Gentleman Troubadours and Andean Pop Stars

“In this fine study, Joshua Tucker masterfully charts the tortuous journey of Ayacucho’s huayno music from the early decades of the twentieth century into the twenty-first, a story powerfully interwoven with Peru’s troubled history and uneven social landscapes. As a genre steeped in Hispanic elitism and intellectualism—and complicit in the reproduction of Peruvian musical and social hierarchies—Ayacuchano huayno’s refined sentiments did not always inspire widespread popularity. Yet, fused with contemporary sounds and presented with an upbeat style by radio DJs, this music temporarily eclipsed other forms of Peruvian popular music. Tucker’s attention to the key role of media workers in these developments is an especially important contribution, with much applicability for studies elsewhere.”

“The predominant theme of Gentleman Troubadours and Andean Pop Stars is musical indigenismo, comprising the process by which the urban mestizo bourgeoisie has, over the past century, ambivalently and selectively appropriated and even fancifully fabricated Andean Indian identity markers, from lyrics about Andean rural life, to college students wearing ponchos and playing panpipes, to the cultivation of a salon huayno that is at once somehow Andean and vaguely Indian while also being urbane and polished. Tucker does a marvelous job of exposing and interpreting indigenismo as a largely urban mestizo phenomenon that celebrates Indianness while erasing actual Indians and their voices.”

“By combining fieldwork in Ayacucho and Lima with historical research, this wonderful book reveals the complex way in which musicians, record companies, radio DJs, and changing audiences create popular music genres in contemporary Peru. From the opening bus ride through the sonic neighborhoods of Lima to the concluding chapter on how a genre gains and loses its audiences, this is a great example of the kind of fine-grained ethnography and careful media research that are necessary for understanding popular music in specific communities.”

“Hesselink offers a groundbreaking historiography of SamulNori, as well as an analysis of the music that shows how SamulNori makes its own innovative sonic features.”