Skip to main content

Moving Away from Silence

Music of the Peruvian Altiplano and the Experience of Urban Migration

Moving Away from Silence

Music of the Peruvian Altiplano and the Experience of Urban Migration

Increasingly popular in the United States and Europe, Andean panpipe and flute music draws its vitality from the traditions of rural highland villages and of rural migrants who have settled in Andean cities. In Moving Away from Silence, Thomas Turino describes panpipe and flute traditions in the context of this rural-urban migration and the turbulent politics that have influenced Peruvian society and local identities throughout this century.

Turino’s ethnography is the first large-scale study to concentrate on the pervasive effects of migration on Andean people and their music. Turino uses the musical traditions of Conima, Peru as a unifying thread, tracing them through the varying lives of Conimeos in different locales. He reveals how music both sustains and creates meaning for a people struggling amid the dramatic social upheavals of contemporary Peru.

Moving Away from Silence contains detailed interpretations based on comparative field research of Conimeo musical performance, rehearsals, composition, and festivals in the highlands and Lima. The volume will be of great importance to students of Latin American music and culture as well as ethnomusicological and ethnographic theory and method.


331 pages | 18 music examples, 14 halftones, 2 maps, 5 tables | 6 x 9 | © 1993

Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology

Anthropology: Cultural and Social Anthropology

Latin American Studies

Music: Ethnomusicology

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction: From Conima to Lima
Part One: Music in Conima
1. Instruments, Aesthetics, and Performance Practice
2. The Collective and Competitive Nature of Musical Performance
3. Making the Music: Rehersals, Composition, and Musical Style
4. Three Fiestas
Part Two: The Local, the National, and the Youth of Conima
5. Qhantati Ururi of Conima
6. The Urban Panpipe Movement and the Youth of Conima
Part Three: The Music of Conimeño Residents in Lima
7. Conimeños in Lima and Regional Associations
8. Centro Social Conima: Music and the Importance of Community
9. The Framing of Experience: Festivals and Performance Occasions in Lima
10. From Lima to Conima: The Residents Return Home
Appendix 1: Calendar of Musical Occasions in Conima
Appendix 2: Historical Background of the Musical Instruments
Appendix 3: Musical Examples
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Annotated Discography
Index

Be the first to know

Get the latest updates on new releases, special offers, and media highlights when you subscribe to our email lists!

Sign up here for updates about the Press