Turino (1989) Critical Review #8

Turino's ethnography on the Aymara music ensembles of Conima in Peru highlights a prime example of strong parallels, reflections, and codependencies between musical practice and social practice. The fact that the Aymara perceive their worldview as far from arbitrary and have a strong sense of what is the "natural" way to do things, greatly informs the way music is created, performed, and sustained. It also makes getting the answers to the "why" questions a bit more slippery than usual.

The Aymara social system is based around extreme principles of non-confrontation, conflict avoidance, and solidarity. But within that is factionalism resulting from conflicts unresolvable by consensus, which are first ignored and then become silently divisive. These binary and ternary divisions are directly mirrored in the organization of musical ensembles, and the paradoxical solidarity is embodied by those ensembles' aesthetic priority of creating a single, dense sound.

The social system's emphasis on egalitarianism and inclusion also dictates the behavior of ad hoc ensemble players, players who don't rehearse with the ensemble, but join in the fiesta performances. This necessitates a public acceptance of (or publicly turning a blind eye to) flaws such as ad hoc musicians playing in different tunings or simply not knowing the songs as well. To assist the latter, new compositions utilize phrases considered "stock" for the genre, so ad hoc players can catch on more easily. These new compositions are also created in a communal, non-confrontational setting. Overall, Turino paints a picture of a culture where musical practice is social practice, and vice versa.

Discussion Question: What other cultures come to mind when you think of a close correlation between musical and social practice? Why, and how do they stack up compared to the Aymara?