Customer Reviews

Moving Away from Silence: Music of the Peruvian Altiplano and the Experience of Urban Migration (Chicago Studies in Ethnomusicology)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In my search to learn as much as I can about the people who create the Andean music that stirs my soul, I am highly impressed with Thomas Turino's research. For a musician like myself, who seeks to perform Andean music with a deep understanding of the culture, this book is a precious jewel. Turino's respect of the people and his detailed descriptions of the process of composition and performance are immensely helpful. I feel like I am sitting in the earthen-floored house together with him and the musicians of Tarkas de Putina as they softly play their instruments in the dim light of a flame, composing fiesta music by wordless consensus all through the night fueled by coca and alcohol.

Furthermore he reports with an equally intimate and scholarly first-person account on changes that migration (between rural Aymara-speaking Conimo on the Northern shore of Lake Titicaca and urban Lima) cause to the music and the culture.