The Offbeat Music of Peru
Posted by adminRAFAEL entered the hallway and sank into a chair. We’ve been recording for hours and I’ve never had a session like it, he said. Instead of just sitting down and playing the usual accompaniment, I spent the entire afternoon trying to teach the orchestra how to play mountain music.
That shouldn’t be such a task, I said. You are all expert guitarists, and folk music is so simple.
Simple, yes, but have you ever noticed the beat? It’s that beat that gets anyone who hasn’t been raised in the Peruvian mountains.
Well, yes, I’ve noticed that the folk music of Peru is a bit different, but—well, just what is there about the beat?
After every few bars there’s a bar introduced that gets only a fraction of the normal beat. Now this simply isn’t done in music. Any musician knows that a piece of music has just so many bars and each bar a given number of beats, whether it be two, three, four or even more. But not the Peruvian mountain folk music.
Now, just a minute, I said. I know a little about music and I do know that each bar has to conform to the timing in order to have rhythm. There’s nothing more frustrating than playing or singing a piece of music when each bar is not given full value. Are you telling me that . . .?