We, the founders of this institution, are a group of five research masters students at Maastricht University who for the past two months have each undertaken a research project. While each project is quite distinct in character, they are thematically bound by an examination into musical cultures. Our starting point was exploring how different musical actors translate aspects of complex historical cultures in order to create new cultures of performance and listening for the twenty-first century. We each sought, within the parameters of our own personal interests, to explore what musical practices consist in; how they are contingent upon social and historical contexts; what assumptions may underlie contemporary attempts to reconstruct musical cultures from the past; how these assumptions may manifest themselves materially. What you see beyond these doors is the culmination of these efforts; a unified exposition of our individual projects. The name of our museum is an amalgamation of the practice of Historically Informed Performance (HIP) and Christopher Small’s concept of “Musicking” (1988). In Small’s view, music is not to be conceived as a static object, but rather as a dynamic process. Small substitutes the noun ‘music’ with a verb ‘to music’ to indicate that music cannot be simply located in any score, instrument or text, but can be thought of as any human activity relating to music performance that takes place in temporal and spatial dimensions. We do not intend to present this collection of “old ideas” as definitive or closed, but as a discursive insight into a “novel”, if not strictly new, self-reflexive manner of observing and practising the presentation of research on the matter. The aim of the collection is not to conclude, but to stimulate and develop discussion into the future, from the past. The Museum of Historically Informed Musicking therefore proudly presents an interconnected collection of artefacts, activities, relationships and locations involved in historically informed musicking; a fusion of the past and present.

The musicians who play these instruments are visually absent from these pictures, if you wish to read more about the hands that pluck the strings

continue to Chilean Musicians.

Return to Artefacts and Instruments

The Instruments
Click on the sound-bar below each picture to hear the instrument.

Charango

Quena

The collective practice of traditional song broke into urban chilean society like an unexpected efficacy, renovating identity relations, constituting itself in a vital space of coexistence and friction of different narratives and representations of the world of popular culture (Alvarado, 2004, p.53)

Welcome to the exhibit "instruments as (hi)story-tellers, here you can follow the ways in which instrument have played a part in telling the (hi)story of Chilean musical and historical culture. You can also listen to examples of a number of the instruments on the left.

The introduction of andean, traditional folk and other latin american instruments to Chilean music is often attributed to the efforts of the musicians Violeta Parra and Victor Jara.

Although many of the instruments utilised by these artists have their origins in countries outside of Chile - the Charango (Bolivia), Bombo Legeüro (Argentina), Tiple (Venezuala) - they nonetheless came to represent a distinctly Chilean musical style and message, which appealed not only to the past of the meztizo culture and patria of Chile but to that of other Latin American nations.

Many of the lyrics of their songs reflected what they saw as societal problems, with some of their songs, such as La Carta "The Letter" by Violeta Parra, acting as "historical testimony" to events such as the agrarian uprisings in the 1950s.

Introduction

50s-60s

I began to play because at that time the instruments were banned by the dictatorship, so it was a reply from the youth of this time that we weren’t few in number, we would get together and play the music of Illapu, Quila[Quilapayún], Inti [Inti-Illimani]. It was a beautiful time but dangerous.

Taita, charanguista in duo Taita-Churi interview with Lucy, March 2014.

Instruments as (hi)story-tellers

1973

Censorship

The Nueva Canción Chilena music movement developed through the 60s and 70s when it became closely associated with and in part patronised by the government of Salvador Allende.

Following the military coup d'etat in 1973 cultural manifestations promoting or connected with “popular unity” were banned, including performances of Nueva Canción artists and the associated use of the traditional instruments.
As one witness Eduardo Carrasco, member of Quilapayún, reported “In the first weeks of the [coup] ... all the best-known folklorists were called to a meeting to be informed that certain folkloric instruments such as the quena and the charango were [now] prohibited.”

This pushed both the musical movement and the instruments associated to the margins and led to the exile and murder of some of the artists involved, Victor Jara (1932-1973) being one of them.

“Barroco Andino opened the way for the reappearance of Andean music in Chile that spearheaded nueva canción's successor, canto nuevo”. (Morris, 2000, p. 152).

In 1974, the group Barroco Andino was formed by conservatory trained musician Jaime Soto Léon and a group of other young muscians previously involved with the Nueva Canción movement. They drew their repertoire from the works of canonical composers Vivaldi, Bach and Handel. However, the instrumentation was unique, they replaced the traditionally used instruments such as the guitar and mandolin for the instruments typically used in La Nueva Canción.

Adaptation

70s

80s-90s

Integration

In the late 80s new artists, born under the military dictarorship began to emerge. Some of these artists, such as

Los Prisoneros contested and outwardly rejected the "folk" model of producing sociallyaware music. Los Prisoneros moved away from more “recognisable” sounds of popular protest, based in the folk tradition and in

stead drew from the popular Nueva Ola or new wave which was growing as a style in Chile.

However in songs which resonate with themes such as “memory”, “poverty” and the edges of Chilean society, the Charango is at the fore, as in Tren al Sur ,“Train to the South” (1983), one of their biggest hits. The song catalogues a trip to a rural area in the south of Chile, on one of the only train lines still in use by the 1980s.

The history of Chilean music is very rich and everyday it is evolving further, in the way they mix the classic with Andean highland instruments and also to mix them ... for listeners all around the world. Listening to these instruments makes me think of many things, but in general [I think of] the evolution thathas happened these past years.

Taita, musician in duo Taita-Churi interview with Lucy, March 2014.

The use of the instruments continues, from recorded loops in rap music performance, to the proliferation of communities of musicians and instrumentalists on the internet. The instruments surface in innovative and suprising ways. As a recent article concerning Chilean rapper Ana Tijoux stated, "When was the last time you heard pan-pipes on a rap song?" (Escubedo, 2014)

Evolution

90s - Present

Some conclusions...

The title of this paragraph is intentionally non-commital. As this diagram has suggested, the use of these instruments is a process which is in action - evolving, adapting, integrating - therefore conclusions are for the purposes of reflecting on these collected thoughts.

The (hi)story of the instruments concerned in Chilean music has been presented along a line headed by arrows pointing left and right. A line strictly pointing left or right could not express the "direction" of this story. The influences of every generation, "movement", action or inaction flows back and forth along the line.

Indeed although at times the "iconoclastic" influence of Los Prisioneros is more visible in the work of contemporary performers than that of the "traditional" Quilapayún or vis-a-vis, neither is lost.

Although the times around them change and the influences meander like the ebb and flow of the tide on a shore, the instruments remain as a physical constant in the musicking experiences considered here. These instruments hold a primacy in the Chilean imagination as story-tellers, linking the musician, listener or other actor involved back along this non-linear chain. When the cords of the Charango are strummed, they hear not only the sound of the Andes or Bolivia, but also the events of 1973 or a wave of solidarity with the groups which performed during that time.

A consideration of the use of these instruments is central to an understanding of historically informed musicking in Chilean music, both past and present. The use of the instruments was intitially bound with not only forging a sense of panamerican compaderazgo (companionship) but also with finding new and old roots for Chilean music. In searching for these roots, they advertedly sewed the seeds for the future of their history. In this way, historically informed musicking in this setting (re)creates a past for the future.