Music and Dance Reviews : Bolivian Ensemble Presents Quechuan Melodies

With the help of amplification and a few chord progressions and rhythms not necessarily indigenous to the Andes, a jazzed-up version of Quechuan music from Bolivia was handsomely displayed by the quintet Rumillajta (pronounced khoo-mi-YAH-ta) Sunday evening at the Wadsworth Theater.

The native-Bolivian ensemble--Adrian Villanueva, Juan Jorge Laura, Nester Tintayea, Juan Carlos Cordero and Miguel Angel Puna--performed a lively, spirited set of eight original selections, all with short titles such as “The Condor.”

Several different sizes of antaras --a Quechuan form of panpipe--produced a wide range of different sounds from a breathy whisper in which pitch was almost indiscernible to loud reedy blasts executed with such force that wind blew the players’ bangs into the air. Puna, Tintaya and Villanueva huffed and puffed on the antaras , along with other various recorders and flutes, deftly exchanging notes of a melody (much like a hocket) and punctuating with scattered vocalizing and beating on a drum called the bombo.

Laura fluidly provided virtuosic pluckings on his charango , a 10-string mandolin-like instrument made from an armadillo shell. Cordero accompanied on guitar with appropriate strums and passages idiomatic to Latin folk music.

The only glaring shortcoming of the evening was in programing. Rumillajta’s tuneful, rhythmic music, indeed accessible to the ethno-pop world, was awkwardly paired with Brazilian pop crooner-guitarist Dori Caymmi.

Caymmi’s headlined part of the program, broadcast live over jazz radio station KKGO, contained little that matched the originality or virtuosity of Rumillajta. Backed up by a rock quartet, Caymmi hoarsely but sincerely sang a collection of original songs, all in an innocuous, middle-of-the-road pop style.