Chuquimamani-Condori announces new booklet and songs from Los Thuthanaka; plays unreleased tracks on WNXP

Chuquimamani-Condori announced that Los Thuthanaka will release a new booklet and set of music titled “Waq’a” on April 3, and shared unreleased music Friday night on Nashville public radio station WNXP.

You can listen back to the set in the audio above.

The booklet, “Waq’a,” is about the birth of the sun or the birth of the “mundo en policia” (policed world). Chuquimamani-Condori and brother Joshua Chuquimia Crampton make up Los Thuthanaka and are Aymara, the indigenous people of the Andes. The myth comes from old oral histories and traditional Aymara ceremonies. “I grew up hearing it and our version is an assemblage of every version we could find,” they said.

The booklet will be accompanied by a three-song set of music: Two songs before the creation of the sun and one song about the implied ending. The music will be instrumental, featuring Los Thuthanaka’s signature musical layering and repetition.

“Everything before there was any time. It’s undifferentiated, like the ocean. And these repetitions start happening. It’s like a humming and the song gets louder and louder and it generates heat and color and it generates so much heat that by accident the star is born,” said Chuquimamani-Condori.

“And in that moment when the star’s born, we see each other for the first time. But it’s sad because we’re also separated for the first time. And so there’s that bittersweet moment right before everything’s burned up by the sun.”

For now, the book will be released in Aymara and not in English because as Chuquimamani-Condori observes:  “nobody asks why not in Aymara when an English text gets made.” It was put together by Shana Inofuentes and Eber Miranda with Ch’ama Native Americas.

In the DJ set, Chuquimamani-Condori played previously unreleased edits that mixed music from Bob Seger, Jason Aldean and “probably my favorite artist of all time” Vince Gill, along with Andean folk musicians Picaflor de los Andes, Los Walys, and Grupo Juventud among others.

“Waq’a” will be released as a PDF and CD via Bandcamp on April 3.