Ancestral languages and urban music: hip-hop through kichwa. The Nin, a case study

Los Nin is a hip-hop and urban popular music group formed in Otavalo, Imbabura province, located in the highlands and north of Ecuador. The group is characterized by its use of the ancestral Kichwa language, a dialect derived from Quichua and which in Ecuador is the official language along with Spanish. Additionally, Los Nin has incorporated elements of Ecuadorian Andean music, such as instruments and scales that have allowed it to organize a musical discourse that circulates easily within the country, and that, in recent years, has transcended local aspects to generate a translocal scene where notions of identity, territory and ancestry are reconfigured. The present article includes analysis of the musical practices of this group, based on the theory of musical scenes, the musicology of musical production, cultural studies and ethnographic methods. Results include the configuration of a Kichwa imaginary that transcends borders through Ecuadorian migration, and the reconfiguration of notions of interculturality, mass culture and urban music in the Andean region of Ecuador.