Santiago at last

Santiago has arrived. The biggest festival of the many that take place every year here in Huancayo. The streets are full of people dancing and  parading around and holding up traffic and each accompanied by a Folk Orchestra playing traditional Santiago tunes.

I love the orchestras. One violin, one harp, perhaps a drum and at least a dozen, perhaps 30 saxophones. There is of course no way on earth to hear the violin or harp once the Saxes start up. It's a magnificent wall-of-sound experience and they play and play and play (and drink) and play some more. They really earn their money.
The sad new is that the family orchestra "Los Principes" has had a family feud and split into two orchestras "Los Principes de Huancayo" and "Los Super Principes de America" . So we can't contract one set of uncles to play without offending the other set of uncles. I don't know what argument they had but I hate to see them separate like this.
We did in fact get to see both orchestras perform on the first day of Santiago, and both are excellent, but together would have been even better.
A Santiago party here is at least a two day event. Starting with a communal guinea pig breakfast and drinks before drinks and dancing at the start house, followed by dancing along the streets to a series of different houses, or the street outside at least, for drinks and more music and dancing, followed by drinks and lunch and more dancing and drinks on the way to the site of the main stage where the serious drinking can start and more dancing and drinks. That carries on into the night, although Michael, Rocio and I went home early.
The following morning it's beer and coca leaf for breakfast and sitting around or dancing and drinking until it's time to dance the way back to the main stage for more drinking and dancing. The music during the day is some of my favourite from Santiago, a sub-set called Tayta Shanti or Shakatan, this is played my a trio of violin, wakra and small hand drum the Tingya. This time the violin leads and can be heard. The Wakra which plays introductions (improvised I think) is a long trumpet-like instrument make from a series of connected cows' horns and is loud and earthy and wonderful. I am hoping Rocio will buy me one but it is big and I am not sure how to get it onto the plane.
By the next morning things are starting to get a little boozy and the dancing a little uncoordinated but you really do have to admire the stamina of Peruvian party goers as they drink some more and do their best.

Through all of this drinking the music continues uniformly excellent. I find the local folk music quite moving and soulful. It's a Huancayo soul, it's earthy and straight forward, and that's what I love. There are so many many forms of folk music here and each has it's history and traditions and costumes and dances and times of year to be played etc. Each form is itself a large repertoire of tunes and each one is gradually being expanded by new tunes being written and becoming popular and so becoming part of the tradition.  We have nothing in England that can compare at all with this example of living folk music.  Our lovely tradition of Morris tunes and dances is quite tiny in comparison, and it's not so much a living traditon as a maintained historical event. Northumbrian pipes are so very beautiful and still being written for, but they don't have a tradition of dances and costumes and times of year to go with the, Santiago isn't my favourite style of music from Huancayo, though I like it a lot, but it's up there with the best. Santiago is up-beat, drunken and relentless. There are other styles that are slow, very sad and very dignified, and others that are jolly and more fun. And so many more.
And in all of that I am only talking about one city and surroundings in Peru, and Peru is a big country and the traditions change from one place to another. In the next city along the Andes, Huancavalica, they have a whole world of other traditions and tunes and dances. Peru is amazing.