, but also a critical juncture for the national folklore movement. This chapter analyzes the major musical folklorization initiatives that state-affiliated entities launched in La Paz city from 1952 to 1964, with special attention given to their connections with MNR projects and agendas, in particular the party’s panacea of cultural mestizaje (ethnic-cultural fusion). As this chapter shows, MNR-sponsored musical folklorization initiatives at times contradicted official party ideology, and in some instances articulated to a greater extent with indigenismo than with mestizaje.

Estudiantinas and Female Vocal Duos

The first half of this chapter focuses on a key precursor of the Andean conjunto tradition, the estudiantina. It traces the process through which, from the 1880s to 1940s, urban La Paz’s estudiantinas gradually eschewed their original Eurocentric stylistic orientation and elite-criollo association, and instead adopted indigenista musical practices (e.g., added the kena and charango to their line-ups) and became identified with working-class cholo-mestizos. The second half of the chapter examines the careers of the La Paz–based female duos Las Hermanas Tejada and Las Kantutas from the late 1930s to the run-up to the 1952 Revolution. A look at the trajectories of these two superstar duos not only provides another perspective on Bolivian musical indigenismo, but also reveals a concurrent trend in the paceño folklore scene, música oriental, which then rivaled the popularity of Andes-centered musical indigenismo.

Bolero Trios, Urban Mestizo Panpipe Groups, and Early Incarnations of the Andean Conjunto

This chapter provides detailed studies of MNR-era musical acts that developed new directions in Bolivian national music that would influence major trends of the late 1960s and beyond. The first part examines the career, repertoire, and legacy of Conjunto 31 de Octubre, and also briefly discusses the activities of Conjunto Kollasuyo and a few other MNR era groups that represent early incarnations of what would become Bolivia’s Andean conjunto tradition. The second section illuminates how panpipe tropa music increasingly became an integral part of the cultural life of La Paz city, through a close look at the two groups that were at the forefront of this development, Los Cebollitas and Los Choclos. The third section explores Bolivia’s adoption and localization of the bolero trio or trío romántico ensemble format, focusing on the trajectory of singer Raúl Shaw and his backing bands, from his time in Mexico’s celebrated Trío Los Panchos, to his later activities with La Paz’s Los Indios (originally known as Los Peregrinos).

Musical Dimensions of Indigenismo

In 1925, La Paz city residents observed Bolivia’s first centennial of political independence, with official state celebrations that in hindsight appear remarkably devoid of Bolivian nationalist exhibitions of indigenismo. Twenty-three years later, urban La Paz hosted another lavish commemoration, this time to honor the city’s 400th anniversary. But, in a clear departure from the 1925 centennial, the 1948 event included a “folklore” festival that was wholly devoted to Andean indigenous music-dance traditions, the Concurso Folklórico Indígena del Departamento. As the Concurso’s inclusion in the 1948 celebration suggests, mainstream La Paz criollo-mestizo views about the cultural value and meanings of Andean indigenous expressive practices had undergone a significant transformation in the twenty-three years following the 1925 centennial. This chapter elucidates this major shift, by exploring key developments in the paceño indigenista musical scene that transpired in the period from the 1920s to 1940s. Throughout Latin America, elite and middle-class interest in regionally distinctive music-dance expressions reached new heights in the early decades of the 20th century, as part of a quest among a varied cast of politicians, writers, and artists for local traditions that unmistakably demonstrated the nation’s cultural uniqueness. Indigenismo represented a manifestation of this phenomenon. The Bolivian variant of this nativist movement took inspiration from indigenista currents radiating from other Latin American countries, including Mexico and Argentina, but above all else from Peru.