THE MUSIC OF THE AYMARÁS
This Indian music is interesting and I was fortunate in being able to
have some preserved in musical form for repetition. In the remains of
the vast Indian nation shattered by Pizarro, the Empire of the Incas,
every man and boy, almost from the age when he can walk, is an adept on
their simple reed flutes and Pandean pipes; the drum he merely thumps.
They are a musical race; there are songs and airs for each season, for
the planting, for the harvest, for the valorous deeds of the vanished
caciques, for their gods of old to whom a new significance has been
given by a pious Church, and the long-drawn chants by means of which, at
their yearly gatherings, they pass down the history of their race. As
there is no written language, there is no written music; it is handed
down from generation to generation by the ear alone.
Their national instruments are but three in number: the flute--a reed
about eighteen inches in length, with six holes, and a square slit at
the end for a mouthpiece, played after the manner of a clarionet; the
Pandean pipes--a series of seven reed tubes that, in the large ones, are
four feet in length, and in the smaller ones scarcely as many inches;
and the drum. The last is the universal instrument of all peoples; there
are few races so low in the scale of human society as not to possess it.
The Pandean pipes are in a double row, and at the time of preparation
for the Indiads, or the intertribal wars, the outer series is filled
with cañassa, the native liquor, and the player receives the benefit of
the intoxicating fumes without the delay incidental to drinking from the
bottle. Only the men play, the women and girls never; their part is in
the chanting and in the hand-clapping that measures the weird rhythm,
although before marriage the girls are allowed to join in the dances and
the drinking that goes with them.
In the cities and villages there are the constant beating of the drums
and sound of the flutes. Every community or group has its special
festival days. Now it is a wedding or a christening with the hosts of
"compadres"--godfathers--or the Church day of some obscure saint
celebrated by the mission padre, then a village fiesta or house-raising,
and from day to day the sounds of barbaric strains stretch in an endless
chain throughout the year. In riding over the high plains in the Indian
country one is seldom beyond the sound of the thin flutes. Every llama
and sheep herder passes the monotonous hours with his playing. In the
still air it carries for miles and softens in the long distances with a
weird pleasing effect. The strain is short, but one bar, and for hours
it is repeated with unvarying exactness.
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Even in the bitter cold and snow of the trails of the high passes the
presence of the Indians is announced long before their appearance by the
echoing flutes. They plod along in single file, muffled in their
ponchos, driving the llamas or burros before them; one of them supplies
the music, but as the air is thin in these high altitudes and breath is
precious, they relieve each other at frequent intervals. There is no
marked cadence to the music; it is a weary minor air unlike the sturdy
measures we associate with marching music, but it undoubtedly stimulates
its audience in some mysterious way with an inspiring effect.
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But it is in the great fiestas that one has the best opportunity of
hearing the Indian music. I was waiting in the Indian town of Achicachi
for the arrival of my mule to carry me over the pass to the village of
Sorata. The fiesta was for the birthday of the town and in honor of the
ancient gods of the place; at daybreak the Indians gathered within its
walls from miles.
With the light of dawn the streets began filling with dancing bands of
Indians in their gaudy festival attire. They were there in thousands.
The plaza was a weaving mass of brilliant ponchos and feathers; Indians
with contorted masks, and jaguar-skins trailing from their shoulders,
performed dances in the cramped spaces cleared for their benefit; silver
and gold bullion decorations glinted in the clear atmosphere along with
cheap tinsel and tin mirrors; and above all rose the sound of the
Pandean pipes, the flutes, and the drums, filling the air with a
confused discordant roar.
Often several groups of Indians would band together and in single file
follow the pipes and drums in a little jerky, dancing step. Sometimes
they went through simple evolutions, figure eights and circles, or
divided and came together in the pattern of the "grand march" of the
East Side balls. The players would dance as well, and occasionally some
inspired individual would halt the line while he whirled dizzily around
in one spot to his own music. The others would watch these performances
with approval, chanting in a high wailing key and clapping their hands
in accompaniment.
With the darkness of the night the dancing and playing in the plaza
became less and less. The groups withdrew to their 'dobe huts and
squatted on the mud floors. A tallow dip or a smoky wick floating in a
dish of grease furnished what light there was. The wind from Lake
Titicaca blew fresh and keen, but in the lurid gloom of their squalid
huts the air was foul with the crowded Aymarás. The chanting took the
place of the dance, and the flutes and pipes led in the air; the drums
were silent. With the finish of each verse or section the note ended in
a prolonged maudlin wail that continued until it became the opening note
of the succeeding stanza.
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This song is also popular with the Cholos--the half-breeds. They hate
the whites, and sing it with either Spanish or Aymará words of foul
denunciation. In Sorata one time they marched past below my window,
singing it for my benefit. Between verses they cursed the "gringos" in
vulgar Spanish.
It was in this same village of Sorata that I was present at its greatest
Indian fiesta. It is the fiesta of the harvest and generally lasts for
an entire week. The mission padre pronounces it the feast of Todos
Santos, but to the Indians that is a matter of indifference. The maize
and the "choque" (potatoes) have been gathered, and the "chalona"
(frozen mutton) prepared for the ensuing season; the year has ended; it
is the fiesta of the harvest. They go to confession on the morning of
the first day, but the remainder is spent in their own customs.
The little parties organized themselves after the early-morning visit to
the 'dobe church and paraded with their odd trotting dance-steps through
the lanes of the town. There was the usual collection of thin drums and
shrill flutes, with here and there the mellower tone of a Pandean pipe.
One band stood out conspicuously in the crowding throngs. This band had
been carefully trained by its host, who did not play himself, but with a
proud dignity directed its evolutions. A huge Aymará headed the party;
he played Pandean pipes with tubes four feet in length. A great drum
swung by a rawhide thong from his shoulders. Its shell was from a log,
the core of which had been burned out. Following him was the line of
Indians in a reducing scale, each with a smaller set of pipes and a
smaller drum.
Each Indian contributed but a few notes to the air; the range of the
pipe was limited. The drums never rested; they marked the sonorous
rhythm of the measures. The training was perfect; there was never a
break in the succession of notes; the effect was much like that of a
calliope, but more mellowed and pleasing. They played but two airs, and
these seemed to be reserved for that peculiar form of orchestra.
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This they would play for hours before changing to the other, as follows:
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White squares of cloth hung from the shoulders of the players like the
capes of the old Crusaders, and with their brilliant new ponchos and the
bright green of the parrot-feather decorations they made a most
picturesque effect. The weird and barbaric music was rather attractive
at first as it rose from the distance and swelled in volume while the
procession came nearer, but after eight or ten hours it palled, and the
prospect of a week more of it was not cheerful. But an outbreak in the
Indian town of Illabaya, ten miles off over the mountains, brought it to
a close much earlier.
To Mrs. Arthur T. Jackson, of Boston, the wife of a prominent
rubber-dealer in Bolivia, who was in Sorata at the time, the only white
woman within hundreds of miles, I am indebted for the transcript of the
Indian music. An accomplished musician, she was much interested in the
subject, and at different times during her months on the Indian
frontiers she had gathered and noted the airs as she heard them in the
fiestas.