Henrietta Yurchenco, música indígena e indigenismo interamericano en la década de 1940

Abstract

ABSTRACT From the time of the founding of the Inter-American Indian Institute, its directors used music and media as tools for the documentation and preservation of indigenous cultures, in addition to the promotion of the Institute in the public arena. This article focuses on the role of Henrietta Yurchenco, a U.S. ethnomusicologist, in III recording projects and radio production beginning in 1942. The sociable personality of Yurchenco enabled her to cross cultural borders and maintain long-term friendships in some of the communities where she worked. However, the III developed a model of the archive as a source of indigenous authenticity that displaced direct interaction with indigenous communities, especially in relation to their musical representation in radio programs. The use of the arts in the III also prefigured the regimes of cultural heritage in UNESCO. The article elaborates the significance of Yurchenco’s history in the III which continues to impact discourses today.