Siren songs: Ritual and revolution in the Peruvian Andes

Abstract

This article examines the radicalization of carnival practices and music in the Fajardo province of Ayacucho, Peru, at the outset of the Shining Path guerrilla war in 1980. The simultaneous rise of formal song contests and Shining Path organizing in Fajardo cannot be separated in this history as both were key elements in a popular regional discourse of modernization and development. Often interpreted as transparent statements of Maoist propaganda, or, conversely, as organic expressions of Andean peasant rebelliousness, revolutionary song performances are instead positioned here as complex sites where local attitudes to politics and ideology were created, debated and transformed.