In Touch with the Earth?

Musical
Instruments, Gender and Fertility in
the Bolivian Andes
Henry Stobart
This essay discusses beliefs and practices concerning gender, musical instruments and
vocal performance in rural communities of northern Potos, in the Bolivian Andes. While
instrumental performance is a male preserve, critical to the construction and expression
of manhood, it is also argued that much value is ascribed to womens singing and
creation of song poetry. It is further suggested that womens exclusion from instrumental
performance should not necessarily be understood in terms of subordination, but
approached within broader models and contexts of gender relations. This involves
exploring gendered aspects of fertility, llama husbandry, seasonality, the cosmos and the
landscape, leading to an examination of courtship, androgyny, notions of marked and
unmarked gender, and the possibility of multiple gender and degrees of gendering.
Keywords: Andes; Bolivia; Fertility; Seasons; Pinkillu Duct Flutes; Julajula Panpipes;
Charango; Division of Labour; Androgyny; Wind; Water; Earth; Interlocking
Instruments; Courtship; Marked and Unmarked Gender
The title of this issue, Sounds of Power, with its focus on musical instruments and
gender, suggests that musical instruments may in some way confer status, as tangible
emblems of power. This raises questions about the relative status ascribed to the
voice, especially in cultural contexts where women are the main singers and men are
the instrumentalists.
From a worldwide perspective, a focus on instruments as signifying music is
evident from iconography, dating back to the earliest times, and from early attempts
Henry Stobart is Senior Lecturer at Royal Holloway, University of London. He is the author of Music and the
Poetics of Production in the Bolivian Andes (Ashgate, 2006) and editor of The New (Ethno)musicologies
(Scarecrow, 2008). As a performer he has recorded and toured widely with the early music ensemble Sirinu and
leads a student-based Andean performance group. His current research focuses on indigenous cultural politics,
digital media, and music piracy in Bolivia, explored through a biographical approach to the recording artist and
indigenous activist Gregorio Mamani. E-mail: h.stobart@rhul.ac.uk
ISSN 1741-1912 (print)/ISSN 1741-1920 (online)/08/010067-28
# 2008 Taylor & Francis
DOI: 10.1080/17411910801972958
Ethnomusicology Forum
Vol. 17, No. 1, June 2008, pp. 6794
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to make sense of music from other cultures, where exotic instruments were collected
and sometimes depicted in treatises, such as Michael Praetoriuss Syntagma Musicum
(1986 [1619])[A.P.1]. This stress on instruments has continued to be underscored by
the discipline of organology and the creation of museum collections. Instruments
could be collected, measured, categorised, their acoustics and mechanics analysed,
and theories developed by individuals who did not necessarily have a deep knowledge
or experience of the performance contexts in which they were collected. The voice, by
contrast, probably proved much more challenging*especially for earlier scholars,
before the advent of recording media where there was nothing tangible that could be
taken away, except transcriptions (in staff notation) which were poor or limited
representations of performance reality. Sharp differences in traditions of vocal
production and aesthetics, alongside a need for a high level of linguistic competence,
may have added further challenges to scholars. In addition, in cultures where women
were the main singers, male scholars access to female singers may have been more
limited than to male instrumentalists, and the researchers own assumptions about
gender status may have led to a focus on mens instruments.
However, when we look more closely at music performance practices it is often the
voice which serves as a key model or ideal for instrumental phrasing and expression.
Solo singers also tend to be the most salient element of an ensemble, the
instrumentalists typically serving as accompanists*and often remaining relatively
anonymous. Lead vocalists (opera singers, in particular) tend to attract higher fees
than participating instrumentalists, as also reflected in their public visibility and
status. In short, although instruments may sometimes signify power, we need to be
careful not to assume that they necessarily carry more status than vocal performance.
We might also question to what degree associations between instruments and power
are underscored by histories of instrument collecting and music scholarship,
especially in less familiar cultural contexts.
This essay focuses primarily on the musical traditions of northern Potos in the
Bolivian Andes, where*as in many other parts of the Andes*a gendered division of
labour between male instrumentalists and female singers is the norm. A common
stereotype of Andean studies is that men dominate the public sphere, speaking at
community meetings and having greater command of Spanish than women. By
contrast, womens power is typically seen to reside in the private sphere, especially the
home, being expressed via more informal modes of interaction. Women are often
characterised as the custodians of tradition, primarily communicating in the Andean
indigenous languages Quechua or Aymara, but Marisol de la Cadena (1995) has
challenged this approach. Also, the singing of unmarried women has sometimes been
identified as an exception to the rule of male domination of verbal discourse (Harris
2000 [A.P.2], 182; Isbell 1997, 280; Martinez 1998).
Ethnographers have often discussed the complementary aspects of mens and
womens roles, especially as expressed in the concept of man-woman (Quechua
qhariwarmi; Aymara chachawarmi) at the heart of the idealised household unit (Allen
1988, 723; Canessa 1997; Harris 2000, 1980[A.P.3]). Certain writers have noted the
68 H. Stobart
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egalitarian nature of the husband-wife team (Harris 1978, 30), a dimension made
explicit in certain ritual contexts.
1
Others have stressed the unequal nature of this and
other forms of pairing where, symbolically at least, male ranks higher than female
(Mayer 2002, 12; Platt 1986, 24). In Andean cultures gender is often used as a kind of
symbolic discourse to organise different types of relations (e.g. older/younger, upper/
lower, or right/left) and Ina Rosing (1997) points out that a person or thing may be
ascribed multiple genders, in addition to biological gender (also see Platt 1986).
Certain accepted models of Andean gender relations were critiqued in two
collected volumes: Arnold (1997), and Paulson and Crespo (1997). Besides stressing
the need for more fluid and context-sensitive approaches, the importance of
androgyny in the gender system of the Andes was highlighted (Isbell 1997, 259),
and the primacy of duality in Andean gender relations was questioned (Spedding
1997). Recent work has also explored the impact of modernity and some of the
complex ways that gender is entwined with class, ethnicity and the nation state
(Canessa 2005b; Stephenson 1999)[A.P.4].
Drawing on some of these approaches to gender, this essay is based on extended
research in Kalankira (Stobart 2006b), a rural community of Quechua-speaking
herders and agriculturalists of ayllu Macha[A.P.5], northern Potos (Figure 1).
2
PERU
BOLIVIA
BRAZIL
CHILE
ARGENTINA
PARAGUAY
La Paz
Cusco
Oruro
Cochabamba
Sucre
Potos
Qaqachaka
Kalankira
Tarabuco
Puno
PACIFIC
OCEAN
L
a
k
e
T
itic
a
c
a
Lake
Poopo
A
N
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E
S
M
O
U
N
T
A
I
N
S
Sacaca
Macha
Northern Potos region
Calcha
Toracari
Betanzos
Charazani
Amarete
Figure 1 Map of Bolivia and places mentioned in the text.
Ethnomusicology Forum 69
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I question the status of male instrumental performance in relation to womens singing
and explore how gender shapes performance practices and is linked to broader ideas
about fertility. Musical discourse and practices lead us away from narrowly conceived
gender dichotomies to examine shifting gender relations, androgyny, notions of
marked and unmarked gender, and the possibility of multiple genders or degrees of
gendering.
Overview of Musical Instruments and Gender in the Andes
The rural communities of the high Andes are home to a rich and diverse array of
musical instruments whose forms have roots in both prehispanic and European
models. Panpipes, notched flutes and double-headed drums are widespread in the
prehispanic archaeological record, whilst guitars and certain forms of duct flutes were
among the most influential sixteenth-century introductions from Europe (see
Bellenger 1980; dHarcourt and dHarcourt 1925; Stevenson 1968, 24392; Stobart
1996b). However, for the most part it would be a mistake to view todays instruments
as simply European or indigenous vestiges, since they represent the fruits of
entangled histories whose meanings are by no means strictly musical. The range of
instruments is astonishing: in some rural communities as many as 12 different types
of instruments were played through the course of the year, each connected with a
particular period within the agricultural cycle (Buechler 1980, 3589). Music is of
immense importance and, with a few exceptions, musical instruments are the
exclusive realm of men.
3
In most highland areas women have tended to be the
principal singers and creators of song poetry. In recent developments, however, men
have often supplanted women as the principal singers in internationally touring or
diasporic Andean neo-folklore ensembles, and it is also now common to encounter
women playing Andean instruments in more urban contexts.
4
As in several other cultures, the main exception to the rule of male exclusivity in
rural instrumental performance is the drum (see, for example, Ziegler 1990, 87;
Doubleday 1999). Over the past few decades, in southern Peru and a few other
regions, people have continued to document examples of women using a small
indigenous-style double-headed drum (tinya) to accompany their own singing.
Female associations with the drum also remain evident in certain saint-day feasts in
northern Potos, Bolivia.
5
The prehispanic roots of an association between women and drums are evident
from the accounts of early Spanish chroniclers and in many drawings in Guaman
Pomas Nueva coronica y buen gobierno (c.1615). One drawing from this collection,
which represents the musical practices of the Qullasuyu area[A.P.6] (part of todays
southern Peru and Bolivia) depicts two women playing a large drum hung in a frame
(Guaman Poma 1936 [c.1615], 324) (Figure 2). In this drawing, the women
accompany a group of men playing wind instruments that resemble the jantarka, a
two-tone pipe played today in the Potos region of Bolivia. In what might seem a
strange historical gender reversal, the jantarka is one of very few wind instruments
70 H. Stobart
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Figure 2 Fiesta of the Collasuyos showing a woman accompanying mens wind
instruments with a drum. Guaman Poma (1936 [c.1615], 324).
Ethnomusicology Forum 71
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played by women in the southern Andes today.
6
The role of playing the drum to
accompany wind ensembles is now almost exclusively a male preserve.
Since the European invasion (1532), strummed guitar-type instruments seem to
have largely displaced the role of the drum in the (rhythmic) accompaniment of
song.
7
These various forms of guitar are played by men, and they have also become
the courtship instruments par excellence, replacing the role of the pincollo (pinkullu)
flute, which, judging from colonial accounts, was formerly the principal courtship
instrument.
8
Available evidence suggests that, with the exception of drums, men have
historically been the primary instrumentalists. Male adoption of some instruments
may, in part, reflect an association with European military practices and gender
conventions. For example, the construction and performance techniques of both the
large bass drum (bombo) and snare drum (tambora), which accompany tarka flute
ensembles in many parts of Southern Peru and Bolivia, are directly based on
European military models.
The Music of a Rural Community
The hamlet of Upper Kalankira (Pata Cayanguera) in northern Potos is home to
some 60 souls who live principally from potato and barley cultivation and herding
llamas and sheep. In addition, most men periodically work as migrant labourers.
9
Music making in Kalankira is highly participatory and largely restricted to major
festivals and specific saint-day feasts from the Catholic calendar, as well as fairs and
weddings. Most men play a minimum of four types of musical instrument including
various forms of seasonally alternated flute, panpipes, charango and guitar[A.P.7],
some of which carry explicitly phallic associations. Like the women, they are most
musically active during the period of courtship.
The principal division of the musical year is between the dry winter months
(AprilOctober) and the rainy growing season (NovemberMarch); the alternation
of instruments and genres is linked respectively with the feasts of All Saints
(1 November) and Carnival (February/March). During the rainy season men play
pinkillu duct flutes and guitars (kitarra), which are brightly painted with images of
growing plants. These instruments are said to attract the rain and help the crops to
grow. In the dry winter months they are replaced by the mandolin-like charango, jula-
jula panpipes (in May) and siku panpipes (in AugustOctober), which are all claimed
to send away the clouds and attract frosts (Stobart 2006b).
As in most other parts of the Bolivian highlands, music-making in Kalankira tends
to be highly dynamic, and primarily concerned with animating situations or bringing
allegria (merriment). Accordingly, musical sound was often referred to with the
Spanish loan word animu, which for the case of Kalankira, is best understood as
animation, energy or life-force. Animu is the animating quality of living things or
people, which may be expressed as light, heat or movement, as well as sound (Stobart
72 H. Stobart
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2000, 3140; 2006b, 2730, 2347). To shape animu in music is in many respects
viewed as equivalent to shaping life.
An Engendered World
In Kalankira, human-like emotions and gendered attributes are often projected onto
the landscape and cosmos, so that certain rocky mountain peaks are connected with
male sexual potency, or soft, fertile and enclosed fields are linked with female
reproductivity. For example, during the asintu ceremony in the month of August the
(female) fields are ritually married to the (male) mountain in preparation for
planting (Stobart 2006b, 11824).
10
As also made explicit in ritual libations and
invocations during daily coca chewing, the sun (tata santisimu holiest father)
and moon (mama santisima holiest mother) are respectively gendered as male and
female.
11
The female gendered moon is closely connected with controlling the flow of
water out of the earth, as made explicit during lunar eclipses (Stobart 2006b, 39), and
with the growth of crops. Harvests are seen as likely to fail if crops are planted or
harvested during an inappropriate phase of the moon.
The Kalankiras regularly place and orientate themselves in the landscape in
gendered ways, especially in ceremonial contexts. For example, the double tents
(ramara) erected during weddings are orientated so that the groom sits on the east
side (on a stone), whereas the bride is seated to the west (directly on the earth). More
generally, when attending ceremonies or visiting friends, as a man I am always
directed to sit on a rock, raised bench or platform of some kind, usually covered with
a cloth. Meanwhile local women almost invariably sit directly on the ground*even
when it is quite damp (Figure 3).
12
I have been struck by how readily people connected the seating of women on the
ground with the female earth deity, pachamama (earth mother)*or wirjin
(virgin), as she is more commonly known in rural northern Potos
13
*especially
in light of her ambivalent associations (see Harris 2000, 208). This identification was
further highlighted by Primativo Nina[A.P.8], a university Quechua teacher who was
brought up in a rural community near Betanzos (Potos), who told me how his
mother rubs her breasts and invokes the pachamama when wishing to ensure she has
enough food to serve a large number of people. This reflects a more general view,
widespread in the rural Andes, that womanhood is linked with a disposition for
safeguarding, caring for and sharing out resources, as well as transforming them into
offspring or life-giving substances. Under womens care, stored-up resources, such as
corn beer, money or food crops, are often seen to accumulate or grow (puquy),
reflecting womens associations with fertility. Thus, men hand money to women for
safekeeping (a practice also common in urban contexts), and place harvested crops
and provisions in family storage huts controlled by women.
Also relevant is the way men usually eat using a spoon, whereas rural women tend
to eat with their hands. I had witnessed this on many occasions and assumed that
priority was given to men because of a shortage of spoons, but when I questioned a
Ethnomusicology Forum 73
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woman about this practice she pointed out that food eaten directly from ones fingers
tasted better. In some respects, then, instruments, tools or other mediatory objects
may be seen to obstruct or impede certain intimate forms of understanding,
interaction and creative powers (including relations between a mother and a child).
Gendered seating conventions and womens unmediated contact with the earth
lead us to question the contexts and degree to which womens exclusion from
instrumental performance should be interpreted in terms of male power and female
subordination.
A Gendered Musical Division of Labour?
Although instruments might be seen to be imbued with particular forms of power
and dominated by men, it is notable that their performance is often explicitly directed
to provoking women to sing. For example, I was discouraged from fast virtuosic
strumming on the charango*a feature of urban technique*as this would obstruct
and distract from the girls singing. While the charango is a clear marker of male
identity (as discussed below), there is a strong sense that it ultimately serves,
accompanies and creates a public performance context for young womens voices. In
Figure 3 Men sit on rocks; women directly on the earth. Family of Pedro Chura and
Santosa Suyo during the ritual marking of the female llama herd (Carnival 1991). Note
the paired earthenware vessels of corn beer.
74 H. Stobart
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this division of labour, where both gendered aspects are critical, the mans charango is
necessarily subservient to womens singing, even if also acting as a snare in the
courtship process. Similarly, it is striking how pinkillu flutes, which are by no means
restricted to men of courtship age, not only provoke and support womens voices but
also resemble their timbral quality. Is part of the aim of male instrumental
performance, in these rural contexts, to invoke the quality and power of womens
voices? This leads us to question whether the knowledge and skills involved in
instrumental performance are viewed as superior to those required for singing.
Although men do periodically sing, they usually know a limited repertoire of verses
and defer to womens greater knowledge and skill. Primativo Nina related womens
role as the key singers and composers of song poetry to their lively and sharp
intellectual abilities and memory (cf. Canessa 2005a, 145). Men, by comparison, he
characterises as lacking such ability for creativity and novelty, needing to rely on
repeating old and well worn song texts of the ancestors (grandfathers):
We men just copy what the grandfathers say, [whereas] the woman begins to create
her own words according to how she lives; to what is happening, to what is lacking,
to what is not good, to the things that are going on. This is very easy [for her] and
she fits it to the melody and rhythm, all this. For us men it is difficult. This has
basically been proved. Lets see, Ill give you money, ten thousand euros. I need a
composition from the men and after this I invite a woman. The woman does it
before the man, and in less time. What is more, she remembers it too! The man
takes forever to develop something, whereas the woman does it at once. In the next
fiesta now she has another song, not the same as before. The man continues with
the same song.
14
(Primativo Nina, interview, November 2007)[A.P.9]
Such statements hardly suggest that womens musical contribution is somehow
subordinate to mens role as the instrumentalists.
In a discussion about why women do not play instruments, Gregorio Mamani
(originally from Tomaykuri, a neighbouring community to Kalankira), explained that
to play a musical instrument such as the charango would affect a womans ability to
share out resources. He went on to explain that the act of blowing a wind instrument
(such as a panpipe or pinkillu flute) involves the consumption or release of
accumulated energies, and is thus inappropriate for women*again arguing that it
would hamper them from making resources go round.
Violent taboos against women touching or seeing mens musical instruments do
not seem to have been recorded in the high Andes.
15
Indeed, in the northern Potos
region of highland Bolivia it is not uncommon to see women safeguarding or
carrying instruments during feasts while, for example, the male player becomes
intoxicated or participates in ritual fighting.
16
But, significantly, certain ideas and
reported taboos against womens instrumental performance are couched in terms of
local understandings of gendered bodily processes, fertility, productive activities, and
values concerning womanhood.
Rosalia Martnez observes that among the Tarabuco (Chuquisaca, Bolivia) women
are discouraged from playing the pinkillu flute, as doing so would be likely to cause
Ethnomusicology Forum 75
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menstrual problems (Beaudet and Mart nez 1994, 14). In Tomaycuri (ayllu Macha,
northern Potos) people have stated that were a woman to play the charango it would
cause the fields to dry up (Cassandra Torrico, personal communication). My own
hosts in Kalankira had not heard of this belief but did state that strumming the
charango would be likely to lead to the loss of a womans ability to weave. In
Kalankira, people were bemused by the idea that a woman might consider playing
one of the mens musical instruments. They asserted categorically that women sing
and men play instruments and clearly saw such musical activities as an important
means through which to express gender identity. Nonetheless, I was told that if a
pregnant woman were to play the pinkillu it could lead to the loss of the child.
Such statements reinforce the exclusion of women from most forms of
instrumental performance, thereby highlighting the male domination of this medium
of expression. However, it is significant that this gendered boundary marking is often
represented in terms of bodily and agricultural processes, highlighting their close
connection with musical performance and stressing the importance of a gendered
division of labour in both music-making and other productive activities.
Gendered patterns of behaviour are also underscored by local discourse about
womens vulnerability and the dangers of travel and towns. Similarly, it was often
stated that playing musical instruments requires immense strength and courage,
eased by the consumption of large quantities of alcohol*with which instrumentalists
are always supplied during feasts. This was seen as unsuitable for women, a view
attributed in part to womens perceived lack of physical and psychic strength. For
example, my host related womens lack of psychic strength to the local belief that they
have only three animus, whereas men have six (a difference which he asserted can be
seen from their respective shadows).
Gender Transformation and the Seasons
In a vast range of family and community activities, people fulfil gendered tasks which
reflect local ideas about productive and reproductive processes. Within these
activities, the practice of keeping male and female llamas in separate herds is a
particularly influential gender model for the Kalankiras. Women and children look
after the female and young llamas, returning the herd to a corral beside the familys
homestead each evening. By contrast, the adult male and castrated llamas are left to
roam freely on the mountain peaks, overseen occasionally by the men. Periodically
the male herd is rounded up and loaded with sacks, to carry products from the fields
or to embark on long journeys to exchange highland products for maize from the
valleys. Around Christmas or New Year the two herds are brought together for the
annual mating ceremony timed to ensure that llamas are born during the rainy season
(NovemberMarch) when pasture is plentiful. This model*females and young
connected with reproduction and nurturing centred on the homestead, as opposed to
males associated with movement away from the productive centre of the commu-
76 H. Stobart
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nity*is largely reproduced in gendered human behaviour. Women tend to stay
behind in the productive heart of the community, rarely travelling to the towns.
17
Several agricultural, ceremonial and musical calendars detailing the seasonal
alternation of musical instruments have been published by Aymara intellectuals and
cultural organisations. These typically classify the rainy growing season (October
March) as feminine and the cold dry winter months (AprilSeptember) as masculine
(e.g. Jayma 1989, 33). The ethnographic justification for this gender distinction is not
made explicit (and such categorisation has the danger of essentialism), but from my
own research in Kalankira I have a sense that feminine and masculine aspects are
indeed respectively more marked during these seasons. It is helpful here to reflect on
Billie-Jean Isbells suggestion that androgyny is a fundamental category in the gender
system of the Andes. She argues that, in the dynamic play of gender, the masculine or
feminine may be marked or emphasised above the other at a particular moment, but
the (androgynous) whole is always the broader field of reference (Isbell 1997, 259).
The transformation of the earth and of the shifting focus of productive activities
through the course of the year may perhaps be approached in a similar way.
In certain respects the feminine aspect of life is more marked during the rainy
growing season. At this time, people (men and women alike) tend to stay in the
community and dedicate themselves to the reproduction of the fields and herds. Even
the main footpaths are blocked with stones, to protect the fields from animals, and
the period is characterised by images of enclosed spaces, suggesting gestation and the
nurturing of new life. These images, which carry strong feminine associations, are
both invoked in song (Stobart 2006b, 12022) and in the main dance of the season
called qhata, which involves men and women holding hands with crossed arms in a
plaited ring (ibid., 229). In many respects, this imagery is reminiscent of the female
llama herd which is dedicated to the reproduction of the herd and which permanently
remains in the proximity of the community, safeguarded and corralled each evening
by the women.
By contrast, the male aspect tends to be more marked during the dry, winter
months, when many men travel to the towns to participate in migrant labour or make
trading journeys to the valleys*traditionally with the male llama herd.
18
This has
resonances with the main dance of the period, the wayli or linku linku. It is
performed exclusively by men to the music of julajula panpipes or the charango, and
is closely linked with travel, pilgrimage and ritual fighting (Stobart 2006b, 1567).
Men dance independently in a long single file, and their meandering form powerfully
evokes notions of independence, movement and travel, suggestive of the male llama
herd and values connected with manhood.
In Kalankira, the invocation of gender in the symbolic alternation of the seasons is
made especially explicit in the final rites of Carnival (FebruaryMarch), which are
claimed to mark the transition from the rainy growing season to the dry winter
months of the harvest season. Immediately before the final despatch (kacharpaya) of
Carnival, salaki songs, celebrating the arrival of the new food crops of the year, are
sung and danced by young people to the charango. On the occasions I have witnessed
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this, they danced in couples, arm in arm, in a line (comparsa) controlled by the
cabecilla (or mayura), a young man who carried a whip and stinging nettle, playfully
disciplining any couples who failed to dance energetically or fell out of line.
Immediately after the final jatun kacharpaya (great despatch), people formed a long
snaking wayli formation (to charango music), invoking the mens dance of the dry
season, but this time disciplined by a young woman (imilla wawa). Thus, with the
transition from the rains to the dry season, the role of dance master transformed
from male to female, while the associations of the dances themselves shifted
respectively from female to male.
Gender transformation was also enacted in this final rite of Carnival through cross-
dressing. During the final phase of the salaki dancing, two young men dressed in
womens clothing and spoke in high falsetto voices, humorously miming copulation
with their male dance partners or any other men who came near. Two young women
also dressed in male clothing. They and their cross-dressed male counterparts were
referred to as qiwa, a term expressing mediated gender or androgyny (half-man,
half-woman)*as discussed in more detail below. At the final climax of the ceremony
these actors leapt into a gulley, reappearing a few minutes later in their usual gender-
specific clothing. The symbolic transformation from the rains to the dry season was
thus enacted through invocation of gender reversal, alongside shifts in dance forms,
musical instrumentation and genres (Stobart 2006b, 26063).
Wind and Water
The role of men as the players of wind instruments is underscored by local discourse
concerning the engendering power of breath and wind. Wind is especially associated
with the month of August, when the (female) earth (wirjin) is said to be simi kichasqa
(mouth open). This allusion to the need for offerings in preparation for the rainy
growing season carries obvious sexual implications. Even the blowing of the wind
outdoors was sometimes directly related to male sexual arousal.
This was brought home to me on a still windless day when I helped my host and
his mother to winnow barley, a task for which wind is crucial to separate the chaff
from the grains. The stillness, it was explained, was because the wind, personified as
Wintura[A.P.10] (Sp. ventura venture), was asleep in the gullies. In order to excite
and arouse the wind, my host chanted the name of Winturas consort, Lazy Lady
(Dona Flojita), whom he compared to light dangling threads on the earpieces of a
local chullu woollen hat. It was as if Lazy Ladys stillness would be stirred by the
lustful breathing of the wind, impelling her to move or dance. The sexual
implications of blowing or breathing are evident from a range of other contexts.
For example, powerful magical rocks are found on many local mountain peaks, and
they are considered crucial to animal reproduction. These rocks are called samiri,
literally one who gives breath (Abercrombie 1998, 520), and I was told that on full-
moon nights they wander around emitting the bellowing noises of sexually excited
bulls. Female animals are sometimes said to be engendered by breath alone.
78 H. Stobart
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Denise Arnold notes that, in nearby Qaqachaka, an analogy is drawn between the
blow-tube (phukuna) used to kindle fires and the penis, where the breath of a man
ignites the embers of female sexuality or stirs up her inner fluidity (1988, 126). This
suggests that the generation of new life is seen to require gender mediation, where
male wind or breath*and the movement this involves*must be balanced with
female fluidity. Arnold also observes that excessive masculinity, in the form of cold
dry breath, cannot generate new life (ibid., 126). This may explain why an impotent
man is sometimes called qina ullu (qina penis), referring to a notched flute with a
somewhat breathy sound (Primativo Nina, personal communication). In rural
contexts the qinas performance (like that of other similarly constructed notched
flutes) is almost exclusively restricted to the dry winter months.
19
Like panpipes,
which are also usually restricted to the dry winter months, these breathy sounding
instruments are said to blow the clouds away, causing clear skies and frosts. Seasonal
understandings of gender and fertility clearly come into play here, and it is notable
that wind and rain are described as enemies. This suggests that whilst breath is
necessary to initiate the flow of regenerative fluids, excessive breath and coldness (as
associated with the dry winter months) are antithetic to reproduction.
By contrast, pinkillu duct flutes are played during the rainy season (Figure 4). These
are claimed to summon the rains and promote crop growth, and they possess their
own internal sound-producing mechanism (Stobart 1996b, 473; 2006b, 240). Their
phallic associations are also sometimes made extremely explicit, as evident from
mens banter and womens complaints about being indecently poked with them.
During the ceremonies at the November feast of All Saints in ayllu Chayantaqa, men
imitate mating llamas by holding pinkillu flutes between their legs, while chasing
women and making hoarse mating noises (Stobart 2006b, 223). As a Quechua
language scholar, Primativo Nina even argues that the name pinkillu may be glossed
as little penis: he says pinku is widely used colloquially to mean penis (although I
have not heard this usage) while (i)llu acts as a diminutive suffix. Pinkillu players
often improve the sound of their instruments by dampening them with water or corn
beer, which suggests*as noted above by Arnold*the need to balance (male) breath
and (female) fluidity for the generation of new life.
Clearly men are not somehow more or less male according to the season, or the
instruments being played. Rather, each instrument carries sets of seasonal associa-
tions, linked with particular forms of production, which in turn carry gendered
associations. Gender becomes a symbolic discourse used to express particular forms
of production. However, despite strong feminine associations with springs, lakes and
fluid-containing vessels, evident from Kalankiras ritual language and local myth,
scholars working in other parts of the Andes have sometimes identified the feminine
with dryness, and the masculine with semen and wetness. In Kalankira, people appeal
to God for rain, suggesting masculine associations (see also Meisch 2002, 231),
whereas for the case of Amarete (northern Bolivia) Rosing argues that rain is
certainly feminine, whilst also noting that water can carry both female and male
associations (1997, 82). Rather than linking the feminine with fluidity per se, for the
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Figure 4 Pinkillu utes (foreground: paired machu tara and qiwa sizes). Played in the
cemetery during the feast of Todos Santos (All Saints) 1986, near Toracari, Charka
province, Northern Potos.
80 H. Stobart
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case of Kalankira at least, there is a sense that it might be more appropriate to
associate it with accumulated fluidity, stressing the notion of containment. By
contrast the masculine seems to be more connected with movement, as also evident
from associations with wind and the llama husbandry practices described above.
The sense that mens pinkillu flutes are seen to draw song from the mouths of
women, in a kind of gendered division of labour, is evident from the following
explanation by my hosts brother.
When pinkillus are played it becomes cloudy . . . Cloud is from womens sing-
ing . . . Men play the pinkillu flute, women sing from the clouds . . . the water
comes out of the clouds. Then rain from the clouds goes to the inner sea (lamar), it
goes to the sirinus [water-spirits].
20
Gender interaction is made explicit in this musico-hydraulic cycle, in which water
rises to the clouds, later to fall as rain, initially motivated*it would seem*by the
action of men. It is also significant that the water returns to lamar, the inner sea,
which carries strong feminine associations, and that it is the (female) moon which
ensures that water does not flow out of this inner sea and engulf the earth, leading to
the destruction of life. As in other examples above, it is the female role to accumulate
and transform life-giving substances or energies, and to ensure their appropriate
distribution.
Interlocking Instruments
The division of the scale between paired panpipes, where two players are required to
play a melody using interlocking or hocket technique, is widespread in the central
and southern Andes (Figure 5). Some researchers have reported a gendered
distinction between these paired instruments, where one is classified as male and
the other as female (Baumann 1996, 31; Grebe-Vicuna 1980, 254). It is unclear
whether musical intercourse in these contexts is conceived in terms of sexual relations
or gender reciprocity, or whether gender simply acts as one (of several) means of
expressing dual relations. My own consultants consistently related paired panpipes to
older and younger brothers, thus stressing the pairs diachronic relationship, rather
than synchronic gender opposition.
21
My hosts also described the pairing of panpipes with the Quechua word yanantin,
which Tristan Platt suggests may be strictly glossed as helper and helped united as a
unit (1986, 245). This word yanantin is widely used to refer to paired objects or
phenomena which belong together, such as eyes, legs or shoes, where one part would
be incomplete (chulla) without the other. This concept is often stressed in
ceremonies through serving corn beer from paired turu wasus (bull cups), one for
each hand; a yoke of oxen is carved in each cup (Figure 6). Thus, whilst the pairing of
panpipes and concept of yanantin should undoubtedly be partly understood in terms
of gender reciprocity, the reduction of such complex cultural principles to gender and
sexuality would deny much of their hermeneutic richness. It is also evident, as noted
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above, that gender and age group may be used interchangeably as means of expressing
symbolic relations or social hierarchy (Rosing 1997, 83).
I was made particularly aware of the dangers of reducing the categorisation of
instruments to male-female polarities during my research into pinkillu flutes, the
Figure 5 Paired julajula panpipes (four-tube yiya, three-tube arka). Feast of San
Francisco 1986, Toracari, Charka province, Northern Potos.
82 H. Stobart
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principal wind instrument of the rainy season. Exceptionally, these six-finger-hole
wooden duct flutes, which closely resemble a consort of European renaissance
recorders (in form but not sound), are played using partial interlocking technique
Figure 6 Paired turu wasus (bull cups) of corn beer, one for each hand, served by Pedro
Chura. Feast of Carnival 1996, Kalankira, near Macha, Northern Potos.
Ethnomusicology Forum 83
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between paired sizes termed qiwa and tara (Figure 7). The qiwa size is tuned a fifth
above its tara partner; these terms referring to the respective timbre produced by each
instrument on the termination note of each piece. The qiwa sound, produced by
covering all except the uppermost finger hole, is weak, thin and clear in timbre, and
higher in pitch. By contrast, the tara sound, produced by covering the two uppermost
holes, is rich, vibrant and highly valued aesthetically (Stobart 1996a; 2006b, 211).
Aware of the male-female categorisation of paired panpipes documented by other
researchers in the Andes, I enquired which size pinkillu was considered male and
which female. The answers I received were typically evasive or contradictory, leading
me to realise that this line of questioning was inappropriate.
Later I came to realise that tara and qiwa were approached in terms of degrees of
genderedness, rather than as male/female polarities. This was made explicit when
people associated the vibrant tara sound with the mating noises of llamas, but glossed
qiwa as half-man, half-woman (khuskan qhari, khuskan warmi). Although the word
qiwa is used widely in towns to mean homosexual (Sp. maricon), people in
Kalankira used it to convey the idea of mediated gender or androgyny. For example,
the cross-dressed dancers in the final rites of Carnival (discussed above) were termed
qiwa, as were men who were in some way effeminate, or women with masculine
qualities. As I have noted elsewhere, qiwa also carries a range of negative associations,
often evoking notions of social dissonance. A mean or miserly person, awkwardly
shaped objects that do not fit properly, or even a charango that cannot be tuned
properly are likely to be referred to as qiwa (Stobart 1996a; 2006a, 21617).
Tara and
Qiwa pair
Tara and
Qiwa pair
Machu tara
111 cm
Qiwa, Malta
72 cm
Tara
Qiwita, Uita
54cm
37cm
D
A
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a
Relative pitches
(on tara fingering 1,2)
Figure 7 A pinkillu consort showing paired tara and qiwa instruments, with their
relative sizes and pitches.
84 H. Stobart
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The notion of qiwa, in the context of local concepts of fertility, also challenges
Western notions of biological fact. For example, I was told that the castrated
llamas*termed qiwa*were particularly important in helping the herds to multiply.
Similarly, other ethnographers working in the Andes have documented androgyny as
identified by waris, a term used to refer to reproductive beings and animals (Isbell
1997, 258). This suggests that local concepts of fertility or regeneration may need to
be understood within broader notions of recirculation and transformation. For
example, it was explained to me that the castrated qiwa llamas grow fat and are
valuable to the renewal of the herds in different ways from the virile, but skinny, stud
animals. This also seems to point to ways of interpreting the role of the qiwa sound
in the pinkillu consort. Its sound is thin and mean, but its role in invoking
production is clearly critical, suggesting associations with both the accumulation of
regenerative substances and with the mediation of polarities or opposing concepts.
The Charango and Music of Courtship
During almost any feast or Sunday market in rural northern Potos you are sure to
encounter groups of young people*well lubricated with cane alcohol or corn beer*
singing and dancing through the streets or carousing in makeshift bars. The singing is
usually led by the girls, and accompanied by a boy strumming a charango (during the
dry season) or a larger form of guitar decorated with plant imagery (during the
rains).
22
Stringed instruments, especially the charango, are of crucial importance to
courtship, and as Olivia Harris has also observed for the neighbouring Laymis, a
young man must acquire an instrument and demonstrate his musical abilities if he is
to be taken seriously by a girl (1980, 73). Indeed, as Thomas Turino has reported for
the case of southern Peru, the very act of carrying a charango signals that the boy has
entered the sexual arena (1983, 82), although aspirations to learn to play often begin
at an earlier age (Figure 8).
The charango is itself thought to have the power to enchant and seduce women,
powers that players sometimes go to considerable lengths to enhance. For example,
the rattle (casbabel) from the tail of a living rattlesnake is sometimes glued inside the
instruments sound box. This is supposed to make girls find the player irresistible, or
to cause the strings of any rivals instrument to snap. In another widely recounted
tradition, men magically tune their instruments at remote springs, waterfalls or rocks
inhabited by water spirits. Players visit these dangerous, but powerful, enchanted
musical beings known as sirinu (or sirina) late at night, leaving offerings alongside
their instruments, whose sound will then become enchantingly beautiful and
irresistibly attractive to girls.
23
These various traditions highlight the ferocious competition between young men
to acquire the intimate and privileged role of accompanist to desired female singers.
In local stories charango players are likened to predators, especially the fox or condor,
who use their instruments to steal away young women, and women are called their
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prey (partridge). The following well-known lines, sung principally by young women,
highlight this discourse of amorous theft.
Theres greening maize, greening apples
How daring are you? Ill steal you now
Just to steal, steal you, marry you always
If not married Ill just get together with you
24
Initial amorous interest during feasts or markets often leads to sexual rendezvous
between couples on the hillsides. When a well-dressed young man carrying a charango
is spotted heading up towards the mountain pastures where girls tend the herds, his
amorous intentions are immediately assumed. Olivia Harris has described such
sexual encounters as a chase where the girl runs away and will not allow herself to be
caught without a struggle (1980, 77). In Kalankira the couple usually reaches some
form of agreement with the parents before starting to live together with the mans
family, but the ceremonial departure of the girl is presented as a form of plunder,
suwanaku (stealing away). The boy and a group of male friends arrive at the girls
home, strumming charangos, and (following a number of ceremonial preparations)
literally run away with her. At weddings, which usually occur in the dry season, the
charango is again omnipresent. In addition to the numerous charangos brought to
Figure 8 Two young charango players. Kalankira, near Macha, Northern Potos (1992).
86 H. Stobart
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accompany wedding songs, it is common for a single official player to accompany
the couple almost constantly throughout the three days of festivities.
After cohabitation or marriage, womens continued singing is subject to
considerable restrictions, especially in respect to courtship songs (takis).
25
However,
it should be stressed that in certain other regions the songs of married women are
viewed as crucial to the reproduction of domestic animals and crops (see Arnold and
Yapita 1998; Arnold, Jimenez, and Yapita 1991). Although mens charango playing
becomes more infrequent after marriage, it is quite common to see married men
accompany unmarried girls in courtship genres, leading to abundant stories of
extramarital affairs and disputes. Turino reports that, in southern Peru, married men
who continue to play the charango are referred to as bohemio (drunkard, woman-
chaser, neer do well), and are subject to a strong negative judgement. He goes on to
highlight how the charangos ambiguous power to attract and seduce can be used for
good (leading to marriage) or ill (extra-marital affairs) (Turino 1983, 95).
Indeed, the discourse surrounding the charango is rich with ambiguity. On the one
hand this instrument can be interpreted as a crucial tool in the process of socialising
and bringing together young people to establish a man-woman unit at the heart of
the idealised household. On the other hand, its seductive powers are strongly
associated with the wild and potentially destructive forces of the landscape which
represent a threat to social stability and especially to the family unit. Yet, as noted
above, complementarity is still to be found at the heart of charango performance since
mens playing technique focuses on encouraging and sustaining womens song. A
young man once apologised to me after I had just recorded him singing a song to his
own charango accompaniment: without a girls voice the song was no use (mana
servinchu) he exclaimed, conveying the sense that such songs required two gendered
parts in order to be complete. The performance was evidently chulla, missing its
partner: the two parts were integral to the whole. In this way the incomplete nature
of a solo performance mirrors the incompleteness of a marriageable young man
without a woman.
Conclusion
As in many other parts of the world, it is clear that the men of this Andean
community dominate instrumental performance, and that playing instruments is key
to the construction and expression of manhood. Singing is also a key expression of
womanhood*especially among young unmarried women. From this perspective,
gender might seem to be expressed by what people do*how they play out their
lives*rather than some abstract notion of intrinsic maleness or femaleness (Canessa
1997, 236). Conversely, musical performance may also be seen powerfully to embody
specific gender attributes, for example the intimate connections between breath and
male sexuality in the case of wind instruments, or the association of womens singing
with creative linguistic abilities and memory or with the release of accumulated water.
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While musical performance is in large part the realm of young people and often
explicitly geared towards finding a marriage partner, the young women of Kalankira
were critically aware of the restrictions that this goal would impose upon their
musical expression. Indeed the song verses composed by young unmarried women
often poetically juxtapose the sensual pleasures girls derive from music-making and
dance with the tears and isolation of womens married life (Stobart 2006a, 11115).
This accords with Isbells characterisation of adolescence as a time of female
supremacy in sex, intellect and power (1997, 280).
Male power predominates in wider discourse and stories (such as the male
charango player as the predator and the female singer as his prey). But in courtship
song performance there is a sense that the male instrumentalist is somehow
subservient to the female singers. Paradoxically, it is precisely the mans musical
stimulation and support that enables women to dominate the symbolic discourse of
such songs (see Harris 2000[A.P.11], 1823). Is this subservience or manipulation? It
is evident that the relationships between musical performance, gender and power
shift through the life cycle, as well as varying according to specific personalities and
real-life situations. However, there is little sense that womens role as singers is seen as
subordinate to mens role as instrumentalists. Rather, it is the intellectual capacities
necessary for singing and for the creation and remembering of song poetry which are
stressed. Womens unsuitability as instrumentalists is related to their fertility,
productive roles and ability to accumulate, transform and share out resources; these
powers and skills might be jeopardised by playing instruments. In addition, the
sensory intimacy associated with singing, eating with fingers or sitting directly on the
earth, leads male practices such as playing musical instruments, sitting on rocks or
eating with a spoon to appear more mediated, perhaps even impeding certain types of
understanding, experience and creative interactions.
Perhaps womens roles only appear subordinate if particular types of abilities,
understandings and knowledge are undervalued. Even though the people of Kalankira
might celebrate a womans abilities as a singer, few outsiders are likely to understand
or appreciate the sophistication or creativity of her Quechua poetry or the aesthetics
of her vocal sound. Instead, what outsiders are likely to notice or stress is her inability
to speak Spanish or to read and write*skills more common among men.
26
The man-woman (qhariwarmi/chachawarmi) conjugal unit has been widely
identified as a primary model for gender relations in the rural Andes, highlighting
the idea of a complementary division of labour. But we discover that gender
reciprocity or opposition is often downplayed in the context of instrumental
performance. For example, paired jula jula panpipes were compared to older and
younger brothers, and contrasted timbres of paired pinkillu flutes were classified in
terms of degrees of genderedness: tara as highly gendered, and qiwa as mediated
gender (half-male, half-female). This latter form of categorisation provides a new
angle on gender relations and would seem to be of particular importance to gender
studies in the Andes and beyond. Furthermore, as if to confound assumed biological
88 H. Stobart
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universals, the mediated gender associations of qiwa*a word also applied to
castrated animals*were held to be especially fertile.
It is evident from the above discussion that the music of this Andean community is
deeply integrated into a complex web of local understandings and practices relating
to identity, fertility, production and reproduction, which encompass socio-cultural,
agricultural and cosmological dimensions. Any attempt to disassociate gender roles
or ideas about fertility from these broader contexts, whose surface we have only
begun to scratch, would be perilous and would probably reveal no more than the
ethnographers own cultural baggage. Perhaps rather than trying to find a place for
music within existing gender categories, we should instead approach music as a
window onto local constructions of gender and fertility. Indeed, it is one that in many
respects provides us with a privileged view.
What also needs stressing is the distinction between symbolic or idealised models,
found in much ritual and musical performance, and actual lived (gender) relations. It
is hardly surprising that the lived and idealised (or symbolic) do not always accord
with one another. Indeed, the very presence of symbolic or idealised models often
emphasises the fact that such things are hard to achieve in the real world. For
example, the widespread use of interlocking technique in southern and central
Andean rural panpipe performance, where a melody is shared between paired
instruments and players, has often been interpreted in terms of complementarity as a
core Andean cultural value. Whilst this may indeed be an important ideal, its
widespread presence in performance practice does not necessarily mean that it reflects
lived social relations. Indeed, we might sometimes do better to interpret such
practices in terms of an acceptance of the difficulty*or even impossibility*of
achieving balanced and equitable social relations. After all, manifestations of musical
harmony often mask symbolic violence and hegemony (Attali 1985, 19; Bourdieu
1977, 196; Stobart 2006b, 142).
Acknowledgements
I am grateful to the British Academy for funding eldwork in the Andes, to Primitivo
Nina, and to the friendship and hospitality of the people of Kalankira. My special
thanks go to Veronica Doubleday who originally asked me to write a much shorter
version of this essay as a case study. Her enthusiasm, patience and immense input as
an editor are especially appreciated.
Notes
[1] For example, symbolic gender equality is sometimes expressed through the use of the tara
wasu (double cup) during weddings. This consists of paired cups (for the bride and groom
respectively) connected by a tube which ensures that liquid always regains equilibrium
between the paired cups.
[2] The ayllu is an indigenous Andean unit of socio-political organisation, which refers to a
group of people who are typically linked through ethnicity, kinship and territory.
Ethnomusicology Forum 89
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[3] For details of musical instruments played in the Bolivian Andes, see Baumann 1982; Cavour
1994; and Stobart 1998. For examples of wind instruments exceptionally played by women,
see Baumann 1982; Cavour 1994, 18084; Martinez 1992, 2930; 1994, 5174.
[4] Over the past few decades in larger Bolivian towns it has become commonplace for young,
educated, middle-class women to play folkloric and rural-style instruments. For the case of
female urban folkloric groups, see Pekkola 1996.
[5] In a performance evidently intended to symbolically invoke fertility as a gendered division of
labour, the feast sponsors sister and her husband (tullqa) sound their respective instruments
outside the church door at the end of mass. While the man sounds a cane trumpet with a
calabash bell (pululu), the sound resembling the bellowing of an ox, his wife periodically
beats a double-headed drum (quchana) (see Calvo and Sa nchez 1991, 20; Sa nchez 1989, 35).
[6] Women play the jantarka pipes alongside the mens saripalka utes and drums during the
feast of Carnival in the village of Calcha. The two tones of the jantarka are typically pitched
around a minor third apart (Baumann 1982; Cavour 1994, 18084; Martinez 2000, 24;
Stobart 1988).
[7] In his Quechua/Spanish dictionary of 1608, Gonza lez Holgu n glosses the Quechua tinya
with forms of both drums (atabal, aduse) and guitars (bihuela, guitarra), suggesting their
interchangability in the early colonial period as rhythmic accompaniment to song (Gonza lez
Holgun 1989 [1608], 343).
[8] The Quechua and Aymara term pincollo (which has many variant forms, such as pinkullu,
pinkillu, pinkuyllu) is today applied to many forms of vertical ute, especially duct utes and
often carries explicit phallic associations (Parejo-Coudert 2001; Stobart 2001; 2006b, 223).
[9] For example, they work in towns of the region as builders labourers or porters, or in coca
production in the tropical Chapare region, or on tobacco plantations in Argentina.
[10] Certain mountains are, however, considered female. For example, two important mountains
of the region, Condor Naasa and Janina, are respectively considered male and female, and a
married couple, qhariwarmi (man-woman). According to Rosing, large mountains which
stand out tend to be classied as masculine (1997, 81).
[11] Rosing observes that among the Bolivian Kallawaya (Charazani region) the morning*as the
sun rises*is seen to be masculine, whereas the afternoon and evening are feminine. Similarly
the future, upper, and right are linked with the masculine, while the past, lower, and left are
connected with the feminine (Rosing 1997, 81).
[12] This is a widespread practice; see for example Weismantel 1988, 179 for the case of Ecuador.
My hosts were quick to dismiss the idea that sitting directly on the ground reects womens
subordination, although in racialised contexts this can clearly be the case, as reported by
Canessa 2005a, 144.
[13] Paradoxically, the Spanish-derived wirjin (virgin) is more common among Quechua
speaking rural communities, whereas the Quechua/Aymara pachamama is heard more
frequently in towns (see Howard-Malverde 1995).
[14] Al hombre le cuesta, al hombre a veces copiamos lo que dijo el abuelo asi, la mujer empieza a
crear su propia palabra de acuerdo a su vivencia, de lo que esta pasando, de lo que falta, lo que
no esta bien, lo que algo esta pasando. Es mas facil y lo acomoda el tono, el ritmo, todo eso. Al
hombre nos cuesta. Eso se ha comprobado basicamente. A ver, digale, a ver te voy a pagar plata,
diez mil euros! Necesito un composicion de los hombres y despues de eso convoque a la mujer. La
mujer primero va a hacer que el hombre, en menos tiempo ademas. Y se acuerda ademas. El
hombre es el que desarolla todo el tiempo, la mujer por un tiempo. La siguente esta ya esta otra
cancon, no es lo mismo. El hombre sigue con la misma cancon.
[15] Compare this, for instance, with Gregors 1985 account of threatened gang rape among the
Amazonian Mehinaku.
[16] Primativo Nina suggests that women commonly carry mens instruments (in the Northern
Potos region) in order to ensure that they are not used to seduce other women. However, in
90 H. Stobart
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the Betanzos region (Potos) where he was raised, he observes that women are not permitted
to touch or step over a mans charango (personal communication).
[17] This contrasts with the community of Sullkata (Potos department, Bolivia), discussed by
Van Vleet, where many girls travel to the cities to work as domestics and, in comparison to
boys, are more closely associated with commodities, the urban sphere, and displays of
fashion (2005, 122).
[18] Trading journeys to the valleys with the male llama herd have become more infrequent in
Kalankira over the past decade. For example, my own host family have not made this journey
again since I travelled with them in 1991.
[19] However, exceptionally, in areas of Southern Potos the qina is frequently linked with
Carnival.
[20] Pinkilluswan phuyus tiyan . . . Phuyu warmi takimanta . . . Qhari pinkilluta tukashan, warmi
phuyumanta takishan, warmi phuyumanta takishan . . . yaku phuyumanta lluqsin. Chanta
para phuyumanta lamarman rin, sirinusman rin.
[21] Olivia Harris (2000, 177) also notes that the nearby Laymis described the two moieties of
their ethnic group (ayllu Laymi) in terms of older and younger brothers, rather than as a
man and woman.
[22] These larger rainy season guitars include the kitarra, talachi and qunquta (khonkhota). For
further details see: Calvo and Sa nchez 1991; Cavour 1994, 27073; Laime 2002; Lye`vre 1990;
Sa nchez 1989; Solomon 1997, 11427; Stobart 1987, 1994. In central and northern parts of
the northern Potos region it has become common, since the mid-1980s, for the dry season
charango and rainy season qunquta to be played together.
[23] For more details of sirena/sirinu traditions see Stobart 2006a and, for example, Allen 1988,
50; Arnold and Yapita 1998; Harris 2000, 190; Solomon 1997, 23670; Turino 1983.
[24] Hay siway sarita siway manzanita/Ima kapaz kanman suwayki kunitan/Suwaylla suwayki,
siempre casarayki/Mana casaraspa tantallapis kayki.
[25] With reference to courtship genres (especially takis), these restrictions sometimes amounted
to prohibitions. For instance, despite often enthusing about the beauty of his wifes voice
during their courting days, my host rejected my suggestion that it would be nice to hear her
sing. His uncharacteristically harsh and unequivocal response, made in the presence of his
wife, was an explicit prohibition against her singing for me.
[26] From this external perspective*which may also be adopted by rural men with aspirations to
migrate to towns*women who speak little Spanish become racially subordinated as
ignorant or uncivilised (see also Canessa 2005a, 146).
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