"Huancavelica" is a live composition. Performed and recorded live direct to mini disck stereo in July of 2004 by Christian Galarreta. The composition is based in the process of a field recording of an andean harp played by an anonymous guy in front of his house in a town at Huancavelica (Peru), also recorded by Christian Galarreta with MD stereo at 2002. you can hear this original field recording in track 2 called "Arpa Andina".

The Andean Harp in Huancavelica is very associated to the "Scissors Dancers", that was a way of resistance of the cult to the Apus (Apu is the mountain¥s spirit, sacred in Andean cosmovision) against the imposition of the Spanish invaders, here you can read an extract of the legend of this dance:
the Wakas rebelled against the Christian West (Spain invaders during colonization ); being embodied in "dan-zaqs" or dancers and in their musicians who possessed by the Andean divinities, they danced in frantic ecstasy, proposing the return of the Old Order and demanding their countrymen not to be subordinated to the "globo-modernity" foreigner... These Apus lives in the hills, rocks, narrow canyons where the "dan-zaqs" go in secret communion with them.
If we consider that the area of operations of the "dan-zaqs" of the Taki Onkoy is bordering to the area of operations of the "Inkas of Vilcabamba" (place where the geste of Manco Inca culminates), then it should be not strange that the priests eradicators of idolatries at the same time that the viceregal troops (Spain King troops) have exercised a contra-subversive function.
Also had already arrived the "Santa Inquisition" administered by the Dominicos (Spanish religious) specialized in demolishing Andean Wakas to build - upon the ruins of this buildings - the calls churches of occidental god, they call that "satanic ritual" (Dan-zaqs) as subversive, because refuting the New Order and also "they invested" the use of European instruments as the violin and the harp ("using them" in other way around: invested ), with a tacit message of liberation. As musician, can I say that the 160 harmonic-melodic movements refer a "invested waltz". would be it perhaps a sarcasm to the goods brought by the invader?
In Ayacucho, Huancavelica and the mountain of Ica (according to Manuelcha Prado, a Dance of Scissors exists with reminiscences afroperuanas), the invaders had prohibited that use the kenas and pinkullus (Andean Instruments), as well as all sound of autochthonous instruments... Then the percussion of the indian way of play the european instruments (harp and violin) ,is "nationalized" in a defiant, obsessive jingle and "magic." The certain thing is that every time that the processions of the Corpus came, the danzaqs made their meetings ("Tinkus") in secret and remote places. There was even the tradition of making a pact with the Apu, dancing until death... and the scissor was an oracle that decided how long it would be the existence of these "andean protest rockers". And it was necessary to blaspheme against that Gospel imposed with torture: the trap, the fork and sword, incompatible with a condemned Pachac·mac (Andean God) to the secrecy.

text and pictures extracted from : http://ecuador.indymedia.org/en/2004/11/7313.shtml
and this web: http://www.musicaperuana.com/arpa/general.htm

Christian Galarreta
www.aloardi.net
www.myspace.com/christiangalarreta
www.myspace.com/ticaticatica
contact:galchrs@yahoo.com

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