Throughout five parts, each of them focusing on one musician or one band of musicians, the film shows diverse musical practices of indigenous musicians from the region of Otavalo, in the Ecuadorian Andes (such as performances in local festivities and on festival stages, recording practices, performances of different genres from different places). It emphasises the circulations of people, sounds, ideas and objects and the ways these circulations shape the contemporary practices of Otavalo indigenous musicians. In this way, several topics that are fundamental in the contemporary everyday life of indigenous people are addressed through image and sound, such as migration, urbanisation, influence/re-appropriation of globalised ideas and objects, the use of technology, the revalorisation and performance of a local ‘culture’. Many Otavalo indigenous people have migrated to Europe and North America, mainly since the 1980s, to sell their handicrafts and to play Andean music in the streets.
Jérémie Voirol
He holds a PhD in Social Sciences (specialization in Social Anthropology) from the University of Lausanne (2016). He has been since 2017 an Honorary Visiting Research Fellow at the Department of Social Anthropology and at the Granada Centre for Visual Anthropology at the University of Manchester. He has carried out ethnographic research mainly in Ecuador, focusing on youth and music in urban contexts and on festivities and music in indigenous rural areas (mainly with Otavalo indigenous people). He made two ethnographic films related to Otavalo indigenous people.