IN STEREO

One of the largest manifestations [of culture here] is the [carnival] of Oruro. I have had the chance to go twice. [One] time, I saw sixty troupes. And it really is incredible. But the interpretation they do is different, how they dance in the urban and the rural areas. In the urban part, you can really see that they are going to compete for a prize. For contests, I have always seen creativity. They change their steps or modify [the dance]. I do not agree with the interpretation [of] those groups, because there are several things that are not respected. First, clothing. Second, the instruments. When you buy a set of instruments, they have to have the same craftsman, [who] has the same tuning for all instruments. But what happens here is that one comes from one place, another from another place, or it has been borrowed…

And in the end, they don’t understand what they are playing. That is what makes me angry. But when you go to the rural area, it is quite different. There are communities that are composed of old people and it is admirable, what I have seen. They do the original steps. At first, I was radically opposed to what the people of the city interpreted, as it was distorted dance, music, melodies. Before, [I thought] it was very radical. Now I realise how the situation is. Because in reality, as I told you earlier: urban people extract melodies [and] dances, [and] they take out the most representative ‘Bolivian dance’ to Europe, to China. Yes, they stylise it a little – a change of style, a change of clothes – but they take the dances extracted from here. – Lucho