Music of El Dorado: The Ethnomusicology of Ancient South American Cultures (review)

Abstract

The musics of pre-Columbian civilizations have fascinated musical scholars since the nineteenth century. Significant works include the d'Harcourts' 1925 study that combined information from instruments recovered in [End Page 289] archeological sites along with folk tunes. Their interests covered parts of Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia. André Sas (1935, 1938), a Belgian-Peruvian composer and scholar, studied ancient instruments of the Inca and Nazca to refute the d'Harcourts' claims of exclusive pentatonicism. Jiménez Borja (1951) included iconic sources in his study of instruments. Stevenson (1968) combined the study of ancient instruments with analysis of literary sources, including colonial chronicles and dictionaries of Indian languages. Music of El Dorado: The Ethnomusicology of Ancient South American Cultures represents the culmination of Olsen's years of scholarship on the music of ancient cultures in South America. In the introduction the author focuses on all the cultures prior to the Spanish conquest that spanned the length of the Andes mountains from Venezuela to Tierra del Fuego. In practice, however, the data are generally limited to information from Venezuela, Colombia, and Peru. About ancient music, Olsen hopes to understand "who made music, where it was made, how was it made, and why was it made" (Olsen 2002, 7). To uncover this information, the author has developed a methodology rather unique to ethnomusicology: ethnoarchaeomusicology. Visually, the model is a cross with four areas of inquiry: music archeology, iconology, history, and ethnographic analogy. Each area focuses on a different kind of data and consequently each area has its own methodology.