Music of Bolivia

Cover image from Instruments and Music of Bolivia
18" x 24", oil on canvas, 2012

Precisely a year ago I documented in an article called Peters and Pans, the first time I ever painted a pan flute. There must be something about the holiday season that makes me listen to pan flute music because Bolivian pan flutes are back in, 14 pan flutes strong, accompanied by 5 large drums in a tune called Quenita. It's all found on this gorgeous piece of vinyl called Instruments and Music of Bolivia recorded by Bernard Keller for the Ethnic Folkways Library in 1962. As a standard feature of Folkways' records you get a booklet with it containing all the data, information, and photos concerning the music on the record. The photo credits in the booklet of the Bolivian issue go to Foto Linaris. The image I painted from is not in the booklet but found on the front cover of the record. I do not know the ethnic group of the musicians in the painting but the record contains musical examples of the Aymara, Quechua, and Mestizo Indians. Quenita is played by the Aymara. The Aymara call their pan flutes sicus and the pan pipers are known as sicuris. The musicians are displaced, as it has become this year's standard, from the Bolivian sky on the record cover to the trees in my backyard.