¡Así Kotama! The Flutes of Otavalo, Ecuador

The town of Otavalo, high up in the Ecuadorian Andes, is renowned for its crafts and its indigenous folk music. Ritual song and dance play a major role in traditional local festivals. North of Otavalo is the village of Kotama, which is home to a music school for players of the gaita, a wooden flute with pre-Incan origins. To help sustain its particular tradition, the Hatun Kotama Flute School receives support from Smithsonian Folkways, the not-for-profit record label of the Smithsonian Institution, the mammoth national museum of the US. Painstakingly researched with extensive album notes, this is the second album from the school, and features master flautists playing alongside students.

Over 36 mostly brief tracks, the ritual music of Otavalo unfolds – circular group dances, rain prayers and harvest songs. The music is hypnotic and satisfyingly recorded, with the gaitas, singing, spoken passages, foot-stomping and other instrumentation – including cow-horns, conch shells, guitar and harmonica – blended well together. How the recording stands up as a stand-alone album is another matter. While it is a brilliant piece of documentation, Hatun Kotama’s earthy, repetitive music is designed for social, practical, outdoor usage, and that spirit is inevitably lost when experienced through just a pair of speakers.