CULTURE SHOCK is tough enough, but to have to face 60 four year olds on your first gig of 30 in a strange country is as tough as it gets on the road. Here, the six piece Andean music ensemble was performing the final kids' concert in a 49 item festival organised by The Ark's Martin Drury.
In the Quechuan language "Chaski-Inkas" means "messengers of the Inca kings". The band's members, coming variously from the Altiplano in Peru, Bolivia, Chile and Argentina, see their music as a missionary description of a variety of ancient local, highland styles, and of the experience of their own exile and present residence in Copenhagen.
Like other similar groups, they take their colour from the 10 string charanga (a tiny 17th century hybrid guitar) and zamponas (panpipes), with the quena (notched flute) carrying the melodies. Here the song was mostly unison voices metered by soft skin bass drum, while keyboard, snare and electric bass produced a kind of "Andean and Western" synthesis.
Chaski-Inkas had some trouble engaging and letting go. Their arrangements lacked the power of their fellow South Americans, Awatinas, who were here in 1994, and also the sense of drama and style of Rumillajta, who visited Ireland last year. But in a short programme excised no doubt from a more impressive repertoire they eventually found their feet, gradually persuading their ruthlessly objective audience into taking the floor.
Chaski-Inkas will perform at the Lambert Puppet Theatre in Monkstown this coming Friday at 8 p.m. as part of the Summer Arts Programme organised by Dun Laoghaire/Rathdown Council.
