Framing culture: VCD music videos and the politics of genre in the Peruvian Andes

ABSTRACT

Since the early 2000s, video compact discs (VCDs) have come to occupy a prominent position in the Andean musical world and making music videos has become an ordinary and expected activity for many traditional and popular musicians. While the widespread uptake of VCD technology itself occurred with little comment or controversy, the material affordances of this new technology have fuelled contestation about aesthetics, culture and identity. Focusing on the production of santiago music videos in Huancayo, Peru, this article investigates the impact of this technological shift on genre conventions and genre politics. The article examines how cultural producers have harnessed, resisted and debated the possibilities of VCD music videos, as well as how genres have been discursively (re)constructed in the process. The article argues that the possibilities afforded by new visual technologies and emerging markets have been a driving force behind recent processes of genre-fication, whether in the service of perpetuating tradition or being part of the next big thing.

KEYWORDS:

• Music video
• genre
• digital technology
• Folklore
• Andes
• Peru

Acknowledgements

I am extremely grateful to the musicians and producers that gave up their time to talk to me as part of this research. Special thanks go to Antonio, Rosario and Lenin Ramos of Producciones Ramos. I wish to thank Henry Stobart for his support and sage advice at various stages of the research as well as Chloe Alaghband-Zadeh for her comments on an earlier version of this article. I also gratefully acknowledge the support of the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

James Butterworth is a British Academy Postdoctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Music at the University of Oxford, UK and was previously a Postdoctoral Research Associate on the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council-funded project ‘Performing Hip Hop Englishness’ at the University of Cambridge. He completed his PhD in Ethnomusicology at Royal Holloway University of London in 2014. His research focuses on popular and folkloric music in Peru, rap culture in the United Kingdom and music in prisons.

Notes

1 For discussion of VCD culture elsewhere, see Barendregt and van Zanten (2002) for Indonesia, Harris (2005) for China’s Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous region, Langlois (2009) for Morocco, Morcom (2008, 2015) for Tibet and Stobart (2010, 2011, 2016) for Bolivia.

2 Music, often more so than other cultural domains, has long been an important source of Andean identity for migrants moving from the highlands to Lima and other coastal cities (see Romero 2001; Tucker 2013b; Turino 1993). Folkloric artists from the northern and southern Andes do perform santiago from time to time but it is rarely part of their core repertoire.

3 Orquestas típicas are ensembles associated with the central Peruvian Andes and are made up of several or more saxophones, a couple of clarinets, a violin and a harp. They regularly feature in festivals and processions throughout the region and perform in a wide range of styles (see Romero 2001).

4 For example, a santiago called ‘Toril’ appears on the 1988 album Peru–Guitara by the Ayacuchan guitarist Raúl García Zárate.

5 Stobart (2016) observes a strikingly similar family dynamic and division of expertise at CG Records in Cochabamba, Bolivia.

6 In Huancayo, I have not encountered the use of green-screen technology, as discussed by Stobart (2011) in relation to Bolivian music videos.

7 This is the same camera used by CG Records in Cochabamba, Bolivia, and discussed by Stobart (2016).

8 While consumers rarely experience videos in high definition, labels regularly boast about the high-definition capabilities and even when videos are uploaded to YouTube and similar sites they tend to use much lower resolutions than high definition. However, technological access is continually changing and over the last five years I have been aware of more and more high-definition folkloric music videos uploaded to YouTube.

9 For a discussion of the importance of landscape in music videos, see Morcom (2015) for Tibet and Stobart (2016) for Bolivia.

10 One botanical report records the limalima having been found at 4400 and 4700 metres (Yarupaitán Galván and Castillo 2004).

11 Such taxonomies are not universally applicable, as in other contexts and geographical locations forms of huayno are perceived to be costumbre.

12 Huaylas is an upbeat dance, which is musically derived from huayno and is associated with el centro.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Arts and Humanities Research Council [grant number AH/H029958/1, AH/G014892/1].