The people of Q'eros live isolated in the Andes mountains of Peru. Carnival in Q'eros: Where the Mountains Meet the Jungle is produced and directed by John Cohen, who serves as the film's narrator. Juan Núñez del Prado also contributed to the making of the film. The Q'eros Carnival follows the Q'eros people during the time of year they call Carnival Season. In this article, I will apply Titon's "Four Components of a Musical Culture" to the musical culture of the Q'eros people in the film Carnival in Q'eros. The film begins at the start of the Carnival season, when the Q'eros send a despacho, a "message to the gods." The despacho contains many small offerings intended for evil spirits, the Earth or friendly spirits who live in the mountains. One of the offerings contains a red thread and a white thread which represent the colors of the Peruvian flag. Say no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on “Why Violent Video Games Should Not Be Banned”? Get the original essay The Q'eros then chew coca leaves to complete this part of the ritual, waving them toward the spirit for which they are intended. Alpacas are sacred to the people of Q'eros. Every year during the Carnival season, the Q'eros celebrate alpacas with a ritual called Palcha. Palcha is also the name of a flower that grows in the Andes and is an important part of this ritual. This celebration begins with a ritual in which the Q'eros place corn beer, shisha and animal statues on a cloth. They then perform the “compeungph”, a ritual song. Following this song, the Q'eros head towards the corral to celebrate the alpacas directly. To do this, the Q'eros play songs on a flute, called a pinculu, and throw palcha flowers at the alpacas. These actions are a request to the gods to ensure the health and fertility of the alpacas. Following this ritual, we see in the film a ritual dedicated to women. We see the women of Q'eros complaining loudly about the things that have happened to them over the past year, scattering palcha flowers as they do so. A woman blames herself for the death of her child, saying, "I couldn't save him." I could not protect him” while another deplores the financial situation of the Q’eros: “we are poor. Now we are eating our poverty. This lament allows women to free themselves from past sorrows as they approach the next year. The film then continues with the most important part of the Carnival season: the gathering of the ayllus at the ceremonial center. Each ayllu is a division of the entire Q'eros population and the families with the ayllus each have their own houses at the ceremonial center, which are only used during the carnival season. The authorities of Q'eros greet each other by playing conch shells when they arrive on horseback, a demonstration of their power. On the evening of their arrival, the Q'eros gather to sing and visit each other. The Q'eros end their party the next morning with dancing and the consumption of coca leaves and chica. When we first met the Q'eros at the beginning of the film, Cohen mentioned that they were having financial problems with their bank. This was because a group of alpacas the Q'eros had purchased were unable to produce offspring, providing them with no return on their investment. At the end of the film, Cohen offers to buy alpacas from the Q'eros to reward them for their cooperation in the film. Each ayllu agreed to pass on the alpacas to another ayllu after a few years. The film ends with the Q'eros retrieving the alpacas from Ocongate, a nearby town, andtake them back to their village. Titon defines a musical culture as “the total involvement of a group in music: ideas, actions, institutions, material objects”. These four categories of involvement relate to what Titon sees as the four components of a musical culture: ideas about music, activities involving music, musical repertoires, and the material culture of music. “Ideas about music” refers to how music relates to religious practices, what counts as music, how music should be performed, and how music evolves over time. An activity involving music is any musical event. “Musical repertoires” include not only specific musical genres and texts, but also the style of music and the way in which music is composed and transmitted. Finally, the material culture of music refers to any object that is part of a musical event. The first element of Titon's musical culture, ideas about music, can be seen in the frequent rituals the Q'eros participate in and the interesting nature of their music. The pinculu, a flute, makes a frequent appearance in Q'eros rituals. The pinculu has only four holes, which limits the number of notes it can produce, but its religious significance to the Q'eros is evident through its frequent use in ritual practices. It appears in the film when the Q'eros women express their problems of the past year and when they throw palcha flowers into the alpaca enclosure. The flat sound produced by the singers and the pinculu flute shows the aesthetics of Q'ero culture. Few of their musical performances have a melody comparable to those of Western music. Instead, Q'eros play and sing repeated, closely spaced groups of notes that create a spiritual ambiance for the ritual they are being played at, allowing them to connect with the Earth and the spirits around them. This "throbbing sound" can be heard in the film when the ayllus socialize on the first evening of the ceremonial gathering. This music is not something that is meant to be listened to, as there are no audience members, but it is meant to allow everyone present to spiritually connect with each other. Musical contexts in Q'ero society are almost always ritual-based. The two most notable rituals in the film are Palcha, the annual alpaca ritual, and the ceremonial gathering, including the nightly musical gathering and the ceremonial dance the next morning (Cohen 6:10, 15:25). As for the history of Q'ero music, most of their music appears to be traditional ritual practices passed down from generation to generation. The Q'eros people live mostly isolated from the outside world, so it is unlikely that their musical traditions have changed significantly over time. Similar to the contexts of Q'ero music, activities involving music in Q'ero society all have ritual characteristics. The main goal of these activities is to connect to Earth and ask something from the spirits that live among and around the people of Q'eros. Activities featured in the film include the alpaca ritual, the women lamenting the problems of the past year, and the carnival gathering and dancing. The first characteristic of the component of a musical culture “musical repertoires” is style, which Cohen defines as “everything that concerns the organization of musical sound itself.” Q'ero's style of music is unique in that it is an ambient sound meant to represent something instead of a melodic piece of music meant to.