Las Kantutas and Música Oriental: Folkloric Music, Mass Media, and State Politics in 1940s Bolivia

In writings on the early history of mass-mediated Bolivian folkloric music, the La Paz-based female vocal duo Las Kantutas is almost invariably mentioned as one of the most pioneering acts. This recognition, however, rarely extends beyond the mere listing of the group and its members, alongside the names of contemporaneous artists. This essay fills this void in the historical literature on Bolivian music, not only by providing many details on the career of Las Kantutas in their heyday of the late 1930s and 1940s, but also by exploring the ways in which the group’s musical activities intersected with the tumultuous political developments of the populist Villarroel-MNR period (December 1943–July 1946) and conservative-reactionary sexenio era (July 1946–April 1952). I also examine the western highland fashion for eastern lowland folkloric genres (known as música oriental), a trend that reached new heights in La Paz city in the Villarroel-MNR years, and represented an important countercurrent to Bolivian musical indigenismo. As leading folkloric-popular music artists of the 1940s, Las Kantutas, ever present on nationally broadcast La Paz radio shows, played a critical role in establishing lowland genres as mainstays for highland criollo-mestizo musicians, although this aspect of their legacy has long been forgotten.