This Indian music is interesting and I was fortunate in being able to have some preserved in musical form for repetition. In the remains of the vast Indian nation shattered by Pizarro, the Empire of the Incas, every man and boy, almost from the age when he can walk, is an adept on their simple reed flutes and Pandean pipes; the drum he merely thumps. They are a musical race; there are songs and airs for each season, for the planting, for the harvest, for the valorous deeds of the vanished caciques, for their gods of old to whom a new significance has been given by a pious Church, and the long-drawn chants by means of which, at their yearly gatherings, they pass down the history of their race. As there is no written language, there is no written music; it is handed down from generation to generation by the ear alone.

Their national instruments are but three in number: the flute—a reed about eighteen inches in length, with six holes, and a square slit at the end for a mouthpiece, played after the manner of a clarionet; the Pandean pipes—a series of seven reed tubes that, in the large ones, are four feet in length, and in the smaller ones scarcely as many inches; and the drum. The last is the universal instrument of all peoples; there are few races so low in the scale of human society as not to possess it. The Pandean pipes are in a double row, and at the time of preparation for the Indiads, or the intertribal wars, the outer series is filled with caÑassa, the native liquor, and the player receives the benefit of the intoxicating fumes without the delay incidental to drinking from the bottle. Only the men play, the women and girls never; their part is in the chanting and in the hand-clapping that measures the weird rhythm, although before marriage the girls are allowed to join in the dances and the drinking that goes with them.

In the cities and villages there are the constant beating of the drums and sound of the flutes. Every community or group has its special festival days. Now it is a wedding or a christening with the hosts of “compadres”—godfathers—or the Church day of some obscure saint celebrated by the mission padre, then a village fiesta or house-raising, and from day to day the sounds of barbaric strains stretch in an endless chain throughout the year. In riding over the high plains in the Indian country one is seldom beyond the sound of the thin flutes. Every llama and sheep herder passes the monotonous hours with his playing. In the still air it carries for miles and softens in the long distances with a weird pleasing effect. The strain is short, but one bar, and for hours it is repeated with unvarying exactness.

Even in the bitter cold and snow of the trails of the high passes the presence of the Indians is announced long before their appearance by the echoing flutes. They plod along in single file, muffled in their ponchos, driving the llamas or burros before them; one of them supplies the music, but as the air is thin in these high altitudes and breath is precious, they relieve each other at frequent intervals. There is no marked cadence to the music; it is a weary minor air unlike the sturdy measures we associate with marching music, but it undoubtedly stimulates its audience in some mysterious way with an inspiring effect.

But it is in the great fiestas that one has the best opportunity of hearing the Indian music. I was waiting in the Indian town of Achicachi for the arrival of my mule to carry me over the pass to the village of Sorata. The fiesta was for the birthday of the town and in honor of the ancient gods of the place; at daybreak the Indians gathered within its walls from miles.

With the light of dawn the streets began filling with dancing bands of Indians in their gaudy festival attire. They were there in thousands. The plaza was a weaving mass of brilliant ponchos and feathers; Indians with contorted masks, and jaguar-skins trailing from their shoulders, performed dances in the cramped spaces cleared for their benefit; silver and gold bullion decorations glinted in the clear atmosphere along with cheap tinsel and tin mirrors; and above all rose the sound of the Pandean pipes, the flutes, and the drums, filling the air with a confused discordant roar.

Often several groups of Indians would band together and in single file follow the pipes and drums in a little jerky, dancing step. Sometimes they went through simple evolutions, figure eights and circles, or divided and came together in the pattern of the “grand march” of the East Side balls. The players would dance as well, and occasionally some inspired individual would halt the line while he whirled dizzily around in one spot to his own music. The others would watch these performances with approval, chanting in a high wailing key and clapping their hands in accompaniment.

With the darkness of the night the dancing and playing in the plaza became less and less. The groups withdrew to their ’dobe huts and squatted on the mud floors. A tallow dip or a smoky wick floating in a dish of grease furnished what light there was. The wind from Lake Titicaca blew fresh and keen, but in the lurid gloom of their squalid huts the air was foul with the crowded AymarÁs. The chanting took the place of the dance, and the flutes and pipes led in the air; the drums were silent. With the finish of each verse or section the note ended in a prolonged maudlin wail that continued until it became the opening note of the succeeding stanza.