Lecture 3: Music of the Americas and African-Peruvian Music

African-Peruvian Music

This week we look at a variety of musical styles found throughout the Americas, referring to North America, Central America and South America.

When people think of Peruvian music, they think of pan pipes and the traditional music found among goups living high up on the Andes mountains. However, as early as the 1600s, the Portuguese brought African slaves to Peru, where they worked in the fields and a number of industries mostly located along the Peruvian coastal areas. They remain in Peru and have developed their own unique style of musical performance, which you will learn about in the readings plus the extra credit documentary film, which I produced and which is scheduled for this module.

The African influence in African-Peruvian Music

Perhaps the most important and interesting thing about black Peruvian music is the African influence in the music, mostly found in black Peruvian music. These rhythms are called multiple or interlocking rhythms. In other words, one rhythm is layered on top of another, which is layered on top of another, and so forth. The end results are rhythms that are very complex and certainly contain elements that survive from Africa when the first slaves were brought over.

I hope you enjoy listening to the music and to learning more about the kinds of things that happen to music over a number of years due to broad social influences, such as the condition of slavery.