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Inca Music Reimagined

The Latin American centennial celebrations of independence (ca. 1909–1925) constituted a key moment in the consolidation of national symbols and emblems while also producing a renewed focus on transnational affinities that generated a series of discourses about continental unity. At the same time, a boom in archaeological explorations, within a climate of scientific positivism, provided Latin Americans with new information about their “grandiose” former civilizations, such as the Inca and the Aztec, which some argued as tantamount to ancient Greek and Egyptian cultures. These discourses were at first political, before transitioning to the cultural sphere. Artists and particularly musicians thus began to move away from European techniques and themes, to produce a distinctive and self-consciously Latin American art. Inca Music Reimagined explores Inca discourses as a source for the creation of “national” and “continental” art music during the first decades of the twentieth century, with a concentration on opera by composers from Peru, Ecuador, and Argentina. To understand this process, the author analyzes early twentieth-century writings on Inca music and its origins, describing how certain composers transposed “Inca” techniques into their own works, to conclude with how this music was perceived by local audiences. Ultimately, it is argued that, faced with the difficulties of constructing national unity at the time, the turn to Inca culture and music in pursuit of such unity could only succeed within particular intellectual circles, and that the idea that the inspiration of the Inca could produce a “music of America” would remain utopian.