In the 1960's, Andean music (Colombia, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Argentina, and Chile) spread across the world, but primarily to the United States and Western Europe. Of these countries, France was mainly influenced.
The Andean States
"By 1973, when Quilapayún and other Chilean Nueva Canción musicians began relocating to Europe as political refugees of General Augusto Pinochet's right-wing military regime, Andean folkloric-popular music had a well-established market in Europe, particularly in France. This greatly facilitated the subsequent international success of many exiled Chilean musicians, an important factor virtually ignored in the vast literature on the socially conscious Nueva Canción movement."
Many people fled to the United States and Europe because of military stress. The government was reigning down hard on the people and they sought asylum in other countries, away from the boiling turmoil. By moving to the new countries, they were able to bring there new music with them and largely influence the musical scene.
"Contrary to what one might expect, artists from Chile and/or the Andean countries (Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru) did not play a key role in the initial diffusion of Andean music to Europe. Until the 1970s, Andean music folklorists based in Europe hailed mainly from metropolitan Buenos Aires, Argentina, the so-called Paris of South America."
In the beginning, much of the influence came from the "Paris of South America." Over time, more influence came from countries like Chile and Peru, but that was later on the timetable, around the 1970's.
"Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel's "El Condor Pasa" (If I Could) single introduced many North Americans to Los Incas, who accompanied the duo on this 1970 release and, a few years later, toured with Simon as Urubamba. Before these collaborations took place, however, Los Incas - Paris's first Andean folkloric-popular music ensemble - already had garnered recognition in France. By 1970, the group had recorded several albums, appeared on a film soundtrack and played at the famed Olympia theater."
Simon and Garfunkel took these influences and exploited the new traditions they brought. The new influences added a new depth to their music. They were of the top of music charts across the world, not just in the US. With this new depth, also came a new group of people that would listen to their music. With a broader audience, more influence was made.
"Despite the presence of Peruvian and especially Bolivian musicians in Buenos Aires, by far the best known ensemble that interpreted the music of the Andes in this metropolitan milieu during the 1940s and 1950s was the Argentine group, Los Hermanos Ábalos. This famous ensemble directly influenced Paris's Los Incas."
As stated earlier, the main influence did not come from Peru or Ecuador, but from the southern countries, particularly Argentina. Los Hermanos Ábalos is a prime example of a group from Agentina that made a large influence, particularly in France. They had heavy influence on another group called Los Incas.
"Los Incas, like Los Hermanos Ábalos and modernist-cosmopolitan modified non-cosmopolitan upper-class urban audiences, folklorists in general, throughout their career rural musical traditions to appeal to middle and using standard folkloric performance practices not typical of Andean indigenous highland communities (e.g., equal temperment tuning versus flexible intonation, clear instrumental timbre instead of dense tone quality, presentational approach rather than participatory ethos)."
Los Incas was much like Los Hermanos Ábalos. They ventured away more from the Adnean indigenous highland style music, by using equal temperment and clear instrumental timbre, but still kept many of the core values associated with Andean music.
"At this locale, and on widely issued recordings, Los Hermanos Ábalos played Andean genres with a kena, charango, guitar, and bombo drum. This mixed-instrument configuration, later canonized as the preeminent lineup worldwide for Andean folkloric-popular music ensembles (usually known as conjuntos), was novel at the time in Argentina, Chile, and the Andean countries. For Los Hermanos Ábalos's Andean numbers (only part of the group's total repertory), the siblings played their own works, such as "Bailecito Quenero" (Bailecito for the Kena) and "Carnavalito Quebradeño (Carnavalito of the Mountain Pass), and compositions by other authors, including the yaraví "Dos Palomitas" (Two Little Doves) and Ruiz Lavadenz's huayño "Hasta Otro Día" (Until Another Day) (Victor Ábalos, p.c.; Los Grandes del Folklore: Los Hermanos Ábalos 1991)."
The instruments that Los Hermanos Ábalos used with traditional Andean instruments. This led to a large influence in Europe and the United States because of unique instruments. More people had never heard these instruments before and it struck a chord with them, pun intended.
These are all quotes taken directly from the article "La Flûte Indienne: The Early History of Andean Folkloric-Popular Music in France and Its Impact on Nueva Canción" by Fernando Rios. Images were taken from wikipedia articles respectively.
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