South and Central America

archeology to today

gallery contents

Mesoamerica
'115-musician - prehispanic clay idols' - culture not known

gold figure
details not known

1514 The 19 ships that sailed from Andalucia, Spain, commanded by Pedro Arias Dávila, was the largest
and most richly supplied ever sent to America….the fleet arrived in June 1514 at the tropical jungle of the Urabá Gulf
(on the border between Colombia and Panama)…at least sixteen professional musicians were on board,…
Additionally, there were three minstrels who played the pipe and tabor (tamborino):
Alonso Barba
Diego de León tamborino, (instrument maker)
Benito de Bejer tamborino, pífaro/pífano

'Trumpets, Gold, Minstrels and Death Music and the Armada of Pedro Arias Dávila in Castilla de Oro (Eastern Panama- Northwest Colombia),
1513-31' by Egberto Bermúdez

1514 “Music was performed for the Spanish governors in the privacy of their own households and most maintained
a group of minstrels who played instruments like the harp, pipe and tabor bagpipe and the Moorish xabeba.
In 1514 such a group was present in the retinue of Pedrarias Davila, a nobleman from Avila who was
governor of Castilla de Oro."

‘Music and musicians in Renaissance cities and towns’, 2001

1758 "“our cavalcade entered the town ... and every house resounded with the noise of trumpets,
tabors, and pipes. ..." Before feasts they " select a number of Indians who are to be the dancers ...
The music is a pipe and tabor, and the most extraordinary of their motions some awkward capers;
in short, the whole is little to the taste of an European. ...then one of them plays on a pipe and tabor,
whilst others dance, as they call it, though it is not more than moving confusedly from one side to the other,
without measure or order.”

Antonio de. Ulloa in 1758 'A voyage to South America ..'

Argentina

player

21st century

South America with dancers
South America religious procession
South America with solo male dancer

video Txistu from Banfield

Bolivia

1750-1830 playing for morenada dancers
during a Catholic church festival, Potosi

player 19th century Aymara Indians

1841-1869 'Album of landscapes,
human types and customs of Bolivia'

1841-1869 'Album of landscapes, human types and customs of Bolivia'

1876 Copacabana

1942 Aymara Indians (page 175)

1948 photograph page 627

1954-1970
playing for the Wititi dance, Umala

The highlands that occupy an important part of western Bolivia and southern Peru … are inhabited
mainly by the Aymara people. Aymara musicians build and use half a dozen one-handed flutes. Of them,
perhaps the most popular is a variety of pinkillo known as waka-pinkillo (name translated as
"pin-killo/flute of the bull"). It is an aerophone made with a segment of suqusa or sokhosa cane,
equipped with three fingering holes (two front and one rear), with the distal end open and the proximal
end covered by a piece of wood (called "tapatira" or "qallu") that forms the aeroduct.
Snare
The drum is equipped with a chirlera. This is a rope with thorns, splinters of cane or wooden rods,
placed on the non-struck head, which serves to cause a buzzing sound.

Pincullo is also called pincollo, pinvollo, pinquillo, pincuillo opingollos and in Quichua aymará pinkiyllu, pinkillo

It adopts different sizes and diameters. It is used especially in carnival and in the past it was used in combat
to produce a hellish noise and frighten the enemy. In today’s Bolivian and Peruvian Andes, pinkullu or pinkillu
duct flute performance is exclusively male, strongly associated with courtship and usually restricted to the rainy
growing season between All Saints (November) and Carnival (February or March). The instrument’s sound
is widely claimed to attract rain and to cause the crops to grow.

The name applies equally to the three-hole pipe, played with a drum by a single player, or to five-, six- or seven-
hole duct flutes which are typically played in consort.

2014

player in the fields

	Waka Pinquillo the duct flute of Bolivia. It is made of cane about 45 to 50 cm long and 2.5 cm in diameter, with two fingerholes and one thumbhole, and a square opening at the duct. Overblowing produces multiple harmonics.
Waka Pinquillo

Waka pinquillo

in Ayata

Ilabaya , Feast of the Lord of Sweet Name of Jesus
on Eden on Earth, January.
[ Gutierrez William - Audiovisual Images]

playing for dancing at Santiago de Huata

c.1927 Chiriguano, in Salinas near Tarija

2006 horn and tabor in a parade page 48

Quenillero and drum

Kunfur pinquillo
(condor flute) or quri pinkilly (golden flute)
from Ayllu Macha, northern Bolivia.
photog Henry Stobart

1876 panpipes and drum
La Paz

1878 Celebrating the Chuno or Potato Festival, Tiahuanaco, Bolivia, from 'Incidents of Travel and Exploration in the Land of the Incas' by E. George Squier

Brazil

1848 An English tourist wrote:

“In the evening we had more visitors. The sounds of pipe and tabor were heard, and presently a procession
of villagers emerged from a pathway through the mandioca fields. ... The pipe and tabor were of the simplest
description. The pipe was a reed pierced with four holes, by means of which a few unmusical notes were produced,
and the tabor was a broad hoop with a skin stretched over each end. A deformed young man played both
the instruments.”

'a Voyage on the river Amazon' by H W Bates:

Chile

1842 Playing in a band for maypole dancing
miners of Huantajaya

close-up of player

Indigenous and mestizo miners, farmers, and fishermen express their faith by dancing to the sound of traditional
flutes and drums. This sound, also made by the flutes
found in archeological sites, has survived despite 500
years of domination as an expression of indigenous
cultural resistance.

source

2008 annual three-day religious festival, Festival of the patron Saint Peter in the Marka de Atacama - the player runs after the bull whilst still playing.