THE GUIDE - The Rough Guide to Bolivia - page 380

THE CHIQUITOS MUSICAL RENAISSANCE
Of all the European arts and crafts introduced to Chiquitos by the Jesuits in the eighteenth
century, the one that gained most rapid acceptance among the indigenous tribes was music .
Imported organs, trumpets, violins and other instruments were enthusiastically adopted
by the Chiquitanos, who quickly learned to manufacture their own instruments, while
the choirs and orchestras of the mission settlements were said by contemporaries to have
matched anything in Spanish America at the time. Father Martin Schmidt , the Swiss Je-
suit who designed the churches of San Javier, San Raphael and Concepción, was a keen
composer who taught music and brought the first church organs to the region, while the
missions also benefited from the presence of an Italian named Domenico Zipoli , who had
been a well-known composer in Rome before coming to South America.
Like all the cultural accomplishments of the missions, their musical tradition all but dis-
appeared in the centuries following the expulsion of the Jesuits, though its influence re-
mained in the folk music of the Chiquitanos themselves. When the restoration of the mis-
sion churches began in the 1970s, however, researchers in Concepción discovered a sub-
stantial archive of liturgical and orchestral Renaissance Baroque musical scores, including
works by Schmidt and other Jesuit composers. The rediscovery of this lost music inspired
a musical revival in Chiquitos, and throughout the mission towns and outlying settlements
you'll come across children and young adults playing violins and other instruments.
In 1996 this revival inspired a group of music lovers to organize the first Chiquitos
Missions Music Festival , featuring performances of the music recovered from the lost
archives. Since then, the festival has grown into a major biennial event (in even numbered
years), attracting dozens of orchestras and musical groups from around the world, and in-
volving performances in all the mission towns of Chiquitos as well as in Santa Cruz. For
further information, visit festivalesapac.com .
Concepción
About 68km to the east, the former mission town of CONCEPCIÓN is slightly larger than
San Javier, but otherwise very similar. The mission was founded in 1709 by Father Lucas
Caballero , who was killed two years later by the Puyzocas tribe, which later settled here. At
the town's centre is a broad plaza lined with single-storey whitewashed adobe houses with
tiled roofs that extend over the pavement, a colonial architectural style introduced after the
expulsion of the Jesuits. In the middle of the square stands a simple wooden cross , surroun-
ded by four palm trees - originally a feature of all the mission compounds.
Concepción is the centre for efforts to reconstruct the Jesuit mission churches of Chiquitos,
and the main workshops for woodcarving and painting are behind the church a block east of