A comprehensive undertaking by a couple of Peruvian musicians and researchers in Dimitri Manga Chávez and Ricardo López Alcas, the debut album by the duo Pacha Wakay Munan explores the sonic possibilities of pre-Hispanic instruments almost too numerous to mention, including pututos a type of ceremonial trumpet made from conch shells, antaras those ceramic pan flutes which were native to the Nazca culture and later Chimú whistling vessels.
Drawing not only upon traditional instruments – whose sounds are a matter of interpretation more than meticulous reconstruction, owing to the absence of written scores or other performance records – but from ceremonies and chants and other concepts native to Andean music, if any of this sounds flighty or academic then Pacha Wakay Munan resolutely turn their palette to contemporary ends, resulting in an album which at times touches upon everything from free jazz and the Afro-Cuban tradition to new age and neoclassical composition, heavy metal or batida and baile funk among other cutting-edge dance trends.
In this sense Pacha Wakay Munan add another string to the impressive bow which is being wielded by Buh Records, the Lima independent label which has released acclaimed works by Ale Hop and Laura Robles, Ballet Mecánico and Perkutao as well as compilations by Oksana Linde and trailblazing figures like Cergio Prudencio and Eduardo Polonio, the esteemed Bolivian composer and Spanish electroacoustic pioneer.
Take for instance ‘El Taki Onkoy’ the second track from El tiempo quiere cantar, which features the voice of Ximena Menéndez and sounds like the Black Sabbath classic ‘Iron Man’ as rasping winds accompany ritual chanting. In fact while ‘Iron Man’ revolves around themes of apocalypse and rejection, ‘El Taki Onkoy’ explicitly refers to the sixteenth-century ‘dancing sickness’, a political, spiritual and cultural movement which arose in the Peruvian Andes in response to the arrival of the Spanish colonisers, with Pacha Wakay Munan’s song based on a Kulina chant as documented by the German-Peruvian musicologist Rodolfo Holzmann.
Or take the flowing keys and ceramic tones of ‘Mundo Posible’ featuring Chalena Vásquez Rodríguez on the piano, a transgressive piece which sounds like a variation on parlour music or Beethoven’s famous Piano Sonata No. 14, the so-called Moonlight Sonata as those keys and hissing yet harmonious ceramics are steadily buffeted by a percussive clangour. Sharp rattles like from a shekere or cabasa seem to drive the pace, before honking sirens sound their alarm as if to herald the climax of the piece, in the manner of the notorious ‘Fire’ or ‘Mrs. O’Leary’s Cow’ from the Smile sessions.
Across the eight tracks of El tiempo quiere cantar the quijada or jawbone and transverse flutes made out of pelican bone, bombo sikuri and wankara drums, ceramic rattles, seed shakers and small cajón, siku panpipes and traditional Andean tarka flutes or quena flutes made out of both clay and bamboo, plus tinkling bronze bells and the circular footsteps of the zapateado add texture and rhythmic impetus.
Together the duo have just a handful of prior credits to their name, with Dimitri Manga Chávez playing the deep-toned quenacho and panpipes while also contributing to the choir on the Peruvian group El Polen’s late nineties fusion album Signos e Instrumentos and providing accompaniment for the 2020 compilation Los Cantos del Kené which featured various vocalists in the recitation of Shipibo-Conibo chants.
Shrill and at times almost ear-piercing whistles and howls frame ‘Machu Tara’, which otherwise blends precipitous pan flutes with marching band snares. Then on ‘Túpac Huaca’ the pulses and oscillations of pututos and whistling vessels together with woodsy quenas fan out around a strong tribal rhythm, which cedes around the halfway point of the composition to an interlude of feral call-and-response yips and yowls.
The effect is like something out of The Wizard of Oz before the beat resumes in polyrhythmic fashion, now punctuating both sides of the mix, with ‘Túpac Huaca’ billed as a reference to the Casa de Aliaga in the historic centre of Lima, a colonial-style mansion which has been in the same family for seventeen generations and was originally built on a huaca, the Quechua term for a sacred object or revered patch of land.
From its watery, cave-dwelling beginnings ‘Agua, Cuarzo y Viento’ proves to be one of the more airy and spacious pieces on the record, its quartz bowls as played by Orieta Chrem adding body and resonance to the song’s otherwise wispy and spectral bird cries or hooting owls. With a sense of purpose ‘Sinkura y Nasca’ delivers a brash interplay of shrill winds and martial drums, before ‘Qinray Tema’ from its muffled opening turns ever more sinuous, like the Aguirre soundtrack by Popol Vuh with its picaresque pan flute, flowing water and communal tread.
The song bifurcates as that solitary flute is joined by a throng of woodwinds in various pitches and the steady march of the drums. Camilo Ángeles and Ángel Pantoja enter the fray, adding a modern transverse flute made out of metal to the chorus as the babbling brook of the opening moments is replaced by some vaguely Celtic airs, as though we were now listening to fiddle music with El tiempo quiere cantar shrugging off its learning, remaining curious and experimental as it skips and gambols to a close.
