Sound sinuosities: the kenkos as spirals of the voice in the Canto con Caja of northwestern Argentina

We reflect on the experience of participating in ‘comparsas’ (choruses) of Canto con Caja, the name given by their coordinator, the singer-collector-disseminator Leda Valladares, to the singing—with a bimembranophone frame drum known as ‘caja chayera’—of the song genres called bagualas, vidalas and tonadas of northwestern Argentina. We focus on the kenko, or q'enq'o—emblematic vowel form of the performative dimension of this vocality—which in the Quechua language has an approximate translation of sinuosity. We name this experience and the mimetic exercise of the vocal experimentation of this research as ap-propriation, differentiating it from the ex-propriation processes that deny or ignore the violent asymmetries of the coloniality of knowledge-power with respect to these ‘cantores’ (singers). This repertoire of our embodied vocal memory is investigated by listening to the archive, phonographic records and texts that demanded a historical tracing of the notion of kenko in almost 100 years’ worth of musicological research. We also dialogue with more recent studies such as Cultural Studies, musical analysis and approaches from studies of vocal technique for singing.We present a comparative spectral analysis, as well as operatives notions to name the performative dimension of this vocality or its way of doing in different performative frames: a beam, from its source in mountains and valleys to small cities, to cultural centers, streets and squares of large cities, or pedagogical experiences.