Dale A.Olsen Prize

2004 Award Winner

Holly Wissler

The Dale A. Olsen Prize is awarded annually to the best student paper presented at the annual SEMSEC meeting. The award carries a $100 honorarium. The prize is named in honor of Dale A. Olsen, founding member of SEMSEC and Professor of Ethnomusicology at Florida State University. The award is only given if there is a deserving student paper that meets the criteria of the prize. A student shall be defined as a person pursuing an active course of studies in a degree program. This will include persons who are engaged in writing the doctoral dissertation, but not those who are teaching full time while doing so.

Wissler's paper deals with the Qero, a Quechua speaking people who live in a remote region of the southern Peruvian Andes, and are known for the maintenance of indigenous traditions such as  shamanistic healing, textile production, and musical ritual.  Up until last year the Qero community has used their own Andean flutes and drums in ritual musical performance. In 2003, at their request, the Qero community received their first urban instrument:  the accordion. While this instrument is not new to the Andes, it is to the Qero community. The paper explores the following: (1) the Qeros relationship with the urban world in the context of their participation in Qoyllur Riti, the largest pilgrimage festival in the southeastern Andes, and the underlying issues for their desired acquisition of the accordion; (2) how Qero community infrastructure is revealed in the official reception of the instrument; (3) the week-long learning process of the single musician who was chosen by the community to perform the accordion at the Qoyllur Riti festival; and (4) how this acquisition of an urban musical instrument is related to the process of mestizaje, indigenous cultural modernization in the Andes.

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