Sounds from the Hispanic Festival will be blowing through Salt Lake City later this week.
And one of the most haunting sounds will come from the "quena" (KAY-nah), a wind instrument from the Andes high plains that sounds like the voice of an angel mourning for the world.
If music is the heart of Andes culture, the quena is the heart of Andes music.
The quena has a sound filled with the breath of life.
"When you play the quena, you have a spiritual feeling inside that helps you draw energy from your land and your people," said Alfredo Cespedes, president of the Bolivia Utah Foundation and an expert on the instrument.
For an example of quena music, one place to find it is on Paul Simon's "El Condor Pasa" (The Condor Passes), a song Simon adapted from a Peruvian folk melody. Originally, says Cespedes, the song was likely used in temple ceremonies and was possibly performed at the ancient Tiahuanaco spiritual site near La Paz.
"There are 48 condors carved into the 'Gate of the Sun' there," he said. "Imagine 100 priests playing 100 quenas. At Tiahuanaco, you get such a different feeling when you play. You feel you are actually part of the melody."
Cespedes, a Bolivia native, played in Utah with the Grupo Aymaran for many years. He learned the quena as a boy when a musician was late for a school program and he was drafted as a substitute. He's kept at it ever since, expanding into other Bolivian folk instruments such as the zamponia — a set of small reeds tied together like "panpipes"— and the charango, the "Bolivian mandolin."
Cespedes says the history of the quena probably goes back to the Arabian countries, though Bolivian versions are higher pitched. The higher notes, in fact, are the most difficult to sound, he says.
Most quenas today are made from reeds found in the Bolivian jungles. Some are plain, some carved, and some professional-quality quenas are works of art. And though quenas are usually the work of trained artisans, the first quena ever made has a more exotic beginning.
Before the Spanish conquest, the story goes, a young Inca man fell deeply in love with an Incan maiden. Before the wedding, however, she passed away. He buried her and mourned her for many years. Finally, in total despair, he dug up her shin bone and carved the first quena from it. The sound he made on that first instrument was so filled with remorse that people could not bear to listen to him play.
And, indeed, the quena today has retained much of that same haunted allure. It sounds like a low wind blowing through a stand of reeds. That breathiness is the instrument's signature — a sound so human the quena itself could be a living thing.
And when you play it at 12,000 and 13,000 feet, you need all the breath you can muster. As Cespedes suggests, it doesn't hurt to draw on the energy of your people and your homeland when you play.
"When I was young," Cespedes said, "I felt a deep need for something in my life. I felt something was missing. The quena helped me find peace."
Now, he — and other "quenistas" — are happy to pass that peace on to others.
E-MAIL: jerjohn@desnews.com