Indigenous Modernities and the Performance of the Music of Bolivian Mission Archives the Ensamble Moxos

During the seventeenth century the Jesuits established the missions of Moxos in what today is Bolivia. In these missions Western Baroque music was used as an instrument of evangelization, and after the expulsion of the Jesuits from Latin America in 1767 the Indigenous people continued performing this music and preserving the scores. This music can be found today in the archives of Chiquitos and Moxos, the only mission archives in Latin America (Nawrot 2000). Since 1996 young people of Moxos perform this repertoire at the San Ignacio de Moxos Music School and its most important ensemble: Ensamble Moxos. Through the analysis of the repertoire performed by the Ensamble Moxos, I will explore the way in which their performance practices, which resist being labelled as either “traditional” or “modern”, express how the Indigenous people of Moxos experience modernity and what it means to be Moxeño in the context of globalization.