Gentleman Troubadours and Andean Pop Stars: Huayno Music, Media Work, and Ethnic Imaginaries in Urban Peru

241 Pages·2014·1.372 MB·English

by  Tucker, Joshua

Gentleman Troubadours
and Andean Pop Stars
Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology
A series edited by Philip V. Bohlman, Ronald Radano, and Timothy Rommen
editorial board
Margaret J. Kartomi
Bruno Nettl
Anthony Seeger
Kay Kaufman Shelemay
Martin H. Stokes
Bonnie C. Wade
Gentleman Troubadours
and Andean Pop Stars
Huayno Music, Media Work, and Ethnic
Imaginaries in Urban Peru
JOSHUA TUCKER
The University of Chicago Press
Chicago and London
Joshua Tucker is assistant professor of music at Brown University.
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637
The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London
© 2013 by The University of Chicago
All rights reserved. Published 2013.
Printed in the United States of America
22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 1 2 3 4 5
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-92395-6 (cloth)
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-92396-3 (paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-92397-0 (e-book)
ISBN-10: 0-226-92395-9 (cloth)
ISBN-10: 0-226-92396-7 (paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-92397-5 (e-book)
Portions of chapter 4 were previously published as “Mediating Sentiment and
Shaping Publics: Recording Practice and the Articulation of Social Change in An-
dean Lima,” Popular Music and Society 33, no. 2 (2010). Portions of chapter 5
were previously published as “Music Radio and Global Mediation: Producing So-
cial Distinction in the Andean Public Sphere,” Cultural Studies 24, no. 4 (2010).
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Tucker, Joshua, author.
Gentleman troubadours and Andean pop stars : huayno music, media work,
and ethnic imaginaries in urban Peru / Joshua Tucker.
pages cm. — (Chicago studies in ethnomusicology)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-92395-6 (cloth : alkaline paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-92395-9 (cloth : alkaline paper)
ISBN-13: 978-0-226-92396-3 (paperback : alkaline paper)
ISBN-10: 0-226-92396-7 (paperback : alkaline paper)
[etc.]
1. Popular music—Social aspects—Peru. 2. Huaynos—Peru—Ayacucho—
History and criticism. 3. Huaynos—Peru—Lima—History and criticism.
4. Radio and music—Peru. 5. Sound recording industry—Social aspects—
Peru. I. Title. II. Series: Chicago studies in ethnomusicology.
ML3917.P43T83 2013
781.640985'09051—dc23
2012021910
a This paper meets the requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992
(Permanence of Paper).
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments / vii
INTRODUCTION / Cities, Sounds,
and Circulation in Twenty-First-Century Peru / 1
ONE / The Distributed Society / 9
TWO / The Andean Music Scene / 35
THREE / Bohemians, Poets, and Troubadours / 79
FOUR / The Commercial Huayno Business / 111
FIvE / Finding the Huayno People / 147
EPILOGUE / Folkloric Frames and Mass Culture / 177
Notes / 185
Bibliography / 205
Index / 221

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
A project of this kind is made possible by the aid and support of many oth-
ers, all of whom I would like to thank. I will begin by recognizing Judith
Becker, Bruce Mannheim, Andrew Shryock, and Amy Stillman, all of whom
guided my initial research efforts, helped me to develop my thoughts, and
later formed a sterling dissertation committee. The Quechua language in-
struction provided by Inés Callalli and Serafín Coronel-Molina, too, proved
invaluable in research and analysis.
Financial support for field research was provided at various times by
the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Social Sciences and Humanities Research
Council of Canada, the Rackham School of Graduate Studies and Center
for Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of Michigan,
and the Lozano Long Institute for Latin American Studies at the University
of Texas at Austin, all of which is gratefully acknowledged, as is the writing
support provided by the David Rockefeller Center for Latin American Stud-
ies at Harvard University and Brown University’s Center for Latin American
and Caribbean Studies.
For giving me their time and helping me to understand the dynamics
of musical life in Ayacucho and Lima, I would like to thank Lucho Agui-
lar, Isaac Argumedo, Alex Arone, Daniel Arone, Martín Arone, Pedro Ar-
riola, Keti Bedrillana, María Luisa Bustamante, Ernesto Camassi, Diosdado
Gaitán Castro, Otoniel Ccayanchira, Arturo Chiclla, Rosa Chiclla, Fernando
Cruz, Ricardo Daryx, Eladio Díaz, Antonio Sullca Effio, Carlos Falconí, Ju-
lián Fernández, Óscar Figueroa, Fausto Flores, Ranulfo Fuentes, Amílcar
Gamarra, Zoila and Doris García, Raúl García Zárate, Miguel Ángel Hua-
mán, Julio and Walter Humala, Mario Laurente, Alfredo Loayza, Daniel
Loayza, Magda Medina, Edy Méjico, Milton Mendieta, Walter Mendieta,
Walter Muñoz, Dina Paucar, Carlos Prado, Manuelcha Prado, Marco Tucno
viii / Acknowledgments
Rocha, Antonio Sullca “Sunqu Suwa,” Walter Wayanay, and Juan Zárate.
For aiding in this and more informal ways, I thank all of my friends, com-
padres, and godchildren in Ayacucho and Lima as well. For their hospitality
in Lima, Jeanine Anderson, Raúl Romero, and víctor vich all merit special
recognition. In Ayacucho, I received valuable insights in conversation with
Jeffrey Gamarra, and would also like to single out the staff at the San Fran-
cisco Monastery as well as the Archivo Público Departamental de Ayacucho
for their assistance in accessing historical documentation.
Upon returning from the field, I received invaluable commentary on
my work from friends and colleagues, including Michael Ferguson, Susan
Frekko, Karen Hebert, and Edward Murphy, as well as the Círculo Micaela
Bastidas de Estudios Andinos at the University of Michigan. Opportunities
for presentation at the University of California, Riverside, Yale University,
and the University of Oklahoma proved invaluable in helping me further
shape my thoughts, for which I would like to thank Jonathan Ritter (who
also deserves special thanks for his long-standing help in many, many other
ways), Enrique Mayer, and Alan McPherson and Mandy Minks, respectively.
Comments by David Novak and Amy Weidman after a presentation at the
conference of the Society for Ethnomusicology are also gratefully acknowl-
edged.
Colleagues at both the University of Texas and Brown University have
provided ample support of various kinds during the writing up of this work,
and I would like to single out Dana Gooley, Kiri Miller, Robin Moore, Marc
Perlman, Sonia Seeman, and especially Paja Faudree. Thomas Turino and
an anonymous reader from the University of Chicago Press made sugges-
tions that helped make an initial manuscript much better, as did my editor,
Elizabeth Branch Dyson, and I express my deepest thanks to all for their
thoughtful comments.
Finally, the support of family and friends, before, during, and after re-
search, is the foundation upon which everything else rests. For various kinds
of logistical support in the field, I would like to thank Jeff and Joanna Lein-
aweaver, as well as Megan Callaghan. My mother and father, Sheila and
Michael Tucker, deserve thanks in ways that exceed my capacity to phrase
them. Most of all, I give thanks every day for the support, critique, and com-
panionship of my wonderful wife, Jessaca Leinaweaver, and for Leo, whose
skills in comic relief have proved perhaps more valuable than everything
else put together.
INTRODUCTION
Cities, Sounds, and Circulation
in Twenty-First-Century Peru
After years of studying Andean popular music in Lima and Ayacucho, Peru,
the thought of either place conjures a wealth of sensory stimuli that define
my experience of their city-spaces. The clouds that loom over Peru’s desert
coast, for instance, shed no rain, but they place Lima under a blanket of
damp, heavy air whose weight the visitor perceives immediately upon ar-
rival. They also trap the dirty fumes of city traffic, merging the olfactory
and the tactile into a synesthetic sensation of acrid humidity. On the drive
in from the airport, past wan palm trees and square cement buildings
crowned by thickets of rebar, the view calls to mind peer cities in the Global
South. But the word Escarchado, painted alongside a phone number on curb
after curb, reminds the attentive observer of the way that Limeños stake a
visual claim to respectability amid urban blight: by having a mason at that
number coat their house in a layer of plaster (escarchado), the outward sign
of a decent, well-maintained home.
Most indelible are Peru’s raucous urban soundscapes. The streets of the
capital teem with taxis and buses past their prime, gunning their engines as
they compete for every inch of road. Blaring horns combine with the shriek-
ing whistles of traffic cops and the hollering of fare collectors to produce a
multilayered din that only abates with the workday’s end. On sidewalks,
ambulatory vendors insistently hustle clients, who shout in turn into cheap
cell phones. Everywhere, sound spills from homes, cantinas, stores, work-
shops, market stalls, offices, internet labs, and the booths of night watch-
men, the sounds of the private sphere engaging those of the public street
in polyphonic transgression of any nominal boundary between them. And
music pulses at the heart of things, as buskers, transistor radios, car stereos,
barroom DVD players, and the external loudspeakers of businesses hoping