British Forum For Ethnomusicology

British Forum for Ethnomusicology
Siren Songs: Ritual and Revolution in the Peruvian Andes

Author(s): Jonathan Ritter
Source: British Journal of Ethnomusicology, Vol. 11, No. 1, Red Ritual: Ritual Music and
Communism (2002), pp. 9-42
Published by: British Forum for Ethnomusicology
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JONATHANRITTER
Siren songs: ritual and revolution in
the Peruvian Andes
This article examines the radicalization of carnival practices and music in the
Fajardo province of Ayacucho, Peru, at the outset of the Shining Path guerrilla
war in 1980. The simultaneous rise of formal song contests and Shining Path
organizing in Fajardo cannot be separated in this history as both were key
elements in a popular regional discourse of modernization and development.
Often interpretedas transparentstatements of Maoist propaganda, or;conversely,
as organic expressions of Andean peasant rebelliousness, revolutionary song
performances are instead positioned here as complex sites where local attitudes
to politics and ideology were created, debated and transformed.
In May 1980 the "Peruvian Communist Party-Shining Path" declared war on

the Peruvian state with an act of political theatre, burning ballot boxes in a small
Andean town on the eve of the country's first democratic elections in more than
a decade. In the euphoria of a seemingly successful return to democracy after
twelve years of military dictatorship,the tiny Maoist party's declaration of war in
a remote comer of Ayacucho was dismissed as irrelevant or missed entirely by
most political observers. Even within Ayacucho, the incident took four days to
make the local paper and was quickly forgotten in the wash of electoral cover-
age. In the bloody decade that followed, the Shining Path (Sendero Luminoso, or
just Sendero in its Spanish shorthand)would become increasingly hard to ignore.
The guerrillas' "theatre"of war plunged the nation literally and figuratively into
darkness as electric pylons and the bodies of alleged "reactionaries"were blown
up in signature acts of sabotage and terror.In response, the Peruvian government
launched a counterinsurgency campaign in late 1982 that quickly ranked as one
of the hemisphere's most repressive in those violent years. By the time Shining
Path leader Abimael Guzmainwas captured in 1992, 30,000 people or more had
been killed or "disappeared",hundreds of thousands displaced, and the demo-
cratic system the guerrillasfought so hard to overthrowusurped, ironically, by an
autocratic president who was intent on stopping them.
Music figures importantly in any account of Peruvian life, and in reading the
voluminous literature on the Shining Path-dubbed senderology by Peruvian
pundits-one gets the impression that the war was fought on musical grounds as
fiercely as it was in the mountains. Perhaps in an attempt to retain some of the
BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGYVOL. 11/i 2002 pp. 9-42

10 BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL.1 1/i 2002
JUNIN
H\Huanta
cUzco
La Mar
HUANCAVELICA
QHuaanga
Sure
Lucanas ...g~
.......
AREQUIPA
Figure1 Mapof AyacuchoDepartment,Peru,and its provinces

in 1980
revolutionaries' flair for the theatrical, colourful song quotes litter journalists'
and scholars' accounts of the violence, from guerrilla "hymns"and "anthems"to
protest huaynos' and laments for lost children. Curiously, however, given the
energy and intellectual rigour of the debates among scholars attemptingto under-
stand senderista ideology in the context of Andean culture(s), the ubiquitous
song quotes are never interrogated as important texts in and of themselves.
Rather,the poetic codes and culturalcontexts of wartime music in these analyses
are flattened to a supposedly transparent,political instrumentality. Prominent
Peruvian anthropologist Carlos IvainDegregori has made a similar observation
recently, commenting that the study of Sendero's use of music remains to be
done and that a "secret enjoyment of the music" may have been hidden in revo-
lutionary song performances (1998:157). The admission is an important one,
I Thehuaynois themostcommonandwidespreadmusicalgenreperformedthroughout
the
PeruvianAndes.

RITTER Siren songs: ritual and revolution in the Peruvian Andes 11
though it hardly begins to address the complex situatedness of each of these

songs, their performance contexts and histories, the modes and processes of their
cultural production, and the agency of songwriters, listeners and performers to
interpretwhat was being heard.
The history of carnival ritual performances in one region of Ayacucho at the
advent of the war suggests that these are important elements for deepening our
understanding not only of the revolutionary songs, but also of the successes and
failures of the Shining Path itself. In what follows, I trace the development of
carnival traditions and a musical genre called pumpin in the Fajardo province
(see Figure 1), one of the first zones of senderista activity in central Ayacucho
in the years leading up to and during the insurgency. The simultaneous rise of
concursos - formalized song contests - with Shining Path organizing in Fajardo
cannot be separated in this history as both were key elements in a regional dis-
course of modernization and development, a belief in what Degregori has called
the "myth of progress" (1986). Consequently, the radicalization of carnival
performances in Fajardo has much to tell us about local attitudes to the growth
and ultimate defeat of the Shining Path, while at the same time entering into a
wider discourse on the potential power of music and ritual performances as
agents for social change.
Drawing connections between music, ritual,power and politics in this instance
is not mere academic exercise. The power of revolutionary song performances
and the deadly consequences that followed make them sensitive and difficult
topics of conversation even today, and the fieldwork, timing and intentions
behind this study thus merit some comment. My research in Ayacucho, carried
out between January 2000 and March 2002, centred on contemporary musical
performance as a "site of memory" (Nora 1984) in the aftermathof the years of
political violence. While I was interested primarily in the current social dynam-
ics of commemorative performances, the strength of the "testimonial" tradition
in pumpin-in comparison with traditional musics in other areas of Ayacucho
that were equally affected by the violence-demanded further inquiry. The late
1970s and early 1980s seemed the most promising era to investigate given the
social and musical upheavals that marked life in the province at that time. Those
very reasons, I soon discovered, also made research on that epoch the most
difficult. Although many people in Fajardowere enthusiastic about my project in
general, they were at first reluctant to discuss carnival events from those years,
and particularly avoided mentioning any role that the Shining Path may have
played in the development of canciones testimoniales ("testimonial songs") and
canciones con contenido social ("songs with social content").2 The reluctance
was understandable: for much of the 1980s, the mere possession of a cassette
tape containing "subversive material" was sufficient justification for imprison-
ment, torture or assassination at the hands of the army.
2 Interestingly,
thetermcanciondeprotesta("protestsong")is reservedin Fajardofor songs
thatexpresslysupportedthe ShiningPath."Protestsongs"are thusofficiallyforbiddenin
pumpinconteststoday,thoughsongsprotestinggovernmentactionsor the yearsof violence
("songswithsocialcontent"or"testimonial
songs")areroutinelyperformed.

12 BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL.11/i 2002
During the course of my fieldwork two factors changed that made this
research possible. First was the "discovery" by several friends in the province,
nearly a year after my arrival,of cassette tapes made at carnival song contests in
the late 1970s and early 1980s. Given the explicit nature of these recordings -
songs entitled, for instance, "People's War" and "A Revolutionary Situation",
accompanied by wildly cheering crowds - their gift was a tremendous act of
trust, not only that I would ensure the anonymity and thus personal safety of the
donors, but also in my ability to contextualize and interpretthe performances on
these recordings in a manner consistent with how they are heard and remem-
bered by people in Fajardo today. This article is an attempt at just that. Second,
my research coincided with a period of tremendous political upheaval in Peru,
including the flight of then-president Alberto Fujimori into exile in the autumn
of 2000, a return to democratic rule with national elections in April and June
2001, and the formation of a Truth Commission to investigate the political vio-
lence of 1980-2000. One consequence of these events has been an increasingly
open and liberal public discourse about the years of violence. Emerging testimo-
nios about those years (and, for that matter, accounts of musical history) are of
course contingent phenomena, produced by social actors with particularinterests
and memories at specific moments, and consequently need to be interpretedand
understood within such contexts. Nonetheless, by early 2002 the ubiquity of the
war as a theme in daily conversations allowed me to corroborate stories and
information about the early history of song contests in Fajardoin a way that was
unthinkablejust two years earlier.These conversations and interviews confirmed
for me the central role that song contests and the celebration of carnival had
played in the history of political violence in Fajardo. Far from being "timeless
customs" in "isolated" villages, carnival ritual practices emerge here as active
social spaces where individuals and communities made and continue to make
statements about their prospects and places in the world.
Ritualand resistance
At first glance most Andean rituals are not obvious sites of subaltern resistance
or political action. Indeed, life in the central provinces of Ayacucho is punctu-
ated by an annual cycle of agricultural, pastoral and communal rituals that
generally affirm, rather than challenge, existing religious, social and political
structures. As throughout much of the Andes, local religious beliefs and prac-
tices in Ayacucho are a syncretic blend of Catholic and pre-Hispanic elements,
and the ritual calendar reflects both influences. Agricultural and pastoral rites
interweave offerings to the local apus or wamanis (mountain deities) with
prayers to protector saints such as San Marcos or the Virgin Mary, and the value
and efficacy of these rituals is predicated on a belief in their perceived time-
lessness and unchanging character. Village patron saint fiestas also juxtapose
Catholic imagery and indigenous symbols while maintaining local social and
political hierarchies through a complex system of festival sponsorship, reward-
ing power and prestige to those who have the economic means to undertake
such responsibilities. As such, Andean rituals have often been interpreted in

classically structuralist terms as condensed symbols of local religious and

cultural practices (e.g. Bastien 1978; Isbell 1985).
Nonetheless, recent scholarship on music and ritual in the Andes has shown
that these traditions can also be dynamic spaces that reflect and actively take part
in social change.3 Numerous studies have explored the relationship between ritual
performanceand social processes as diverse as economic modernization (Romero
1990, 2001), urban migration (Turino 1993), political violence (Vasquez and
Vergara 1988) and the reworking of notions of gender, identity and national
belonging (Abercrombie 1992; CQinepaKoch 1998; Mendoza 2000; Solomon
1994). As articulated by Zoila Mendoza, these works emphasize the "transfor-
mative" power of Andean rituals, positioning ritual performance as a "realm of
experience in which central concerns of the everyday world are addressed and
reworked, and in which 'arguments' are made through metaphor, metonym, and
otherrelated tropes"(2000:31). The symbolic and formal language of ritual action
- including musical, choreographic, poetic and dramaturgicalmodes - heightens
the speaking power of ritual statements and endows them with a cultural force
lacking in everyday speech. This force makes them potentially powerful sites for
addressing not only "concerns of the everyday world", as Mendoza suggests, but
also non-everyday, extraordinary moments of radical social change, political
activism and cultural resistance.
Although ritual's capacity for resistance has been increasingly studied by
scholars since the 1980s, resistance itself has become a point of contention
among critics who question its analytic importance and widespread application.
Citing works in cultural studies and allied disciplines, these critics have pointed
out its tendency to collapse phenomena as distinct as watching television and
guerrilla warfare into a singular, bland oppositionality - a "savage leveling",
notes Michael Brown, "thatdiminishes, ratherthan intensifies, our sensitivity to
injustice" (1996:730). A second critique argues that locating resistance every-
where and at all times is analytically useless and can also blind us to other
aspects of cultural and social action - the inevitable crosscurrents of accommo-
dation and consensus, or the role of creativity and imagination, for example -
that inform the complex and often contradictory histories and events we study.
These concerns are certainly germane in the context of a polarized and violent
political confrontation, where the high stakes of political resistance demand
special consideration, but also threaten to overwhelm or trivialize the more
subtle cultural acts that permeate and give additional meanings to the conflict.
In this sense, it is not a theoretical overemphasis on resistance per se that
should concern us, but rather the need for a more rigorous, discriminating and
ethnographically informed approach to how resistance operates and is used to
create meaning. Refocusing on ritual resituates this debate in helpful ways, cen-
tring our attention on a signifying practice located in the interstices between
political and cultural realms. Indeed, in this article I take the position that it is
3 The work of June Nash (1970) and Michael Taussig (1980) established an important
precedent for the study of ritual and social change, though their Marxist orientations differ
substantiallyfrom the theoreticalbasis of the more recent literaturesurveyed here.

precisely in ritual's liminal spaces, in its interplay of poetics and politics, and
through its unfolding in performance that concerns about the limits and nature
of resistance may be most fruitfully explored (see also Dirk 1994; Comaroff
and Comaroff 1993).
Given a global tendency for social inversion, political satire and outright
protest, carnival and other rites of reversal are a recurrenttheme in the literature
on ritual and resistance and an apt subject for the above debate. Culturaltheorists
and social historians have questioned whether carnival's celebrated subversion
constitutes a real threat to the established order (Bakhtin 1984) or is simply a
necessary and temporary diversion - a "permissible ruptureof hegemony" and a
"contained popular blow-off' (Eagleton 1981:148). Most works strike a balance
between these positions, as Nicholas Dirks has noted, positing that carnival is
"dangerous, semiotically demystifying, and culturally disrespectful" even as it
"confirms authority [and] renews social relations" (1994:486; also Stallybrass
and White 1986). Some have even argued that it is this ambiguity, the possibility
of slippage from one to the other, from ritual to revolution - but never its
guarantee - that gives carnival its edge and social perspicacity (Fiske 1989).
Recent studies in ethnomusicology have explored how the act of imagination
carnival generates may, in certain circumstances, be sufficient to catalyse
movements for enduring social or political change, with consequences that have
included the fall of the Duvalier dictatorship in Haiti (Averill 1994) and revised
popular meanings for a failed coup attempt in Trinidad (Birth 1994). These
works demonstrate that resistance cannot be simply assumed as some sort of
carnival essence, but rather a tendency that must be put in motion - performed-
by social actors in opportune contexts.
Carnival in Ayacucho at the outset of insurgency and throughout the years
of violence offers a compelling example of how the "democratic education" and
"festive questioning" of ritual performance can, in the words of Ayacuchan
anthropologist Abilio Vergara, "attempt a sort of upside-down world ... [that]
seems to anticipate a broader protagonism" (1986:3). The anticipation of that
"broader protagonism" was surely on the mind of Shining Path militants and
song composers in the late 1970s and early 1980s, and it would be easy to pin
the radicalization of carnival in Fajardo solely on their efforts. But a quick jump
from theories of "festive questioning" to the revolutionary propaganda of
1980-82 in Fajardostill ignores the specific histories, internal debates, economic
and political factors and performance issues - in short, the "how" of resistance -
that played a crucial role in this transformation.Echoing and responding to Gage
Averill's call for more localized ethnographic work on carnival and resistance in
diverse locales (1994:219), my interest here is the mechanics of the slippage
from ritual to revolution: how does it happen? Or more to the point, how did it
happen in the province of Victor Fajardo?
To answer that question, I begin by exploring several key carnival ritual
practices in Fajardo that predate the years of violence, nearly all of which con-
tinue today. The intent here is not to draw simple "before" and "after"portraits
of carnival with the Shining Path intervention as a dividing line, but rather to
situate within a deeper history both the continuities and the ruptures in carnival

practices that were engendered by song contests and revolutionary organizing

in the late 1970s. This diachronic view emphasizes the long-term social and
cultural force of carnival in local lives that made the changes in how it was
celebrated such important indicators of, and agents in, the radical transforma-
tion of the province.
Carnivalin Fajardo
Carnival is the most widespread and sustained public ritual in the Ayacucho
region - a heterogeneous mix of song, dance, street theatre and religious ritual
activity that takes place in the days and weeks before Lent. Consecutive
Thursdays prior to the central carnival weekend are marked by Catholic masses
and private parties in honour of compadre and comadre4 relationships, and
killes - strings of fruit, cheeses, vegetables and other gifts - are offered to reli-
gious icons in the churches. In the streets, secular carnival fever builds in
anticipation of Carnival Tuesday, the eve of Ash Wednesday. People of all ages,
liberally decorated with paper streamers and talc powder, parade in discrete
units called comparsas, consisting of loosely organized groups of musicians,
dancers and costumed pranksters. In the city, song and skit performances by
these groups typically contain the most politically subversive material during
carnival. The yunza is the principal activity of the younger generation, an activ-
ity appropriatedfrom the neighbouring MantaroValley in the 1960s. Also called
a cortamonte or sachakuchuy (literally, "tree-cutting"in Spanish and Quechua),
the yunza is a round dance circling a tree loaded with gifts, which revellers take
turns chopping at until it falls. Though united by the festive atmosphere and a
freeing of many social norms, participation at all of these events still tends to
adhere along class and ethnic lines, and specific carnival practices can vary
widely in the region. Choice of music is one of the primary identity markers,
dividing indigenous styles utilizing native flutes (kenas), drums (tinyas) and an
extremely high, pinched vocal aesthetic by female singers, from a mestizo style,
which incorporates nylon string guitars, mandolin, accordion, violin and a more
relaxed vocal timbre.5
Catholic rituals, comparsas and yunzas are also important carnival events in
Fajardo province, though they are accompanied musically with pumpin, a dis-
tinctive genre of music local to the area. Performed on guitarswith twelve or more
steel strings and a capo usually at the seventh or eighth fret, accompanied by small
four- to eight-stringed charangos and usually sung by female voices in the high,
4 Compadreand comadreare male and femaleterms,respectively,in the fictive kinship

relationshipestablishedbetweena child'sparentsandgodparentsuponthe child'sbaptism.
5 The borderbetweenthese musicalstyles is increasinglyporous,thoughthe distinction
betweenthemremainsculturallyimportant in Ayacuchoforpeoplewho self-identifyas mes-
tizoandas indigenous.A thirdstyleof carnivalmusiccouldbe addedto thislist today,which
incorporateselectronicinstrumentationandLatinpercussionintothemestizostyledescribed
here,andis primarilyfoundatyunzasin the city of Ayacucho.Carnivalpracticesandtradi-
tionsin Ayacuchoaresummarized in moreextensiveformby VasquezandVergara(1988)
andUlfe (2001).

16 BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL. 11/i 2002
San p1 0o
Jose.
as
Llusita
Quil a
lTi
i ancaraylla
lot
Platea Ccayanto
swantu
Huancapi
Erusco
Contour heights in metres
Figure2 Mapof centralFajardoprovincewherepumpinis performed
strident indigenous style, pumpin's instrumentationand overall aesthetic differs

substantially from other Ayacuchan carnival musics.6 Rhythmically, pumpin's
heavy downbeat and duple meter also contrast with the typical carnaval, which
is markedby a triple, rolling feel. These differences are recognized throughoutthe
Ayacuchandepartmentand, as a result,pumpin is markedand marketedseparately
from other carnival genres and serves as an index of Fajardinoidentity and pride
within the region.
Like many rural provinces in Ayacucho, Fajardo celebrates a number of car-
nival events outside of the primarily urban-derived festivities described above.
Carnival coincides with the height of the growing season in the high Andes, and
festivities are thus frequently tied to pastoral and agricultural rites of fertility,
which themselves are often avenues for courtship activities (Vasquez and Vergara
1988). This is certainly the case in the districts of Colca, Cayara, Huancaraylla
and Huancapi, the region in Fajardo with which pumpin is most associated
(Figure 2). Here, the celebration of carnival may begin in a sporadic fashion as
6 Reasonsforthedistinctivenatureof pumpinaredifficultto pinpoint.Oralhistoryin Fajardo

holdsthatthegenre'soriginslie in labourmigrationto thecoastin thelatenineteenth
century,
andtherearecertain,limitedsimilaritiesbetweenpumpinandthemusicalstylesof commu-
guitaris anomalous,however,and
nitiesthatlie alongthatroute.The use of a twelve-string
moreresearchis neededfordefinitiveanswers.

Figure3 Jose Palominoplays guitarduringan aporque de mafz in Colca, Fajardo

province,Ayacucho,January2001
early as December for the mid-season tilling of corn fields, known as sara qall-
may in Quechua, or aporque de maiz in Spanish, and culminate in a pilgrimage
up one of the local mountains during carnival week to make an offering to the
apu, or mountain deity, in a ritual known as the iiawin apay.
Though participation was seriously reduced during the years of the war,
according to people in Fajardomost aspects of carnivalpractice in these ruralcon-
texts have not changed significantly in decades. There is considerable movement
within the province in these months as young people, men especially, move from
town to town in search of agriculturalwork and, perhaps, a mate. The aporque is
worked primarily under a labour-sharing system (minka) by young men and
women, who end the work day by dancing and singing pumpin, frequently all
night and into the following day (Figure 3). In the village of Colca the aporque
may also be accompanied by yugoyugo, a game of sexual conquest in which a
young man will tackle a woman, often unexpectedly, and the rest of the group will
cover the couple with a poncho amidst gales of laughter, waiting to see if the
young woman will try to escape. If she does not, it is interpreted as her accept-
ance of the match, and the two may remain under the poncho for some time. The
minka group, festively decorated with colourful paper streamers and talc powder,
will eventually make its way towards the house of the aporque sponsor, dancing
in a round and engaging other groups of revellers along the way in informal
singing competitions. In this context, the songs performed are commonly known
or improvised short verses, usually quite witty (jocosas) and primarily dedicated
to love and courtship (amoramiento). The following verses were recorded by the

author at an aporque de mafz in Colca on 18 January,2001.
Young woman:
Maslla ripukusaq maslla pasakusaq I will go far away
Zonzo caraykita manafia rikunaypaq So as not to see your foolish face
Manahiaqawanaypaq So as not to see you any more
Men:
Zonza Colquinita yuyallachkankichu Foolish Colquinita,don't you remember
Sarapa chaupichampi yuguykullasqayta In the midst of the corn, we played yugo
yuguykullasqayta We played yugo
Women:
Zonzo Colquinito yuyallachkankichu Foolish Colquinito,don't you remember
Sarapa chaupichampi kuyaykullasqayta In the midst of the corn, we made love
Wayllukullasqayta We got affectionate
Men:
Linda paisanita yuyallachkankichu Beautifulpaisanita, don't you remember
Sarapa chaupichampi yuguykullasqayta In the midst of the corn, we played yugo
yuguykullasqayta We played yugo
Women:
Zonzo Colquinito yuyallachkankichu Foolish Colquinito,don't you remember
Sarapa chaupichampi wischuykullasqayta In the midst of the corn, we threweach
other down
Marqaykullasqayta We embraced
In this example, the playful evolution of text through the improvised modifica-
tion and repetition of a given verse is readily apparent. One young woman
begins by singing a commonly known verse (the first strophe), which the guitar
players and other singers quickly follow. When the verse ends, one of the guitar
players adopts the melody to improvise a new strophe. Provoking laughter, the
young woman who sang the first verse repeats the new one, changing the final
two words, and others begin to join in. This may continue until someone shouts
out a new song or all become bored with the verse and simply continue dancing.
With the exception of songs performed as part of formal concursos, or contests
(discussed later), this performance practice holds for almost all events associ-
ated with carnival in the region, including nightly passing through the streets
by comparsas, at yunzas held on street corners or in nearby fields and during
the pilgrimage to and from the fiawin apay or offering to the mountain deities
(Figure 4).
Though there is a loosening of social norms during these events, particularly
for young women, such encounters still occur within the confines of the com-
munity under the distant but watching eyes of parents and family. Until the
mid-1970s, young men and women in Fajardo avoided that scrutiny in another

Figure4 Carnivalrevelryafterthe flawinapay in Colca,Fajardoprovince,February2001
carnival event that took place clandestinely, up on the high and "wild" plateaus
of the puna.7 There, young people would gather, without the knowledge of their
parents, to sing and dance in informal competition with others from neighbour-
ing towns. There are numerous sites in the region where these encounters took
place, but the principal gathering point for youth from Colca, Cayara and
Huancapi was the plain of Waswantu (Figure 2), roughly equidistant from these
three towns. Alejandro Mendoza, a man from Colca now in his late 1950s,
described these encounters to me as follows:
Every Sunday,at least duringthe months of Januaryand February,we would

go up to Waswantu.The girls would escape their parents with the story
[cuento] that they were going to check on their fields or their animals.
Meanwhile, the young men, we would just take off for Waswantu with a
guitar. Or, if necessary, we went saying that we were going to bring down
ichu [a tall grass thatgrows on the puna, previouslyused for roofing houses].
And aftercuttingthe ichu, we would dance ... in competitionwith those from
Huancapi and Cayara.It was a competition, [all were] burning to play and
sing. We have a style of playing that is a little slower, and our girls sang
strongly,in a sopranovoice, and it often ended up in a fight. Why? The girls
from Colca broughtup tuna [pricklypear fruit], and the girls from Cayaraor
from Huancapibroughtup flowers. They were friends and would exchange
7 Thenotionof thepunaas a "wild"placewheresocialtaboosdo notholdis commonto the

communitiesof thePampasRivervalley.Thevidamichiy,anotherencounterof youthin the
punawithexplicitlysexualends,is describedby Isbell(1985:119).

gifts, the Colquinas giving tuna and the Cayarinasand Huancapinasgiving

flowers. And many times the girls from Cayaraand Huancapiwere brought
back to our group. Seeing how we were playing so well, they came to dance
with us. But what happened? Sometimes their [male] friends, the Huan-
capinos and Cayarinos... they got resentfulbecause theiryoung women were
dancing with us. Sometimes the Huancapinoand Cayarinomen triedto drag
their women away by force - those thatdidn't want to leave - up to the point
of throwingrocks and insulting those of us from Colca. And so in defense
sometimes we had to take off, or stay and fight. At times we played like that,
face to face, with them just to our side, to see who could sing the loudest,
whose guitar sounded more. So what happened?Strings broke. And so they
thoughtwe had done some witchcraft,and again they got angry.
(Interview,17 May,2000)
Alejandro's account encapsulates a number of themes pertinent to understand-
ing the continuities and changes reflected in the later transformationof pumpin.
The internal logic of the events on Waswantu centred on courtship and inter-
community competition, principally among young men. Song texts were at
best secondary concerns. No individuals that I talked to who had participatedin
these encounters remembered any specific songs that were "traditional"to the
occasion, instead commenting that, as with the aporque de maiz, verses were
either commonly known or improvised on the spot and generally treated themes
of love and/or betrayal.
It should be noted that social or political commentary did and does on occa-
sion enter these improvised song texts, particularly to heckle a local official or
other authority who may be present. To a limited extent, then, pumpin shares a
tendency for protest and inversion with other manifestations of carnival through-
out the world and also contributes to a long history of Quechua sung poetry that
addresses social and political themes (Montoya, Montoya and Montoya 1987;
Vergara 1995). But such songs in Fajardorarely go beyond generalized teasing,
and never enter into a level of political discourse beyond local issues and figures.
Similarly, a small number of commonly known carnival songs make references
to historical acts of rebellion, such as peasant involvement in the War of the
Pacific in the late nineteenth century,8but prior to the late 1970s this historical
consciousness of resistance was not developed in reference to contemporary
political affairs. Seen from the early 1970s, then, carnival ritual practices in
Fajardowere hardly a bellwether of revolution. Two developments in the coming
decade - the advent of formalized song contests and the rise of the Shining Path
guerrilla movement - would change those practices irrevocably.
Enteringmodernity
At the time of the Shining Path's emergence Ayacucho had been suffering from
nearly a century of economic neglect and political fragmentation. Following the
8 Thedecisiveroleof highlandpeasantsin theWarof thePacificagainstChilein 1879-83is
songsanddancesthroughout
a popularthemein traditional thecentralhighlandsof Peru.See

guano boom of the mid-nineteenth century, which briefly created a market on

the coast for highland products, commercial activity within the department
declined and a long period of economic stagnation set in (del Pino 1993).
Different trade relationships developed slowly in the twentieth century for the
northern and southern sectors of the department, and the lack of a transportation
corridor linking the two effectively cleaved the region in two. The division left
the department weak economically, isolating the extreme north, which extends
into the upper Amazon jungle region, and the centre, where the Fajardoprovince
lies (Degregori 1990:30).
Efforts to confront this marginalization and economic stagnation began in
earnest in the 1960s. The re-opening of the Universidad Nacional de San Crist6bal
de Huamanga in 1959, which had been closed for nearly 75 years, made it
the dominant force in a regional narrative of modernization and development.
The university ignited hopes, particularly among the rural peasantry, that a new
generation of locally educated teachers, engineers and agronomists could turn
the region around, serving as an engine of both economic development and indi-
vidual social mobility. The belief in education as the road to prosperity was
demonstrated clearly in a 1969 uprising that had a profound impact on the future
of Ayacucho and its music. In June of that year, a student- and peasant-led protest
in defense of free public education spilled over into violence in the northern
provincial capital of Huanta. The protest was the culmination of weeks of organ-
izing by students in Ayacucho against a new law decreed by the military
government that fined students for poor academic performance. Fourteen people
were killed and 56 wounded in clashes with the police in both Huanta and
Ayacucho, and 35 professors from the university were rounded up and detained
for their involvement in the protests.9 The military dictator, General Velasco,
immediately repealed the law, but the significance of the uprising continued to
grow and reverberatein the following years.
Two aspects of the event bear on our analysis here. First was the credit given
to one of the detained leaders, a philosophy professor in his late 30s named
Abimael Guzmin. Guzmin played a relatively minor role in the uprising, but
within a few years capitalized on its success as the leader of the Shining Path,
catapulting his organization into prominence among the Marxist left in
Ayacucho. By the 1980s, both the guerrilla movement itself and outside political
commentators would trace the origin of the region's turmoil to those heady days
in 1969. Second, the events in Huanta inspired a number of local songwriters
to pen new works, in particular two huaynos in the mestizo Ayacuchan style.
Ricardo Dolorier's "Flor de Retama", written within two years of the uprising,
speaks directly about the events in Huanta. It mixes narrative and metaphor in
a strongly worded protest against the police who came "to kill peasants" and
"to kill students", and ends with the memorable and oft-quoted line that "the
people's blood has a rich perfume/it smells of jasmine, of violets, geraniums
Mendoza(1989)foran overview.
of theHuantauprisingandits ties to theriseof the ShiningPath,
9 Fora completenarrative
see Degregori(1990).

and daisies/of gunpowder and dynamite". Ranulfo Fuentes' "El Hombre", first
recorded in 1975 by the Duo Garcia Zairate,speaks in more general and poetic
terms against tyranny and oppression, the author not wanting to be "the hang-
man/who stains the world with blood/and tears out hearts/that loved justice"
but rather "the brother" who "lends a hand to the fallen". Both songs gained
widespread popularity throughout the departmentin the 1970s and, in so doing,
reintroduced the idea of traditional music as a site of testimony and protest.
An experimentalmoment in pumpin
In Fajardo province the modernizing impulse found expression in new musical
contexts as well as lyric content. In February 1976 Norberto Flores Rodriguez
organized the first formal concurso, or song and dance contest, at the regional
level dedicated to pumpin. With the contest, he hoped to increase the province's
visibility and place its music on an equal footing with what he called the more
"prestigious" musics in the country, coastal genres popular among the Creole
upper class like the vals (waltz) and marinera (a dance genre related to the
Chilean cueca). The contest, held atop the Waswantu plateau, was extremely
successful, drawing an enthusiastic audience of a thousand or more and a dozen
newly formed groups or conjuntos of performing musicians. Within a few years
every district in the region was hosting its own contest during carnival, though
the Waswantu concurso would remain the largest and most importantevent. The
changes in carnival practices wrought by concursos, explored here, are central to
understanding the eventual radicalization of pumpin in Fajardo.
In planning the first contest, Flores - a lawyer, former student of anthropology
at the university in Ayacucho and native of Colca - sought and received the help
of the Instituto Nacional de Cultura (INC) and the Asociaci6n Distrital de Colca,
a civic club in Ayacucho founded by migrants from Colca (Flores and Vergara
1987). The involvement of these entities tied the event from its inception to
regional and national ideologies regarding "folklore" that date back to the first
Andean music contests sponsored by the administrationof Augusto Leguia in the
1920s (Turino 1991:267-71). Chief among these ideological influences was the
rhetorical emphasis placed on the "preservationof tradition"even as the contest
wrought tremendous changes in pumpin practice. Flores' immediate comparisons
of the contest to those held for the vals and marinera, genres considered the
"national"music by criollo elites, also underscore the associations he hoped to
make by initiating the contest. These ideological moves were and are complicated,
however, by local concurso practices - including the competition's organizational
model and, especially, the location of the contest - that undercut its easy charac-
terization as a site of disappearing traditions or the elite containment of counter-
hegemonic voices.
The decision to hold the concurso in the open air atop the Waswantu Plateau
was a conscious bid to place the contest within the declining tradition of
informal competitions, previously discussed, that had taken place on the plateau
for a century or more. Stressing this cultural continuity, Flores argues to this day
that his innovation was simply a formalization of what was already there:

It was hidden away; all I did was institutionalizeit. That was my basic idea;
I didn't just say from one moment to the next "let's go up there and sing".
There were antecedents.
3 April,2000).
(Interview,
Like the folklore concursos begun in the 1960s in Cusco studied by Mendoza
(2000:69-71), the Waswantu contest was consciously conceived by a member of
the regional elite as an effort to launch local "folklore", in this case pumpin, into
the national consciousness and "modernize" local music and dance practices.
However, its remote location effectively ensured the insularity of the event and
limited its audience to (healthy!) residents of the province willing and able to
make the trek. If, as Mendoza has implied, "folklorization" through concursos
in the Andes is frequently characterized by a dialectic between ritual decontex-
tualization and the opening of new spaces for subaltern voices (2000:237),
the Waswantu concurso forged a rather novel synthesis of these elements that
minimized the power of dominant political and social forces while still adopting
their language.
Both continuities and changes marked the relationship between the new
concurso's competitive structure and that of the previous informal encounters.
In its first years the concurso's competition model echoed the practice of pitting
community against community, holding elimination rounds for each district
before a final round in which each community was represented by a single
group. The spatial layout changed entirely, however, reflecting many of the less
obvious ideological changes at work. Previously, small groups of people from
each community crowded around circular depressions in the plateau (which
remain there today), men in the centre playing guitar and women circling
around them, holding hands in a round dance referred to as a qachwa.
Competition between circles was simultaneous, informal and, as in Alejandro
Mendoza's account cited previously, mostly a contest of volume and impro-
visatory wit. In the new concurso format, dozens of groups now competed
against one another in serial fashion, appearing in a line before a panel of
judges and the audience (see Figure 5). Volume to overpower a rival group was
no longer necessary, which gave greater leeway to guitarists to explore more
virtuosic playing techniques that required a more delicate hand. Perhaps most
importantly,verbal improvisation ended as song texts had to be submitted to the
judges prior to the contest.
Contestant evaluation at the concurso demonstrated some of the ambiguities
in local attitudes about the new competition model. Judges, usually local polit-
ical officials or staff from the regional INC office, were brought in for the event
and based their evaluations on subjective observations of the "quality" of the
performance and the poetic and musical traits of the new composition. The
power of the judges' position was (and is today) frequently undercut by popular
questioning of their decisions throughout and following the contest, particularly
of politicians with no musical background or INC officials deemed "unknowl-
edgable" about local customs. Cognizant of this, crowd reaction to particular
groups and songs often has a major influence on judges' evaluations. When

24 BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGY VOL. 11/i 2002
Figure5 A contemporary duringa carnival

pumpinconjunto,"LosMensajerosde Quilla",
song contest in Huancaraylla,
Fajardoprovince,February2001.
judges ignore majority crowd opinion, public censure of their decisions can be
severe; one judge I interviewed remembered being chased off the mountain in
a hail of stones. Such stories reveal the dialogic nature of the concurso, during
which songs and performances are evaluated in the emerging and constant
interaction of audiences, performers and judges.
Changes in song structure and thematic material in the first four years of the
contest make the strongest statements about the ideological work being accom-
plished by the concurso. As shown in the aporque de maiz example on page 18,
prior to 1976 pumpin songs were strophic, with a two-part melodic structure
continuously repeated by singers and musicians without instrumentalbridges or
changes in melodic contour. A surviving recording of the first contest reflects
this performance practice among all competing groups. The winning song,
"Naypischa", is typical, consisting of four verses sung to a simple AABB
melody, which is repeated as a guitar instrumental between each verse. Due to
contest rules and, importantly,the awarding of prizes to groups that made "inno-
vations", by 1979 most songs contained substantial structural changes. Just as
models of political and economic development in the provinces were drawn
from the discourse of the regional capital, so too were musical models of devel-
opment. Borrowing from the mestizo huayno form, an instrumental introduction
and bridges between repetitions of the melody were added, as well as afuga or
coda, which introduced a new, shorter melody and often slightly increased the
tempo. When queried on the subject today, Flores and others acknowledge the
impact of the contest and its rules in what they call "developing the tradition"
(desarollar la tradicidn).

Changes in thematic materialwere even more dramatic.Contest rules required

the submission of a written copy of the new composition and advised contestants
that "thematic coherence" would be considered in the evaluation. In short, the
meandering verses and repetitions common to most carnival performances, like
the aporque de makzexample discussed earlier, were not to be permitted in the
contest. Narrative development became a necessity and, with it, a demand for a
wider variety of thematic material. Within a few years, the focus on love and/or
betrayal common in pumpin up until that point faced competition from new songs
treating topics as diverse as development projects, historical events and explicitly
political themes.
At least three factors were behind the broadening of pumpin topical material.
First, the large audience, composed of residents of each of the three districts, was
a historical first in Fajardo and provided an unprecedented forum in which to
address inter- and intra-community conflicts. The winning composition from
1978, "Irrigaci6n de Colca", was almost certainly inspired by this opportunity;
it is a song of protest by a group from Huancapi against a proposed irrigation
tunnel to Colca, arguing that the project would divert water from their town.
Second, judges' positive responses to songs like "Irrigaci6n"that parted from the
love and betrayal norm encouraged competing groups to explore new themes.
Given the popularity throughout the department at that time of huaynos with
social themes, such as "Flor de Retama" and "El Hombre", these became a
popular source of inspiration and on a few occasions, even plagiarism, for
pumpin composers.
Finally, I will argue that the structure and very existence of the concurso,
with its formal rules, large crowds, visiting dignitaries and implicit ties to
regional and national discourses of identity and belonging, encouraged Fajardo
residents to see their performances as an entry point to national narratives, a
public stage upon which to make statements about the Big Issues that mattered
most to them - even if the nation was not listening. It was an experimental
moment in the musical life of the province, one in which the repositioning of
pumpin reflected and took an active part in a period of overall cultural and
social effervescence. All of these factors made the pumpin contest a perfect
vehicle for revolutionary propaganda, something that did not escape the notice
of Shining Path cadres a few hours away in Ayacucho, then organizing to
launch their guerrilla war.
The Shining Path

Founded in 1970 by Abimael Guzman, the "Peruvian Communist Party -
Shining Path"was a product of the internecine strife and interminable splintering
that plagued the Marxist Left in Peru in those years. In fact, the Shining Path
faction was one of three Maoist parties in the 1970s claiming descent from the
original Peruvian Communist Party, founded a half-century before by Peruvian
intellectual and writer Josd Carlos Mariategui. Accusing rival parties of
collaborating with the military regime, Shining Path proclaimed the imminence
of the revolution and set about building the necessary party apparatusto fight it.

After a brief heyday in 1971-73, when it controlled the major student association
and the education faculty at the university in Ayacucho, Shining Path retreated
from the limelight. Abandoning mass organizing in the city, the party vanguard
dedicated itself to what it called "intellectual work", following Maoist dogma to
forge the "correct party line" in preparation for the initiation of their armed
struggle (Poole and Rdnique 1992:39). "The masses" and "the people" remained
rhetoricallyimportantfor the party,but by the time of the "initiationof the armed
struggle" in 1980, Sendero consisted almost entirely of university professors and
their current and former students.
Shining Path ideology was drawn from an extremely literal reading of the
works of Mao and Mariategui, interpreted and expanded upon for the party by
Guzm~n himself, who was referred to by his followers as the "FourthSword of
Marxism" after Marx, Lenin and Mao (Gorriti 1999). Critical to the Shining
Path's self-understanding was the idea that party ideology was based on
Guzm~n's absolutely "scientific" and irrefutable study of the laws of history and
nature. Adopting the Maoist blueprint and Mariategui's decades-old analysis,
Guzm~n characterized Peruvian society as "semi-feudal" and called for a
revolutionary war on the Chinese model that would "surroundthe cities from the
countryside". These were positions that most observers, including the rest of the
Marxist Left then flirting with electoral politics, considered absurd- particularly
after the Agrarian Reform of 1969 and the return to democracy that coincided
with the party's decision to take up arms.
Shining Path's cultural policy was explicit in its opposition to what it called
"folklore".Guzmin studied in China in the late 1960s, as did eventually a number
of Shining Path leaders, and consequently modeled party strictures on the brutal
policies of Mao's Cultural Revolution. Religious practices, customs, rituals and
musical traditions were all lumped together as "remnantsof feudalism that must
be demolished by the revolution and disappearin the New Society" (quoted in del
Pino 1998:175). Writing in the party newspaper El Diario in the late 1980s, one
party militant explained Sendero's opposition to "folklore" with a logic drawing
on Marxist-Leninist aesthetics, the notion of "art as a manifestation of social
consciousness" (Levin 1979:149-51):
Maoism teaches us that a given culture is a reflection, on the ideological
plane, of the politics and the economy of a given society. ... [Andeanculture
is thus] a reflection of the existence of man underlandlordoppression,which
reflects the technological and scientific backwardnessof the countryside,
which reflects the customs, beliefs, superstitions,feudal and anti-scientific
ideas of the peasantry,productof centuriesof oppressionand exploitationthat
have subsumed it in ignorance. ... This is the characterof what is called
'folklore'".
(Mairquez1989, quoted in Degregori 1998:152)
In practice, this signified a wholesale attack on many aspects of traditional
Andean life, from religious rituals to village fiestas. Even references to God were
to be replaced by references to "Presidente Gonzalo", Guzmin's nom de guerre
(del Pino 1998:175).

The effect of these prohibitions and the violence of the war itself took its toll
on many ritual practices. In a collection of testimonials published in 1987, one
peasant refugee in Ayacucho related:
Customs have been dropped out of fear, because the tuta puriqkuna
["nightwalkers",a referenceto the Shining Path]have prohibitedthem. They
say "Youspend all of your money on that, that is why you are so poor."The
militaryhas also forbiddenthem, telling us: "Theymake noise and disorder.
The terroristscould take advantageof that to enter, get everyone drunk.It's
dangerousfor you all."That is what they tell us, and for thatreason we don't
have fiestas like before.
(Loayza,SalcedoandUrrutia1987:40)
In Fajardo province, my own fieldwork has confirmed Shining Path's antipathy
to most village ritual customs (with the exception of carnival concursos) and
their consequent decline or disappearance throughout the years of the war.
Patron saint festivals were cancelled, certain aspects of carnival revelry declined
severely, and even private religious rituals like the hiawinapay were curtailed as
they involved a trek to the heights, where the guerrillas often travelled or slept.
Nevertheless, it is clear today that the Shining Path was inconsistent with its
prohibition on "folklore". As noted in the introduction, quotes of revolutionary
songs written in folkloric styles are legion in the vast literature on the Shining
Path, and protest huaynos such as "Flor de Retama" also became immensely
popular with the guerrillas and their sympathizers.'0 Journalists' accounts of
their visits to Shining Path-controlled prisons in the 1980s cite - in addition to
endless choruses of Marxist hymns like "The International" and stagings of
Jiang Ching's model operas - "typical bands" of flutes, panpipes and drums
playing huaynos as the prisoners danced (Gorriti 1999:246; Kirk 1993:53).
Examples from the countryside are scarce due to the secrecy of the party and the
difficulty of journalistic or academic work in the emergency zones throughout
the war, but anecdotal evidence suggests that guerrillas did on occasion take part
in village fiestas that had not been cancelled. Peruvian anthropologist Nelson
Manrique reported a folkloric dance contest actually organized by the Shining
Path that went on for weeks in the department of Junin (Manrique 1998:211),
and in Chuschi, the very town where the revolution was launched, attempts to
ban carnival ended with the guerrillas dancing in the streets, their rifles over
their heads (Isbell 1994:85).
What can explain such apparent contradictions between party theory and
practice?
10 Popularassociationof a particular
songwiththeShiningPathdidnotnecessarilyindicate
thatit hadbeenwrittenfororby theparty.In thepolarizedpoliticalclimateduringtheheight
of thewar,protestagainstgovernment as supportfortheguer-
atrocitieswaseasilytranslated
rillas.Though"Florde Retama"predatesthe launchof the ShiningPath'sarmedstruggle-
andin spiteof authorFidelDolorier'sinsistenceto thisdaythathe was nevera ShiningPath
member- thesongis widelyconsideredto be a guerrillaanthem.

As Stephen Jones has noted in his study of rituallife under Mao in ruralChina,
the impact of Communist policy on ritual activity is difficult to generalize, and
inquiry into particulartraditions and regions must bear a sensitivity to local polit-
ical and social realities (1999:32-4). In the Peruvian case, we must first keep in
mind that despite Shining Path's totalizing ideology, many militants and com-
munity members in the "liberatedzones" had differing levels of indoctrinationinto
and identification with party thinking. Ponciano del Pino's work on daily life
under the Shining Path has pointed out that internalization of party ideology
"becomes more flexible as one descends from the pinnacle towardthe social base"
(1998:159), and current evidence suggests that the breaches of party policy on
folklore were most common at the lowest levels of party hierarchy. To some
extent, then, we may view this phenomenon as a result of the incomplete project
of party integration, a reflection of rural cadres' self-identification as both party
militants and local community members.
Second, the Shining Path had a pragmatic need for effective propaganda,
and "revolutionary songs" in folkloric styles were an easy and popular delivery
vehicle. One of the few published Shining Path documents of the mid-1980s
notes that "armedpropagandaand agitation" constituted more than a third of all
party actions, most of which were done in the countryside "in an oral form"
(PCP-SL 1988:23). Residents of villages and towns in Fajardo were made to
attend mandatorypublic meetings where chants, slogans and revolutionary song
performances were common. The autonomy of certain genres, particularly the
huayno, from any particularritual context made them easy to insert in different
contexts as needed. Furthermore,that autonomy may have made huaynos easier
to justify in light of party prohibitions on "folklore"that seemed to imply a ritual
context. Drawing on Mao's dictum that "old forms" could be "reconstructedand
filled with new content, so that they also become revolutionary and serve the
people" (McDougall 1980:65), a change of words made old huayno melodies
and songs acceptable and even "art of a new type" (Degregori 1998:157). One
prominent Peruvian journalist who covered the war extensively has even
suggested to me that, in practical terms, the Shining Path's only "policy" on
musical performance was that it incite listeners to militant fervour, come as it
might in the context of a prison march or a village fiesta.
Finally, the guerrillas' appropriationof certain ritual traditions and not others
may have depended on the "ritual" status of the particular custom. This was
almost certainly a factor in the case of carnival concursos in the province of
Victor Fajardo. Unlike obviously religious or "traditional" events that were
discouraged or banned outright, such as offerings to the apus or processions in
honour of patron saints, formalized carnival song contests were a modem and
secular innovation. Though the contests made, and make to this day, a deliberate
association with past ritual customs, their emergence was coterminous with that
of the Shining Path in the mid-1970s and, as I have argued, in many ways grew
from the same modernizing impulse that gave the guerrillas their political
opening. In the eyes of party militants, the new concursos may already have
seemed a part of the New Society, not a reflection of the old.

Siren songs: a radicalmoment in pumpin

The elements sketched thus far in this article - a regional discourse of develop-
ment and modernization,an experimentalmoment in carnivalmusic brought about
by the advent of concursos, and the rise of the Shining Path - all came together
in Fajardoprovince in the late 1970s. Given the geographic isolation, poverty and
general lack of state presence in the central region of Ayacucho, Sendero chose
the Cangallo and Fajardoprovinces as the territory in which to begin their revo-
lutionary campaign. The lack of hacendados, or large landowners, in this region
was probably also a factor in Sendero's choice; the Velasco government's mas-
sive agrarian reform law in 1969 consequently made virtually no impact in the
area, and the sense of social change and possibility felt elsewhere in the highlands
thus largely eluded residents of Fajardo and Cangallo."I Party militants, mostly
students and alumni from the university in Ayacucho, trickled out into the rural
areas of the region, often taking jobs as teachers in local elementary and high
schools. This affordedthem access to and authorityover local youth, who, seduced
or coerced by the daring and power of their teachers, became the first rural con-
verts to Sendero's vision. Numerous former teachers in Fajardo recalled to me
how their senderista colleagues used a mix of persuasion, coercion and, finally,
threats to enlist not only students but also fellow teachers in their cause and thus
increase their hegemony over local schools. They were aided by the faith placed
in education as the region's path to development and upwardmobility, a belief that
had by this time seriously influenced the cultural values and social hierarchies of
rural towns. The opinions and leadership of educated youth, especially those
returning from the university, were invested with a new weight and importance
that facilitated senderista organizing among the general population (Degregori
1994; Degregori 1998:131).
Music played an important role in the activities organized by Shining Path
militants and teachers in Fajardo. Journalists' reports from throughout the
Ayacucho region in the early 1980s, corroborated by comments made to me by
former students of senderista teachers, indicate that revolutionary music was a
staple in their classrooms, with the "International"replacing the national anthem
and protest huaynos filling in where other folkloric music might have been sung
(Medina 1983:20; de Wit and Gianotten 1994:63). Mandatory meetings held
outside of class for older students or the general populace of a town - often
referred to as "people's schools" (escuelas populares) - also incorporatedchants
and revolutionary hymns into the curriculum.
Less formal gatherings, such as those of students already sympathetic to the
Shining Path message, had a social character that foregrounded the use of folk-
loric music, and it is here that the first examples of pumpin with explicitly
l FloresGalindohas arguedthatthe ShiningPathwas initiallymost successfulin zones

institutionsof powerwereweakest,dueto a lackof statepresence,the
wherethe traditional
absenceof a hacendadoor gamonalrulingclass andthe waningauthorityof the Catholic
church(1987).I wouldliketo thankZoilaMendozaforreiterating to me thepotentialimpor-
andimpacton musicin Fajardo.
tanceof thesefactorsforShiningPath'sdevelopment

revolutionary lyrics emerged. Arturo,12a student in Huancapi in the late 1970s,

recalled gatherings and debates among students in the town plaza at that time that
frequently ended with the singing of the popular protest huaynos as well as new
pumpin compositions. As he remembered it, pumpin made a "180 degree turn"at
that time away from themes of "love, agriculture,and the daily goings-on of peas-
ant life" towards songs with a "direct message". Though Arturo positioned the
pumpin songs he remembers from these gatherings as "anonymous creations of
the people" that "told things like they were", the examples he sang to me make
exact references to key elements of Shining Path ideology and strategy, which
strongly suggests a militant guiding hand in their creation. One such song, "Jos6
Carlos",a referenceto PeruvianCommunistPartyfounderJos6 CarlosMaria-
tegui, anticipates the "chosen day" when students and peasants who are "notshort
on valour nor courage" will "awaken"and "standup" to "toss out the dirty ones".
"Jos6 Carlos",pumpin song sung by students in Huancapi in the late 1970s
Josd Carlos, alma proletaria Jos6Carlos,proletariansoul

Josd Carlos, alma proletaria Jos6Carlos,proletariansoul
Pronto queremosque llegue el dia We wantthe chosenday to arrivesoon
escogido
Pronto queremosque llegue el dia We wantthe chosenday to arrivesoon
escogido
No nosfalta valor ni coraje We arenot shorton valouror courage

No nosfalta valor ni coraje We arenot shorton valouror courage
Aqui estamos los estudiantes, Herewe are,the students,
muchachosvalientes braveboys
Aqui estamos los campesinos, Herewe are,the peasants,
muchachosvalientes braveboys
Llaqtarunarikcharillasunita We the peoplemustawaken

Llaqtarunasayarillasunfia We the people muststandup
Quiuchayllata sayarikuspanchik All togetherwe aregoing to awaken
qanrataqawischusunchik We will toss out the dirtyones
Qukchallataiiasayarikuspanchik As one we will standup
muchuytawischusunchik To toss out the failures
Fuga:
Llaqtarunasayarillasun We the people muststandup
Llaqtarunasayarillasun We the peoplemuststandup
Qanrakunataaswan peornia As the dirtyones get even worse
wischullasunchikqarqullasunchik We will throwthemout,eliminatethem
Supaykunataaswan peoriia As the devils get even worse
qarqullasunchikwischullasunchik We will eliminatethem,throwthemout
12 All namesof individualsin thissectionof thearticlearefictitious.

The influence of regional models is readily apparentin "Jose Carlos" in the use
of the verse/fuga huayno structure discussed previously and also in portions of
its text and melody, which are drawn verbatim from the lyrics to a carnaval song
popular in the city of Ayacucho. These cosmopolitan associations, funneled into
a musical genre and bilingual text marked as rural and "Fajardino",reflect the
liminal, "in-between" nature of this song and its performers, all of whom were
local students linked by desire or experience to the radical political discourse of
the regional capital. Given the limited scope of the song's audience, it appears as
less a propaganda tool than an expression of radical identity for these students.
A more widespread and enduring radicalization of pumpin came in the con-
text of the concursos. As stated previously, the contests attracted Shining Path
militants for obvious reasons. They presented an opportunity to speak to the
largest annual gatherings of people in the province, and did so in an atmosphere
marked by the usual social liberty of carnival and the unusual textual and musi-
cal experimentation that the concursos had engendered. Senderista teachers had
little trouble recruiting singers and/or guitar players from among their students,
who were eager to participate in the immensely popular events. It is difficult to
pinpoint the exact year and conjunto that introduced revolutionary lyrics to the
contests as no complete documentary record currently exists and oral accounts
vary. Nonetheless, community members in Fajardo today unanimously recall
senderista songs in the concursos that predated the initiation of the armed
struggle in May 1980 and consistently name several conjuntos as the strongest
proponents of what they call canciones de protesta, or "protest songs".
The most successful and influential conjunto with ties to the Shining Path
was "Las Sirenitas de Waswantu" ("The Little Sirens of Waswantu"), and its
history bears further consideration here. Alberto, a young man in his early 20s
from Fajardo then studying education at the university in Huancayo, founded
Sirenitas in 1977 with other young friends from the province.13Already a party
militant, Alberto's frequent trips to Fajardowere probably tied to Sendero's cam-
paign in the region, though it is not clear whether his work in the "people's
schools" first inspired his formation of the group. As noted before, Sendero's
totalizing ideology was not internalized equally by all party militants, and it is
reasonable to speculate thatAlberto's attractionto the pumpin contests may have
initially stemmed as much from his identity as a Fajardinoand the opportunityto
take part in an exciting new development in the communal life of the province as
it did from the instrumental reasoning that the contests would be politically use-
ful for the Shining Path. Likewise, Alberto's choice of a name for the conjunto
also reflects this ambiguity. Drawing on the powerful imagery of the sirena, an
elusive singing female spirit said to inhabit the rivers, lakes and waterfalls of the
region (Turino 1983), Alberto harnessed the mythic and seductive power of what
was undoubtedly characterized as "feudal superstition" by the party to the revo-
lutionary message of his conjunto's performances. Regardless of the politics of
the director, not every member of Sirenitas was an active Shining Path member
or even known sympathizer, and the conjunto's popularity, at least at first,
13 detailshavebeenchangedin thisstory.
Certainnon-essential

stemmed less from its politics than from its solid performances and the vocal
strength of its young teenage singers.
Sirenitas' songs, written by Alberto, were marked from the beginning by
strong social and political content, though not all were necessarily interpretedat
first as revolutionaryby listeners. Sirenitas won their first concurso at Waswantu
in 1979 with a song celebrating the centennial of the War of the Pacific. Takenat
face value "Centenariode la Guerra del Pacifico", reproduced below, was a new
contribution to the previously mentioned tradition of highland songs and dances
celebrating peasant heroism in that war. The new barbs thrown at Chile in
Sirenitas' 1979 version must also be considered in the context of a hemispheric
political climate condemning the repressive military dictatorship of General
Pinochet, who had wrested power from a socialist president in a bloody coup six
years before. These factors notwithstanding, the theme of rebellious peasants
taking back the country clearly resonated with incipient Shining Path aims, and
the song stops just short of making that connection explicit. In updated and
aggressive rhetoric - "Listen well, little Chile, to the Peruvian singers on
Waswantu ... neither your missiles nor your planes will save your lives!" - a
revolutionary message for Fajardinos was cloaked in the metaphor of nationalist
patriotism.
"Centenario de la Guerra del Pacifico", written and performed by "Sirenitas

de Waswantu"at the 1979 Festival de Waswantu;quoted in Flores and Vergara
1987.
Pachak watatahiamPeruninchik cumplen Our Peru is now celebratinga hundredyears

Pachak watatahiamPeruninchik cumplen Our Peru is now celebratinga hundredyears
Chile nacionchapa guerra declarasqan Since Chile declaredwar
Miguel Grauninchikpajatun sacrificium Since Miguel Graumade his great sacrifice
Hermanos Fajardinos imach qunqach- Brothers,Fajardinos,what have we

wanchi forgotten
Hermanos Peruanos imach qunqach- Brothers,Peruanos,what are we
wanchi forgetting
Wauqinchikunapayawar chaqchusqanta Ourbrotherssprinkledblood
heroinchikunapajatun ejemplunta Ourheroes made a greatexample
Chayta yuyaspaymi fiuqa rillachkani I tell this so it is remembered

chayta yuyaspaymi riuqa rillachakani I tell this so it is remembered
Tacnafronterata Peruniy defiendiq OurPeruviandefendersat the Tacnaborder
Arica llaqtata patriay reclamaq Reclaiming our fatherlandin Arica
Luchaspa luchasun Cacerisninchikjina Struggling,we will struggle,like our Ciceres

peleaspa peleasun Bolognesi jina Fighting, we will fight, like Bolognesi
Arica llaqtanchik kutimunankama We will returnto our town of Arica
salitre minanchik vueltamunankama Our saltpetermines will be returned

Fuga:
Chile nacionacha sumaqta uyariy Listen well, little Chile
Waswantupatapi Fajardino takiqta To the Fajardinosingers on Waswantu
Chile nacioncha sumaqta uyari Listen well, little Chile
Waswantupatapi peruano takiqta To the Peruviansingers on Waswantu
Avionchaykipas, misilchaykipas Neither your planes nor your missiles

manasd vidallay salvallasunkichu will save your lives!
tanquichakipas, misilchaykipas Neither your tanks nor your missiles
manasd vidallay salvallasunkichu will save your lives!
Sirenitas and other conjuntos dropped the pretense of metaphor for the carni-
val contests in 1980, a reflection of the growing boldness of Shining Path activity
in the province. Six out of eight songs in the semi-final and final rounds at
Waswantuaddressedpolitical topics directly.A conjunto named "The Liberators"
weighed in with songs titled "Llaqtarunaavanzasunchik!" ("People, Let's Move
Forward")and "HermanoCampesino" ("BrotherPeasant"), and two other groups
questioned the returnto democracy with compositions simply entitled "Elections".
In contrast to the supposed hyper-patriotism of the year before, all groups cast a
suspicious or wary eye on the actions of the current and pending government
administrations. Sirenitas was the most explicit of all, entering the semi-final
round with the song "Situaci6n Internacional" ("International Situation") and
an unambiguous call for revolution. To wild applause and cheers, they finished
their song with the exclamation "Fajardinos,we announce the revolution, we are
talking about armed struggle!" Three months later, Shining Path boycotted the
elections and took up arms by burning the ballot boxes in Chuschi, 40 km upriver
from Waswantu.
The Shining Path worked virtually unopposed in much of Fajardoin 1981 and
1982 due to the retreat of police forces from the area, and, not surprisingly, this
period markedthe height of revolutionarytexts in pumpin carnival songs. Alberto,
now living full-time in the province and working as a high school teacher, moved
to take direct political control of his hometown in 1982 through intimidation and
threats to local authorities. Though Alberto's story is extraordinaryin this narra-
tive for his dual role as a Shining Path leader and director of a pumpin group,
actions similar to his took place in small towns throughoutthe province as Shining
Path militants, now active guerrillas, consolidated the gains they had spent years
cultivating. Unlike the usual experience of a moribund and austere social/festival
life in areas under the control of the Shining Path (del Pino 1998; Isbell 1994),
the celebration of carnivalflourished in Fajardoand concursos de pumpin actually
expanded. The contests were now key sites for party propaganda and negotiating
power in the region and consequently received the full support and participation
of Shining Path columns.
For the first time since the mid-1970s, pumpin song texts and form settled into
a predictable pattern between 1980 and 1982, indicating that the "experimental
moment" was waning and that new norms had been established. Protest songs

dominated the concursos, and political themes were present in more than half of
the songs presented at Waswantu in this period. Musically, the huayno form had
been adoptedby all groups and composers at this point, and new innovations were
limited to more elaborate guitarintroductions.Sirenitas were prototypicalin these
respects, winning the Waswantu concurso in 1981 and competing at other con-
tests that year with the song "Situaci6n Revolucionaria", ("Revolutionary
Situation"). The song anticipated a phrase from the party's Second National
Conference report the following year, which declared that Peru was "living in a
revolutionary situation" due to its "feudal structure" ("Las Conferencias ..."
1984:21). Sirenitas' performance of this song at the 1981 Quillaqasa concurso -
a new contest held in a small, high field between the communities of Colca and
Quilla - survives on a rare tape recording today. Two remarkable features of
"Situaci6nRevolucionaria"stand out in the recording. First is the song's complete
adherence to huayno form, including an arpeggiated guitar introduction, short
instrumentalbridges between melodic sections and afuga that features a shorter,
contrasting melody. Second is the boisterous crowd reaction to Sirenitas' per-
formance; the song is punctuatedby loud applause and cries of "Bravo!"between
each of the verses. At this stage in Shining Path's tactical plans, revolutionary
propagandawas probablythe primarygoal in composing and performingthe song,
but aesthetic concerns, musical knowledge of local and regional genres and ample
rehearsal are also highly evident in the performance and demonstrate consider-
able care and preparationon the part of the conjunto.
"Situaci6n Revolucionaria", written and performed by "Sirenitas de Waswantu"

in 1981.
Kayllay decadapi In thisdecade

kayllay tiempollapi in thesetimes
decisiones kachkan, posicionis kachkan decisionsarebeingmade,positionstaken
situacion nisqan revolucionaria theysay it is a revolutionary
situation
Wakchapobrekuna The poorandimpoverished

amirqullanchikiha we arefed up
hambre miseriawan kallapas kanfiachu with thishungerandmiserysappingus
llapa imallapas wicharimullaptin whenthepriceof everythingis rising
Obrero, campesino Worker,peasant

avanzallasunfia we arealreadyadvancing
guerra popularwan, lucha armadawan withthepopularwar,withthearmedstruggle
kayllay miseriata puchukachasunchik we will overcomethis misery
Fuga:
Llapa apullas mancharisqantia All of thewealthyarealreadyafraid
Ilapa apullas katatatachkanita all of thepowerfularealreadytrembling
lucha armadata rimariptinchik whenwe talkaboutthe armedstruggle
guerrata guerrillas anunciakuptin whentheguerrillawaris announced

Text, performanceand meaning

Does the positive crowd response to these "siren songs" offer definitive proof of
Fajardinos' support for the Shining Path in the early 1980s? Did the militant
lyrics, the success of groups like Sirenitas and the sheer number of protest songs
composed in the province in fact reflect general sympathy for the guerrillas?
My interviews with musicians and others present at the concursos in those years,
as well as a closer inspection of live recordings from the era, suggest that all is
not as it would seem. First, crowd reaction at concursos is based on a wide vari-
ety of factors that go beyond lyric content, a fact that underscores the weakness
of purely textual analysis for performed events. Indeed, crowd contributions to
the "dialogue" of a pumpin performance may not bear any relation at all to the
actions or words of the performers. For example, competition between commu-
nities and "hometown pride" are the most important and common motivators of
public applause at concursos; audience members cheer loudest for the conjuntos
from their own district, aware of the impact this could have on the judges' evalu-
ation. The crowd reaction to Sirenitas' performance of "Situaci6n Internacional"
in 1980 is telling in this regard. As the "Little Sirens" announced the advent of
the armed struggle and impending revolution, the conjunto's fans interrupted
with wild applause, chanting the name of the group's home district. Far from
voicing uncritical support for the Shining Path and its revolutionary project, the
crowd reaction to Sirenitas' radical message was more akin to that of fans at a
soccer match, cheering on their local team after a particularly well-played goal.
By way of comparison, several minutes later different voices in the crowd were
equally boisterous in supporting a conjunto from their own home district, though
the song the group sang was not political, but rathera witty song about traitorous
lovers. Consequently, while lyric content is clearly important, general carnival
exuberance and inter-district rivalries cannot be ignored when analysing how
crowds reacted to concurso performances of revolutionary songs.
Second, performers' motives for singing protest and revolutionary songs
varied widely, and one cannot assume that all were Shining Path militants. As
noted, even within strongly pro-Sendero groups like Sirenitas, not all members
were party activists or even informed sympathizers. One surviving former
vocalist in Sirenitas today maintains that she sang with the group to compete in
the concurso and because she was dating one of the musicians, not for any
political reason - a justification echoed in the stories of many others.14Then as
now, personal ties to members of a group, a competitive spirit with deep roots in
local carnival practices, and the importance of the new concursos in the social
life of the province figure as key factors that motivated people to perform. It is
easy to imagine the allure of performing with a group as popular and successful
as Sirenitas, and how individuals may have ignored or simply not cared that
14 Obviously, contemporarydenials of previous involvement in militant activities must be

consideredin thecontextof thedecadeof violencethatfollowedShiningPathrulein Fajardo.
are
Memoriesarequitelikelyselective.Nonetheless,thereasonsofferedfornon-participation
if
plausible, nothistorically in
accurate every case.

their participation was giving voice to the guerrilla movement. Others who
joined were conscious of that revolutionary role but performed out of a fear of
the possible consequences of not doing so, especially as the Shining Path began
executing law-breakers, "squealers" and the "bourgeoisie" in acts of what they
called "popularjustice". Manuel, a high school student in Colca at the time and
now a community leader in his 30s, recalled the combination of fear and attrac-
tion that spurred his involvement:
While it is certain that we were with them, the whole population - I can't
deny that I also participated- we were totally obligated.We accepted them
out of fear.And, at that [same] time, they were speakingof marvelousthings
that one would have ... well, about things one wanted to believe. That's how
this social-politicalproblemhappened.
28 November,2000)
(Interview,
Fear, obligation, personal ties, competitive drive and social motivations were
thus all compelling reasons for performing revolutionary songs and joining
militant conjuntos. None of these motivations, however, implied actual active
support for the guerrillas.
Finally, many composers and conjunto directors who wrote and made the
decision to perform "protestsongs" were simply inspiredby the successful model
of conjuntos like Sirenitas and tried to imitate them. Singing and writing such
songs became the norm rather than the exception, and groups began to concep-
tualize their annual compositions for the carnival contests as a pair - a love song
and a political song - regardless of the ideological or political stance of the
composer. Maria, the director of a successful and influential conjunto in the early
1980s that was not tied to the Shining Path, and one of the only female directors
of a conjunto in the history of the contests, linked her group's success to the
combination of themes they presented:
Every year I always tried to compose a combinationof songs. One had to be

sentimental,one aboutlove, anothera protestsong, maybe othersaboutwork
or many different things. I tried to compose [songs] about the authorities,
what was happeningin life, how the prisonerssuffered,I combinedall of these
things, always composing. For thatreason, from there,came our triumphs.
13 February,
(Interview, 2001)
Maria is adamantthat she was never a supporterof "the subversives". If true, her
inclusion of protest songs, songs about "the authorities", and even songs about
"how the prisoners suffered" in the list of themes that made her group "triumph"
is an extraordinaryadmission of the influence of the Shining Path on song com-
position beyond their own ranks in the province. Indeed, Maria's songs were so
popular and effective that, as she tells it, local Shining Path militants approached
her to compose revolutionary songs for them, which she declined to do and
quickly moved out of the area. Maria's interest in political rhetoric, like many
other composers in the province, was limited to its popularity and, thus, winning
potential in the song contests.

For this very reason, not all of the new protest songs were equally radical.
A review of all existing recordings and texts from the concursos between 1980
and 1982 reveals many songs that offered a very general political critique but fell
short of the revolutionarycall to arms typical in the lyrics of a militant group like
Sirenitas. One such song, "Kimsam Wiraqucha Presidentemanta" ("Regarding
Three Presidents"), was performed by the group "Los Hijos de Waswantu" in
1981. The song argued that quality of life had declined from a height during the
leftist military dictatorship under General Velasco (1968-75) through the right-
wing military dictatorship of Morales Bermudez (1975-80) and had reached
a low point under the new democratic administration of President Belaunde.
The critique fits with certain Shining Path positions, such as the rejection of
the current democratic administration and the emphasis on the misery of many
people in the country, but it defies others, such as the longing glance back at
the Velasco government, which was not supported by Sendero. The song also
demonstrates the changing compositional goals and themes of one conjunto over
the course of five years; the same group won the very first Waswantu concurso
five years earlier with a song about a jilted lover, "Naypischa". Thus, while
Shining Path influence is clear in the reorientation of pumpin song topics in this
period, comparison of actual songs reveals substantial gray areas where "politi-
cal" and "protest"did not necessarily connote revolutionary activity.
The radical moment in pumpin ended with the Waswantu concurso in 1982.
Police forces, stepping in after years of ignoring the event's radical discourse,
broke up the concurso during the event by firing their guns in the air and sending
the participants fleeing down the mountain. One of the contest organizers from
that year was later tracked down, jailed and threatenedwith execution for his role
in "fomenting terrorism".As many from the province were forced to do in the
following years, in our interview he immediately distanced himself from the
revolutionary rhetoric thatpumpin had acquired at that time:
Shining Path loved pumpin; the armed struggle was loudly proclaimed in
those songs. And thatimplicatedus, includingme. [The army] accused me of
being the "intellectualauthor"there.I was arrested,but I told them, "Sir,what
fault do I have if the conjuntos showed up singing those songs that they
had written beforehand?"[The Shining Path] took advantage of the large
gathering,I just came to participate.
(Interview, 23 March,2000)
In December that year the Peruvian government finally responded to the growing
crisis in Ayacucho by declaring much of the department, including Fajardo
province, under military control. The army's campaign of terror in the country-
side quickly emptied towns as people were disappeared, murdered, or fled to the
burgeoning barrios of Ayacucho and Lima. In August 1983 Alberto and three
other local Shining Path militants, including members of the conjunto Sirenitas
de Waswantu, were ambushed by the army and accused of being terrorists.They
were separately torturedand killed, not far from where they had so triumphantly
performed during carnivaljust one year before.

Conclusion
The radicalization of pumpin in the province of Victor Fajardoat the outbreakof
the Shining Path guerrilla war lay at a powerful intersection of social and
aesthetic dramas, to borrow terms first introduced by the ritual studies of Victor
Turner (1974) and Richard Schechner (1993). Old ritual practices, such as the
informal gatherings for courtship and competition on the Waswantu Plateau,
gave way to a new community ritual in the concurso, where emergent ideas and
political projects were presented and debated in the dialogic performance space
of a formal contest. At the same time, discourses of modernization and develop-
ment fueled the rise of the Shining Path and created a breach with traditional
forms of social organization and political loyalties. Continuities and changes in
pumpin's song form, thematic material and context reflected both social and
aesthetic considerations. "Ritual performance", writes Schechner, "is especially
powerful because it equivocates, refusing to be solely aesthetic (for looking
only) or social (committed to action now); rituals ... draw their power from
both" (1994:629). The Shining Path's success in redirecting that power to
revolutionary ends arose from their ability to influence aesthetic factors in
pumpin performance (through the success of Sirenitas and other conjuntos allied
with the party), as well as social trends due to their brief political power in
the province.
Revolutionary song performances in and of themselves were rarely transpar-
ent statements of propagandaby the guerrillas, as their out-of-context quotation
in many works on the Shining Path might imply, nor were they organic expres-
sions of peasant rebelliousness and supportfor the revolution. Rather,composers
and musicians were drawn to perform radical songs for a multitude of reasons
that often were only indirectly related to the Shining Path, including town rival-
ries, ties of family or friendship and hope of victory in the concursos. The
presence of political protest songs that eschewed the rhetoric of armed struggle
also suggests that sectors of the population accepted and supported the Shining
Path's critique of the Peruvian state without supporting the guerrillas' war to
topple it. When performers did sing intentionally in support of the Shining Path,
we must also question how often fear and obligation were the prime motivators.
Consequently, to acknowledge the major influence of Shining Path militants and
guerrillas on the transformation of pumpin in Fajardo is not to imply that this
radicalization was paralleled by a similar change in popular political sentiment.
Much like the Andean sirena, the legacy of these once seductive and still power-
ful songs is ambiguous, neither entirely positive nor negative in the memory of
people in Fajardotoday.
Finally, I will conclude by pointing out that playing with carnival is risky and
frequently ends with unintended consequences. The efforts of the local elite in
the mid-1970s to channel carnival exuberance into a more respectable form, the
concurso, quite unintentionally created a space where that energy was funneled
into revolutionary activity. Likewise, Shining Path efforts to politicize the space
of the concurso eventually spun out of their control. In 1983 violence in the
region prevented the celebration of carnival in any form, but by the following

year Fajardino refugee and migrant communities in Lima were sponsoring

concursos, and the first contests were held again in Fajardoin 1986. Testimonial
songs protesting the brutality of the army replaced calls for revolution, and the
concursos became the principal site of commemoration and social memory for
Fajardinos throughout and following the years of violence. Exactly twenty years
after the revolution was announced by the Little Sirens with the song "Situaci6n
Internacional",political sympathies had reversed. In the late afternoon sun at the
2000 Waswantu concurso, a conjunto from Huancapi nearly provoked a riot
when one of their members began dancing wrapped in the red flag of the
Shining Path. Order was restored and laughter ensued when one of the singers
pulled out a plastic machine gun and shot the "senderista", singing "We thank
our President, who has pacified the terrorists" as she jumped up and down on
him. Even the "theatre of war" that was a hallmark of the Shining Path had
turned against them.
Acknowledgements
Research for this article was conducted under the auspices of grants from the
International Studies Overseas Program at UCLA, the Fulbright Institute for
InternationalEducation and the Wenner Gren Foundation, all of which the author
gratefully acknowledges. Special thanks also go to Rail Romero and the Centre
for Andean Ethnomusicology in Lima, Peru, for providing me with an institu-
tional home, friendship and advice, scholarly and otherwise, during my stay
in Peru. Zoila Mendoza, Ponciano del Pino, Sonia Seeman, Angeles Sancho-
Velazquez, Dennis Claxton and Alice Hunt read drafts of this article and
provided extremely helpful commentary. Finally and most importantly, I would
like to thank the many composers, musicians and community members in
Fajardo who bravely shared their lives and stories with me.
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Note on the author

Jonathan Ritter is currently a doctoral candidate in ethnomusicology at the
University of California, Los Angeles. He has conducted fieldwork in numerous
communities throughout the United States, Central America and the Andes,
including most recently 18 months in Ayacucho, Peru. His dissertation explores
the role of musical performance in fomenting, contesting and, today,
remembering the political violence that rocked Ayacucho in the 1980s and early
'90s. Address: 11809 Darlington Ave #6, Los Angeles, CA 90049, USA; email:
jlritter@ucla.edu.


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Siren Songs: Ritual and Revolution in the Peruvian Andes

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In May 1980 the "Peruvian Communist Party-Shining Path" declared war on

BRITISH JOURNAL OF ETHNOMUSICOLOGYVOL. 11/i 2002 pp. 9-42

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Figure1 Mapof AyacuchoDepartment,Peru,and its provinces

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though it hardly begins to address the complex situatedness of each of these

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classically structuralist terms as condensed symbols of local religious and

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practices that were engendered by song contests and revolutionary organizing

4 Compadreand comadreare male and femaleterms,respectively,in the fictive kinship

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Contour heights in metres

Figure2 Mapof centralFajardoprovincewherepumpinis performed

strident indigenous style, pumpin's instrumentationand overall aesthetic differs

6 Reasonsforthedistinctivenatureof pumpinaredifficultto pinpoint.Oralhistoryin Fajardo

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Figure3 Jose Palominoplays guitarduringan aporque de mafz in Colca, Fajardo

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author at an aporque de mafz in Colca on 18 January,2001.

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Figure4 Carnivalrevelryafterthe flawinapay in Colca,Fajardoprovince,February2001

Every Sunday,at least duringthe months of Januaryand February,we would

7 Thenotionof thepunaas a "wild"placewheresocialtaboosdo notholdis commonto the

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gifts, the Colquinas giving tuna and the Cayarinasand Huancapinasgiving

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guano boom of the mid-nineteenth century, which briefly created a market on

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Figure5 A contemporary duringa carnival

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Changes in thematic materialwere even more dramatic.Contest rules required

The Shining Path

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Siren songs: a radicalmoment in pumpin

l FloresGalindohas arguedthatthe ShiningPathwas initiallymost successfulin zones

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revolutionary lyrics emerged. Arturo,12a student in Huancapi in the late 1970s,

"Jos6 Carlos",pumpin song sung by students in Huancapi in the late 1970s

Josd Carlos, alma proletaria Jos6Carlos,proletariansoul

No nosfalta valor ni coraje We arenot shorton valouror courage

Llaqtarunarikcharillasunita We the peoplemustawaken

12 All namesof individualsin thissectionof thearticlearefictitious.

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"Centenario de la Guerra del Pacifico", written and performed by "Sirenitas

Pachak watatahiamPeruninchik cumplen Our Peru is now celebratinga hundredyears

Hermanos Fajardinos imach qunqach- Brothers,Fajardinos,what have we

Chayta yuyaspaymi fiuqa rillachkani I tell this so it is remembered

Luchaspa luchasun Cacerisninchikjina Struggling,we will struggle,like our Ciceres

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Avionchaykipas, misilchaykipas Neither your planes nor your missiles