Pathways in Becoming a Professional Folklore Musician
Matias Recharte / Phd student Faculty of Music, University of Toronto / m.recharte@mail.utoronto.ca
The “Escuela Nacional Superior de Folklore José María Arguedas”
(ENSF-JMA)
 Located in Lima, Peru
 Founded in 1948 by Rosa Elvira Figueroa
 Publicly funded since 1964, official university status since 2011
 Currently offers degrees in Professional Folklore Artist with specialization in “music”
and “dance” as well as Artistic Education specialized in Folklore.
Historical, geographic and political context.
 Colonialism: Spanish conquistadors topple the Inca empire and found the
Viceroyalty of Peru in 1543.
 Music education was a central component of the evangelization project which sought to convert the
local indigenous population and enslaved peoples brought from other non-European lands into
christianity (Baker, 2008). Non-European music continued to be practiced and developed in rural
areas and through political/religious/cultural resistance movements such as the Taki Onqoy
(Millones, 1990).
 In time, Indigenous, mestizos and peoples of African descent developed their own styles of music
combining local instruments, concepts and aesthetic preferences with European ones.
 Independence: In 1821 a South America-wide revolutionary movement led
by local criollo elites ends colonial rule and inaugurates an independent
Republic of Peru.
 Those who led the revolution remained ambiguous about racial equality and deferred social
changes.
 Public education was seen as a way to bring the masses into modernity through social and
cultural evolution, while indoctrinating them into the new nationalis ideology. Nationalist music
and patriotic songs became the main concern of music education.
 20th century: Indigenismo and the Revolutionary Government of the Armed Forces
(RGAF)
 A new intellectual current centered around the rights and representation of Indigenous peoples
(Indigenismo) in the national political and cultural stage gains importance in the 1920s and 30s.
 Artists and intellectuals pioneer the formation of folkloric canons of indigenous, criollo, mestizo
and Afro-Peruvian styles of music and dance (Mendoza, 2008; Feldman, 2006).
 The Ministry of Education takes up some of the indigenismo concerns and begins nation-wide
programs of bilingual education, ethnographic data collection and a National Folklore Ensemble.
 The RGAF takes power in 1969 and begins an aggressive program of land redistribution,
nationalization of natural resources and an Afro-Peruvian and Indigenous cultural revival.
 Neoliberalism: ”Marca Perú” and the commoditization of diversity.
 Radical economic reforms are initiated in the 1990s to comply with global neoliberal imperatives
of ‘development’.
 Public education is defunded and privatized. Curriculums are geared to productivity and training
of workers/consumers. Arts education practically disappear from national curricula.
 ”Marca Perú” is created as a way to gain a competitive edge’ against other countries in the
tourism industry, attracting foreign investment and providing a platform for Peru’s export industry
(www.peru.info)
 As a result, Perú’s cultural diversity is marketed as a parallel to its biodiversity highlighting its
potential for exploration, exploitation and consumption.
 Schools like the ENSF-JMA have become suppliers of skilled workers for this cultural industry
which thrives on folkloristic representations of Perú’s cultural diversity.
 At the same time, young activists and artists (many of whom are students and recent graduates
from ENSF-JMA) are engaged in decolonial cultural/social/political movements, deconstructing the
received canons and challenging hegemonic notions regarding ‘folklore’, ‘authenticity’ and other
related concepts.
Theoretical framework: Preliminary Research Questions:
 Folklore and National Culture.  How do the students that attend the
 Definitions of ‘Folklore’ starting with the work of Herder (& Bohlman, 2017) and other
historical works on the development of the concept in Europe and its relationship to
ENSF-JMA construct their identities
as “professional folklore
music (Gelbart, 2007; Bohlman, 1988).
 Theory surrounding nationalism and culture such as Hobsbawm’s “The Invention of performers”? What are their
Tradition” (2013[1983]), Anderson’s “Imagined Communities” (2013 [1983]) and “Beyond
Imagined Communities (Sara Castro-Klaren & Chasteen, 2003) thoughts on what that should be and
 Sources from within the ENSF-JMA community and within the country which have their how do these compare to the official
own definitions and genealogies of ‘folklore’ in the work of Roel Tarazona Padilla (2013), view of the educational institution?
Jose Maria Arguedas (1975, 1977) and Jose Peña Ortega (2013).
 How does the concept of folklore
 Historical development of a Peruvian folkloric canon
 Studies that chronicle the formation of distinct repertoires that are now considered
frame what is taught, how it is
canonical, which developed mostly in the first half of the 20th century. taught and who teaches and learns
 The case of Cuzco is described by Zoila Mendoza (2008) while the case of Afro-Peruvian
it? What are the tensions inherent in
music and dance has been chronicled by Heidi Feldman (2006).
 Other works describe the changes in folkloric repertoires through the second half of the the institutionalization of folkloric
20th century as they were affected by mass migration and then rural exodus following the practices?
‘internal armed conflicted’ that killed 69,000 people, mostly indigenous and mestizo (for
example Turino, 1993 and Tucker, 2008).
 How do students’ negotiate ideas
about their identity in terms of
Coloniality/Decoloniality gender/race/sexuality/ethnicity/
Coloniality of power (Quijano, 2000) designates the systems of social, political, cultural and
economic structures that were developed during colonial times and that continue to affect
language, etc. with normative
the ways contemporary postcolonial societies are organized and perceived. identities embedded in the folkloric
Coloniality of power continues to structure macro and micro-scale relationships between canons they learn to perform?
regions, countries, societies, social groups and individuals.
Racial categories were formed during the colonial period and they continue -albeit in  What is the role of a professional
historically modified ways- to inform cultural systems of expression through what Bohlman folkloric musician in Peru and how
and Radano call the “racial imagination” (2000).
Decoloniality names the practices of cultural, political and economic resistance to the
does that function within neoliberal
imposition of a colonial system of government and an Eurocentric worldview. These practices conceptions of diversity and
originated at the moment of the colonial encounter and continue today in forms that have multiculturalism?
sometimes been called “folkloric”.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
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Arguedas, Jose Maria. 1977. Nuestra Musica Popular Y Sus Interpretes. Lima: Mosca Azul editores.
 Symbolic capital (Bourdieu, 1984) refers to the accumulated resources a person can -----------------------------. 1977b. Formación De Una Cultura Nacional Indoamericana. Mexico: Siglo
Veintiuno Editores. Peña Ortega, Jose. 2013.
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