Increasingly popular in the United States and Europe, Andean panpipe and
flute music draws its vitality from the traditions of rural highland
villages and of rural migrants who have settled in Andean cities. In
Moving Away from Silence, Thomas Turino describes panpipe and flute
traditions in the context of this rural-urban migration and the
turbulent politics that have influenced Peruvian society and local
identities throughout this century.
Turino's ethnography is the first large-scale study to concentrate on
the pervasive effects of migration on Andean people and their music.
Turino uses the musical traditions of Conima, Peru as a unifying thread,
tracing them through the varying lives of Conimeos in different locales.
He reveals how music both sustains and creates meaning for a people
struggling amid the dramatic social upheavals of contemporary Peru.
Moving Away from Silence contains detailed interpretations based on
comparative field research of Conimeo musical performance, rehearsals,
composition, and festivals in the highlands and Lima. The volume will be
of great importance to students of Latin American music and culture as
well as ethnomusicological and ethnographic theory and method.