Brief overview of the musical dialogue between Bolivia and United States [full paper]

Abstract

This paper presents a results overview of the musical relationship between Bolivia and United States in the few last years. In this context, composers like José Velasco Maidana (c. 1899-1989) and Jaime Mendoza Nava (1925-2005) lived in the United States, opening in this way the doors for certain American influence in Bolivia, a country characterized by an appreciation and defense of its original culture. Thus, we show that a meaningful compositional dialogue has been established. One outcome of this dialogue took shape with the Orquesta Experimental de Instrumentos Nativos (OEIN), whose innovative aesthetic positioning, has stimulated an intercultural reflection integrating musical traditions of the Aymara and Western musical language. In the performance field, intercultural projects have been developed from the exchange of musicians and conductors – as the renowned violinist Jaime Laredo (b. 1941), the guitarist Piraí Vaca, or conductor Kenneth Sarch – resulting, for example, the foundation of the Orquesta Sinfónica Juvenil de Santa Cruz de la Sierra (OSJ). In the academic area, Bolivian composers have benefited from initiatives such as the Centro Latinoamericado de Altos Estudios Musicales del Instituto Torcuado Di Tella in Buenos Aires, where received instruction Alberto Villalpando (b. 1940), responsible for the formation of two generations of composers in Bolivia. Thus, technical and aesthetic aspects of musical composition in works resulting from the interdisciplinary dialogue above, were identified and will be presented in this paper.