1965

Abstract

By narrowing the focus to the major events and happenings involving Bolivian musical folklorization that occurred in 1965 (e.g., Bolivian folklore delegation’s unexpected success at Argentina’s First Latin American Folklore Festival, the expansion of the local recording industry, the Bolivian state’s increased support for cultural tourism), and explaining the ways in which the Barrientos-Ovando administration’s populism resembled the approaches of the recently ousted MNR governments, this chapter sheds light on the intertwined local and translocal factors that made this year such a pivotal conjuncture for Bolivia’s folkloric music movement. It also reveals that by 1965 the conditions were strongly favorable in La Paz city and other Bolivian metropolitan centers (especially Cochabamba) for the rise to stardom of a locally based criollo-mestizo folklore band whose performance practices foregrounded signifiers of Andean indigeneity, a niche that the band Los Jairas would fill the following year.