Sonic pilgrimage of Los Thuthanaka between the Andes and queer mythology

Liquidity of time, sonic archaeology, and traditions which are reborn in a different form. Last year, the Bolivian-American sibling duo Chuquimamani-Condori and Joshua Chuquimia Crampton embarked on a journey to the ridges of the Andes Mountains and back with their project Los Thuthanaka. The self-titled album is a mixture of hypnotic trance, digital noise, psychedelia, cumbia, and the Andean genre and dance huayño. The record was hailed by music critics last year, with Pitchfork rating it as the best new album since the release of Fiona Apple’s Fetch the Bolt Cutters in 2020. Los Thuthanaka will perform at Ankali on November 5th in collaboration with the Heartnoize collective.

“The future lies not ahead of us, but behind us… to move forward is to return,” commented Chuquimamani-Condori (formerly known as Elysia Crampton) on their connection to their roots and the culture of the Aymara, the indigenous people of Peru and Bolivia. This return to the future is, among other things, what the album Los Thuthanaka is about, as the sibling duo symbolically dedicated it to the Aymara deity who protects queer people. Psychedelic guitar riffs, noise from local radio broadcasts, and relentless rhythms regularly reaching new musical heights — last year’s recording is full of techniques that transcend the rigid colonial order of the world. The unexplored terrain that Los Thuthanaka ventures into consistently reshapes old rules without firmly defining new ones.