A staggering 43% of the world’s languages are endangered, according to UNESCO, including the two-thousand-year-old language spoken by the Incas: Quechua. In her latest music video, ‘Chañan Cori Coca’, the Internet sensation from a village near Ayacucho interprets the story of the legendary precolonial warrior princess who successfully helped Pachacutec to fight the Chacras.
Adorned with an orange feathered headpiece, elaborate jewellery and patchwork garments designed by Peruvian-born artist Annaiss Yucra Mancilla, Renata encourages her young Peruvian fans to stop being ashamed of speaking their ancestral language and celebrate their roots. Her music also adopts a wider social engagement to fight against governmental corruption, educational inequality and gender-based violence in Peru and beyond. Her message has resonated across her home country to Argentina, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, the US, Spain and beyond.
The Endurance of Quechua
The endurance of Quechua, which has survived two millennia, demonstrates it’s strength and resistance. Since the arrival of the Spanish conquistadors arrived during the sixteenth century, it has coexisted with Spanish over four hundred years, despite the attempts to erode it. Quechua speakers are predominantly concentrated in Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador, although there are small clusters of speaker communities in Chile, Colombia and Argentina, too. According to the World Bank, there were over three million speakers of Quechua in Peru alone in 2007- representing around 13% of the country’s population. In Peru, Quechua has therefore been considered as a co-official language alongside Spanish since 1975.
Despite a total of 11 million people who speak it, compared with Danish (six million speakers) or Catalan (10 million) it is severely endangered. Predominantly spoken by the older generations of rural Andean communities, Quechua is stigmatised as a backwards language which does not belong within the age of urbanisation and modernisation. Many bilingual parents decide not to pass their indigenous language onto their children for fear that they will be discriminated against in the classroom and on the job market.
Furthermore, the Civil War of the 1980s and 1990s between the authoritarian government of Alberto Fujimori and the rebel group ‘The Shining Path’, disproportionately impacted the indigenous peasant population; 75% of the almost 70,000 war victims were Quechua speakers and women who were disproportionately targeted by violence.
Renata’s journey to becoming a Quechua popstar began at fourteen years old when she was a contestant for ‘The Voice Kids Peru’. Although unsuccessful, Renata started uploading covers of pop songs in Quechua onto YouTube, the videos in partnership with the Asociación Cultural SUCRA which teaches young people the importance of Quechua in Renata’s community. In 2015, Renata's Quechua cover of Michael Jackson's 'The Way You Make Me Feel" went viral...
When I interviewed Renata in 2018 I asked her if by commercialising her culture, she was perhaps degrading it?
“Not at all” she said,” I consider this to be part of the development of a culture which is necessary to prevent it from being lost. For example, K-Pop takes on western influences and some words in English, but the music is still very much Korean. Now, everybody is listening to K-Pop, including Koreans and international fans, and everybody wants to collaborate with the artists.”
This is really interesting, I answered, as often in the Western world at school we are led to imagine indigenous communities in Latin America as ‘frozen in time’...
Renata answered: "Yes, but we have evolved. We have adopted some parts of Spanish culture, for example, Peruvians are really religious. There are many Catholic churches in my city. We are a fusion, including our religion, clothing and music."
While some Quechua speakers criticised Renata for corrupting the Quechua language and culture, there is no doubt that the Internet and urban music are extremely powerful instruments for projecting indigenous voices and preserving their culture.
Renata started to compose her own songs which shed light on social issues in Peru. Her 2018 debut single, ‘Mirando la misma luna’ addresses the discrimination experienced by Quechua-speaking children owing to their difficulties communicating in Spanish. While her song ‘Tijeras' was born out of the #NiUnaMenos feminist wave and combines a the Peruvian scissor dance- a melody of wind instruments, the quena, the harp and violin- with rap lyrics in Quechua and a hip-hop style.
Her 2019 track, ‘Qam hina’, is influenced by R&B and soul and is a tribute to her grandmother who, like many other indigenous individuals in rural Peru, stopped going to school due to the long and dangerous commute. Educational inequality persists despite the 2001 law in Peru to improve schooling opportunities for girls in rural communities. This year, Renata is set to release her debut album, Inque (‘nine’ in Quechua) which is named after the Andean numerology ‘mirror to the soul’ and aims to capture the spirit of a genealogy of inspiring Andean women.
Now interviewing Renata in 2021 I want to know how her life changed since you released your debut single two years ago?
Renata: "I think that I’ve changed a lot as a person and the types of people who have listened to my music has changed, too. To start off with, I wasn’t entirely sure about what I wanted to do but I felt so strongly about my music and my roots that I knew that I had to do something. I felt that it was my responsibility to assume this mission because in Ayacucho, where I live, there’s a lot of discrimination. There are still so many incidents that cannot be silenced. I couldn’t sit back and do nothing. So, I started to set my objects, record more songs on my YouTube account, try to compose music, try to look at the problems that exist and write about them because I think when I’m writing. So, here I am and I’ve been spending the last two years trying to develop my music.
On the other hand, I’ve realised that social media is a really powerful tool, especially for my generation. We’re always glued to our phones! I tried to therefore remain active on social media and ensure that we (the Quechua-speaking community) feel more free to express our roots. Lots of people reach out to me via my social media and tell me things that I didn’t even imagine that music would be capable of transmitting. Things that I didn’t even know that Quechua and our culture were capable of communicating."
LatinoLife: Have you noticed a change in the types of people who listen to your music over the last two years?
Renata: Yes. I started off by doing covers of the classics like Michael Jackson and Alicia Keys that everyone had heard of but maybe young people of my age weren’t so interested in. More young people my age now listen to my music and even people who are a bit older than me in their mid-twenties! I’m realising that the types of people who follow me on social media and listen to my music is becoming increasingly diverse.
LatinoLife: Now that you’re composing your own songs, who are your musical inspirations?
Renata: I learn from a whole host of artists but I try to listen to new artists who are up-and-coming. Here in Peru, I’m interested in artists who are developing the trend known as fusion music with Quechua and other languages. I also like to listen to music from other countries from Argentina, the US… I try to seek inspiration from lots of different places. In terms of my inspiration for my activism, I listen to artists such as Nina Simone. I’ve always loved Nina’s music and I’ve also always listened to soul, groove, these different genres and I used to listen along to them. I loved Nina’s approach of using music as a vehicle through which to change erroneous mentalities which at the time were based around racial segregation.
I can see that racial discrimination is still a big problem today starting with my own surroundings and my grandmothers who are both Quechua-speaking. They have migrated from their villages and they have suffered from the discrimination that dates back to colonialism. On the 26 July which is known as Independence Day here in Peru, indigenous people were still fighting in the rainforests against this same discrimination. Freedom is yet to be achieved and as a young person, I like to be able to bring about change through what I’m most passionate about, music.
What inspired the lyrics and the music video for ‘Chañan Cori Coca’?
Renata: ‘Chañan Cori Coca’ was composed during the lockdown. We had been trying to give the album an overarching concept and a deeper meaning since last year. I started to watch history videos and I found the story of Chañan Cori Coca. It really caught my attention because I had never learnt about her at school and people never mentioned her name. I was surprised that a woman who had achieved so much was never mentioned. But one way or another, I found her and got to know her story. It really caught my attention that she belonged to both cultures: she was indigenous with Inca blood but she was also Spanish. So, her story had to be heard in some way and it had to be known throughout Peru and the world because there are many women who never gain recognition in many places.
There’s not much research on Chañan Cori Coca and there should really be more but there is one painting of her in Cusco holding a head in her hands like a real warrior! This painting is very old and shows that there were female warriors during that era who protected their land and their families. What interests me the most is the sixth sense that women have. You know, when your mum warns you ‘don’t go there but I’m not going to tell you why you shouldn’t’. All of these women fought with a more profound motivation in mind, such as protecting their children, which was a source of superior strength.
The nature and strength that we women have inspired me when I was writing ‘Chañan Cori Coca’. Not to mention, Pachamama (the Mother Earth) and the Andean cosmovision in which women also play an important role alongside their male counterparts in this worldview which is shaped by the notion of equality and complementarity. So, I think that I can extract some very positive traits from our ancestors and try to do something good with this knowledge.
LL: Can you tell us a little bit more about the video game that accompanies your album?
Renata: You can download the app from Google Play. The videogame has the same name as the album: Inque. We start off with Chañan Cori Coca and the video game showcases important female figures throughout the ages from the precolonial period to the formation of the republic and the present day. The video game will be linked to the different tracks that we’re set to release this year.
LL: What are your plans for 2021?
Renata: In 2021, I’m trying to stick to a routine and organise my time between singing, songwriting and learning Quechua. We’re all really excited because we’re going to release a new music video this month. We’ve finished recording so the video is being edited now and we will release the rest of the album this year!
LL: How has the pandemic impacted your work and the issues that you discuss in your music?
Renata: Here, the pandemic has had a strong impact on our community. During the lockdown, there was a huge number of cases of domestic violence, lots of women contacted helplines because they were locked down with their violent partners. This is just unthinkable. It was not even safe for them to be at home and it was just shocking to see so many cases of violence during the lockdown.
Now, luckily we can go out as long as we take care but I imagine that if there’s a second wave and if the new strain arrives, there will be even more cases of violence. In Ayacucho, where I live, one woman tried to escape from her house as her ex-husband was abusing her. She had a young daughter and she had nowhere to go. Her husband later found her and sadly killed her. The worst thing is that they had built a refuge centre for women but they filled the building with offices for the local municipality. It’s horrible because if this centre had actually worked how it was supposed to, maybe this woman would still be alive. Maybe she would be free and happy.
LL; In the UK, we’ve just entered lockdown three and many parents are therefore home schooling their children. It would be interesting to know about your experience of teaching Quechua via YouTube videos.
Renata: It was a crazy experience because I had wanted to record these videos long before the pandemic but I wasn’t sure if people would be interested in them or not. However, when I was in lockdown, I decided to finally make the videos as everything else had been put on pause, including the music video that I’ll be releasing this month that was delayed because it originally was supposed to be filmed last March! So, I had no work on and I decided to finally shoot the videos. My mum filmed me with my phone and her camera and since I’ve attended Quechua classes at the local languages university here in Ayacucho, I had some experience of language teaching that was helpful. A lot of people say that they don’t want to learn Quechua because it’s too difficult but it’s actually easier than Spanish. It is possible to learn Quechua but the issue is that we need to develop methods for learning the language because there still isn’t a method here in Peru for learning indigenous languages yet. But we are working on finding a faster way for everyone to learn these indigenous languages.
Listen to Renata’s music on:
YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC-QM2vahE4-IOAsLGCIecdw
Spotify- https://open.spotify.com/artist/3TZtFZu2rmUnoE0kr8QxdT
