In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

4 A Hobby, a Sojourn, and a Job “Can I smoke here?” Takashi Sugiyama asked me somewhat nervously. Sugiyama had been living in Bolivia for thirteen years. I had not met him during my own ongoing interactions with La Paz’s world of musicians, perhaps because Sugiyama located his primary interests in the troupestyle playing that characterizes genres associated with indigenous music from the countryside. While Música de Maestros stages some of these genres, the musical world in which I circulated had more mestizo associations , in genre as well as in personal identifications. Sugiyama prided himself on his connections to a performance scene of Bolivian indigenous music.1 When I finally interviewed him, we met in Música de Maestros ’s rehearsal space on Sajama Street in San Pedro—an apartment in a relatively new building that overlooked a dusty, partially cobble-stoned street, located behind the central post office, behind the hole-in-the-wall ceviche restaurants, and across from a parking lot that, according to contemporary lore, used to be the site of an early twentieth-century bordello. “People who smoke here usually do so by the open window,” I responded, giving Encinas’s rule as I had heard it during numerous rehearsals. “Okay. I’ll wait,” he said politely. When I asked Sugiyama to tell me how he became interested in Bolivian music, he recalled an early childhood interest in flutes—a concert flute at his grandmother’s house in Japan, a recorder ( flauta dulce) he learned to play in school, and even an ocarina that a friend showed him. When he was about twelve, a friend had him listen to a recording he called simply “folklore,” meaning Andean folklore or music that featured quena, zampo ña, and charango. It was a recording of Uña Ramos, the Argentine quena player who played with Urubamba, the ensemble of the Simon and Garfunkel and “El condor pasa” saga. Inspired by Ramos’s playing, Sugiyama began his quena quest. But in the early 1970s, he said, there were no quena instruments, no quena method books, and no quena instructors. So he fashioned his own instrument from bamboo until, six months later, he was able to purchase an Argentine one at a store in Japan. Instrument construction would become one of his passions, as he described the experience of trying to make the perfect quena and of “almost sleeping with bamboo.” 92 Chapter Four A few years later, he formed his first ensemble in Japan, calling it Kantuta , in reference to the Bolivian national flower. At the age of eighteen he had set his sights on traveling to Bolivia. Ernesto Cavour’s performances in Japan during the 1980s may have been key in getting him to shift his attention from Argentina, or a more vague “folklore,” to the specifically national category of “Bolivian” music. He attended Cavour’s concerts in Japan, met the artist personally, and eventually would stay with Cavour for two months upon his initial arrival in La Paz. But getting to Bolivia took longer than Sugiyama had expected. He began to study architecture in Japan, but left this career to work in an odd assortment of jobs, saving his money to make the trip to Bolivia. At the age of twenty, when he had saved almost enough money, Sugiyama’s father—his only surviving parent —died, leaving him in charge of his younger brother. With the postponement of his trip to Bolivia, Sugiyama spent his savings on a Harley Davidson, trading one dream for another, and began saving for the day when his sibling would be on more independent footing. He again took up many different jobs and said he hated most of them. As he reflected on these work experiences in Japan, from his current position in Bolivia he said, “That’s why I want to work in something I enjoy doing—making instruments, playing music.” He just kept telling himself, “One day I will go. One day I will go.” At the age of twenty-nine, when he finally arrived at the airport in El Alto, he was overcome with emotion: “I was always imagining it . . . as I went down the highway into La Paz . . . I saw a cholita walking, carrying her aguayo. I almost cried, because before I had only seen this in photos.” He intended to stay three months, but at the time of our interview he had been living in Bolivia for thirteen years. “What could I learn in three months...

Share