On Different Ways of Being an Indio Músico in the Viceroyalty of Peru

Spanish American cities and pueblos de indios in the Viceroyalty of Peru had a variety of formal and informal institutions and occasions in which indios músicos –indigenous musicians– performed. Music chapels, congregations and fiestas displaying imperial and religious power, among other scenarios, integrated these subjects in individual and collective ways, and created particular colonial identities. Indios músicos involved in colonial practices were not just part of "hispanization", since learning western music was highly specific among indios and therefore provided indio artists with unique social leverage. And even if an indio musician may have had a somewhat similar experience in different places and contexts, performing in a Cathedral of a central and relevant city like Lima did not have the same social implications as belonging to the musical chapel of a town subject to the rotating encomienda regime, as was, for example, the case in the pueblos de indios of Paraguay. Scholars have grouped Indios músicos as a collective, and the mention of such individuals as músico, cantor and maestro de música in colonial documents pinpoints a variety of roles and status which helped to build particular identities that are difficult to grasp from the present. Furthermore, not all were exempt from working in their communities or had the same privileges. These subtleties raise questions about identity and its relation to labor and status, which I intend to discuss in a comparative manner, considering different scenarios –cities and pueblos de indios scattered in the vast territory of the Viceroyalty of Peru– and drawing on specific case studies from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.