Music of the Andes

Try out this compilation of mostly-instrumental amazing music from the Andes mountains! Lives up to the description - "...a music that is emotive, profound and searingly beautiful." Uses mostly native South American Indian instruments - their flutes especially are fabulous!

Listen to samples at: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/B000005GWP/002-5545770-0712068?v=glance

Cd/cassette: Music of the Andes, by Hemisphere records.

Available in the World Music section of Planet M and Music World.

By the way, the World Music section in these stores comes out with really great finds at times! Music from across the world recorded at the best studios, sometimes in fusion, sometimes pure.

Read more if you are interested:

"The ragged peaks of the mountainous Cordillera de los Andes etch the spine of South America. It is a column stretching between the northern tip of Columbia and the southernmost reaches of Chile, across the strait from Antarctica. Centuries ago, the stretch between Ecuador and Chile, these high fertile valleys and plateaus, formed the domain of the great Inca empire, whose territories and culture were nearly obliterated by the arrival of the Spanish conquistadores in the early 16th century.

The Conquistadores arrived with the Cross, arquebuses, horses and armor, poised to rape a rich land of its gold. Fixed on by the quest of a Lost Paradise, they were blind to the other riches that lay before them: a unique and extraordinarily advanced civilization. As history has recorded in the case of other great civilizations, cities like Athens, Flanders and Naples, the conquerors were in many ways themselves the conquered. Little of the Spanish influence remains on the high reaches of the Andes where the Quechua and Aymara communities that were spawned by the Incan Empire have maintained unaltered their customs, their ethnic purity and their land. Today these descendants are scattered predominantly among the highlands of Peru and Bolivia.

The conquistadores tried to destroy a culture, but centuries later the soul of a people still remains. This melancholy soul-is it history or terrain that makes it so? - found expression through artistry and a music that is emotive, profound and searingly beautiful."