Words by: Bernadette Lara Kasar
Graphics and Photography by: Eero Deosaran
An early November night in London can take you to two places: Guy Fawkes Day celebrations, or Pitchfork Music Festival. This year, I was drawn to seeing the Andean-American duo, Los Thuthanaka at the Dalston-based venue EartH Hall. My first time hearing about the band was last year, when Pitchfork named their self-titled debut album the best album of 2025. I found it quite refreshing that the album was only available on Bandcamp and YouTube. Now, a year after my discovery, I was experiencing it live for the first time in a night full of fireworks.
Consisting of the siblings, Chuquimamani-Condori and Joshua Chuquimia Crampton, Los Thuthanaka is a way for them to express their Aymara heritage and culture, with Andean traditional music elements from various genres such as Huayno and Kullawada while also synthesizing their electronic and psychedelic musical influences from each’s prior work to forming this duo. If you have listened to anything by Los Thuthanaka before, you probably have never been able to find anything like them again.
Excited, I stepped into this foggy room and couldn’t help but notice the peculiar crowd set up; the audience was scattered around the space, standing circularly around the centre of the hall, drawing my attention to the fact that the stage was set up in the middle of the room. I’ve seen and worked in numerous shows in EartH Hall, this was the first time I’ve experienced this setup. I took my place in the circle and waited for the show to start.
Two silhouettes with big panchos and bowler hats stepped on the stage with a keytar and a guitar as the crowd was cheering. They opened the set with Huayño “Phuju”, a track from their debut album featuring Andean rhythms, catchy guitar riffs, and soundscape-building electronic elements; followed by another movement-based track Caporal “Apnaqkaya Titi”. The whole room is moving, it’s like the tracks were composed and performed in such a way to bring themselves and the audience to a state of trance where your body can do nothing but react, and this is just the first 20 minutes of the show.
As the show flows onward with their tracks Parrandita “Sariri Tunupa” and Quta (capo-kullawada), the music transitions toward an entrancing, droning direction, making the call and response nature of the audience and musician interactions more apparent. This is when you, if you’re familiar with it, start to realize that Los Thuthanaka has been significantly loyal to the ayni principle in their music. The ayni principle is an Andean concept of giving and receiving; exchange of humans, nature, and the universe. Many cultures have this concept in different names, but in Aymara culture, it’s considered the most important principle as they believe it is the foundation of life.
I was also enchanted by their outfits. They were both wearing vibrant and colourful panchos with geometrical patterns. This type of clothing is traditional to Aymara people. Seeing incredible musicians embracing their heritage this way inspired me a lot. They also opened the Aymara flag Wiphala a few times during the show. Wiphala is as vibrant as the traditional clothing, if not more. Each colour represents a value. It is really powerful to see priorly colonized and enslaved indigenous people proudly and freely expressing their ethnicity, especially in the Global Northwest. As a listener, one can feel the self-determination, strength, and spirituality of the Aymara people through their music and stance.
As the show began to come to its conclusion, you could feel inside of you that there was a climax coming. We’ve been on this journey, getting introduced to one another, going deeper in our emotions and passions, and now it’s coming to an end. The rhythms got more intense, both musicians were performing more ferociously, the sound started clipping, you could hear the static noises all around you, soundscapes were moving almost marking their territories in each spot of the room.
This show was not just another gig I’ve been to. I felt that I was witnessing a pivotal moment in the history of music that is going to be referenced a many of times in the future. Los Thuthanaka is bringing spirituality to experimental electronic music world and takes you to a journey of connecting with nature and the supernatural. Go to a Los Thuthanaka show with an open heart and mind, let the music move you.
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