• Instrumentation: voice and piano

• Duration: 5'

Arawi—which translates as “verse” or “song”—shifts in its focus as its context is revealed.  What begins as a love-song transforms into a plaintive song of longing that arrives in a prisoner’s bitter aching over an absent lover.  The passage is drawn from Felipe Guaman Poma de Ayala’s description of the “Festival of the Inkas” in his early 17th century historical account of the Andes, El Primer Nueva Crónica y Buen Gobierno.  Throughout Nueva Crónica, the author, a Quechua nobleman, chronicles the Andean region from the time of its first inhabitants, through the reign of the Inca, and into the Spanish conquest of the Inca Empire. Extended text in both Spanish and Quechua, as well as 398 full-page illustrations by the author, include graphic depictions of the suffering endured by the Andean people under Spanish rule.  Guaman Poma addressed his work to the Spanish King Philip III and, while the author delivered his manuscript personally to the Viceroy in Lima, it is unlikely that it was ever seen by the Spanish King. —GL