MUSIQUE AYMARA DE BOLIVIE
AYMARA MUSIC FROM BOLIVIA
Enregistrements réalisés par M. Louis Girault - Prix Liotard 1958
BAM, no date, LD 355
(Editions de la Boite à Musique)
The music on this short 33rpm is perharps the first traditional music recorded in the field I have ever listened to. I was quite young (maybe 5 years old) and it is maybe thanks to this album that I took up the kena a few years later. My parents had bought this disc because there was a kind of craze in France for Latin stuff in the 50's. But the music here is far from what people used to like : Los Machucambos, Los Guaranis and the likes; no, it is pure music from the Bolivian Altiplano recorded between 1953 and 1957 by the ethnologist L. Girault for the French CNRS. The prize mentionned on the cover was awarded each year by the President of France to the best field trip.
There is no date on the cover; since the prize was awarded in 1958 I suppose that the year of release was 1958 or 1959.
The publisher warned the listener about the bad sound quality due to difficult conditions but because of the rarity and ethnomusicological interest of these recordings it was important to release this disc.
I don't think you need to be an ethnomusicologist to be touched and impressed by these musicians and their culture.
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