Natural Progression : Peruvian Ensemble Celebrates Cultural Mix of Ancient, Modern Music at San Juan Library

Be it harvest or carnival, Mother Earth or Father Sun, most ancient Peruvian music celebrates nature. While newer Peruvian music--say from the 1600s on--focuses more on love and relationships, it retains both the exuberance of the older music and its link with nature.

Right down to the birds and the fleas.

“In a song about desire, a man sings about being jealous of the fleas because he wants the same opportunity to enjoy (his darling’s) company from morning to night,” said Guillermo Bordarampe, director of Inca: The Peruvian Ensemble, the Los Angeles-based group that performs Saturday at the San Juan Capistrano Library.

“Perhaps he’d like to be a hummingbird to be able to absorb the honey of her lips--a very romantic way of saying he’d like to kiss her. In Peruvian music, things are expressed in a very tangential sort of way, but also in a way that is totally fresh.”

Inca’s six musicians and four dancers, who wear traditional Peruvian attire for performances, will present two completely different sets, at 7 and 9 p.m., in the library’s courtyard.

Although the songs are all Peruvian, they draw from a surprisingly diverse geographical, cultural and historical repertory of three basic types: music of ancient peoples such as the Inca, Aymara, Quechua and Uros; criollo music, showing the Hispanic influence after the conquest, and Afro-Peruvian music from the blacks of coastal Peru.

According to Bordarampe, the highly organized, warrior nature of the Incas gained them the upper hand over the agriculturally minded Aymara and Quechua, while the Uros people lived peacefully and undisturbed on a town built of reeds right out on Lake Titicaca.

“Nobody else wanted to live on a floating island,” he surmised.

The black slaves of Peru attained freedom earlier than their counterparts in the United States and subsequently interacted more freely with the indigenous and Hispanic populations. Criollo music arose from the mingling of the natives and Hispanics. “When we play in the schools, the children easily sense the relationships among the three ethnic groups and the mix of musical influences,” said Bordarampe, who works as an interpreter for the Los Angeles County Superior Court. “In Southern California, anything that can bring a sense of peaceful coexistence between ethnic groups is great.”

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There were no string instruments nor any harmony in the ancient music, only flutes, pan pipes and percussion. Aymara music utilizes wooden flutes ( tarkas ) while Incan music uses bamboo flutes ( quenas ). The 10-string charango was later developed from armadillo shells to imitate the Spanish guitar, while the Afro-Peruvian cajon , a plain wooden box that the performer both sits on and plays, now pervades all coastal Peruvian music.

The evolution of instrumentation didn’t stop with the cajon .

“Nowadays they play the ancient music with saxophones, trombones and tuba,” Bordarampe said. “They play ancient huayno rhythms with 30-piece big bands, and it sounds like music from another planet, like music from Mars.”

Bordarampe is not necessarily against such modifications.

“Music is music,” he said. “If you want to change it, it’s up to you--only not if you are trying to sell it as traditional music.

“The music will keep evolving. Peruvian cuisine now reflects the Chinese influence in Peru. How will a Japanese-Peruvian president affect the music?” he said, referring to Alberto Fujimori, who took office in 1991. “How will the guerrilla troops in the Andes affect it? I don’t know. I’ll tell you in a few years.”

Though most members of Inca were born in Peru, its Argentine director is a native of Buenos Aires; his parents were Basque, “from the French side of the Pyrenees.” Bordarampe, 41, developed his taste for the traditional music of Peru as a member of a post-Beatles-era rock group that had earned several gold records in Argentina.

“Between tours, I began spending more and more time in the little Peruvian towns in the (Andes),” Bordarampe said. “I found a link with nature that I didn’t find in other music, something way deep, way back in the roots of the people.

“Knowing this music helps to set my priorities straight. It’s important to have your house and a good car, for instance, but beyond that, is it worth it to work like a maniac and not have time to spend with family or be out exploring nature?

“The ancient way of life was obviously a simpler way of life, and (that music) put me in touch with a very different set of values, “ he said. “(Their) ideas of beauty and spiritual approach to life can still be found in the music.”

* Inca: The Peruvian Ensemble will perform on Saturday at 7 and 9 p.m. in the courtyard at the San Juan Capistrano Regional Library, 31495 El Camino Real, San Juan Capistrano. $3. (714) 493-1752.