The Archaeo-Sonic Legacy of Nasca Antaras and the Making of Spirals of Wind
Reimagining Ancient Sound in Contemporary Composition

This project explores the extraordinary sonic world of the ancient Nasca civilization of southern Peru (ca. 100 BCE–800 CE) and its creative potential for contemporary music. At its center are the antaras—ceramic panpipes whose sophisticated construction, tuning systems, and cultural significance challenge conventional understandings of pre-Columbian music.

The project is grounded in sustained scholarly engagement. Over several months, I have studied the extensive body of literature on Nasca music and organology, and I am deeply grateful for the opportunity to engage directly with leading scholars in the field, including Carlos Mansilla, José Pérez de Arce, Carlos Sánchez Huaringa, Anna Gruszczyńska-Ziółkowska, and Claudio Mercado. Their research, insight, and generosity have profoundly shaped my understanding of this repertoire and have been a constant source of inspiration for my creative work.

Drawing on extensive research conducted in major museum collections, including the repository of over 2,500 sound artifacts in Lima, this work examines the antara not simply as an archaeological object, but as a living acoustic technology. These instruments reveal a highly developed approach to sound: carefully proportioned tubes, non-Western intervallic systems, and complex sonic phenomena such as beating, “bisonido” (dual pitch perception), and microtonal variation. Far from adhering to simple pentatonic models, Nasca tuning systems suggest intricate, internally coherent structures that remain only partially understood.

Equally important is the cultural and cosmological context in which these instruments functioned. In Nasca society—an arid, ritual-centered culture defined by its relationship to water, fertility, and transformation—sound likely played a mediating role between worlds. Music operated as a form of ritual technology: activating ceremonial spaces, accompanying trance states, and facilitating communication with non-human forces. Archaeological evidence, including the presence of antaras in burial contexts, further suggests that sound was deeply embedded in notions of identity, continuity, and the afterlife.

This project seeks to translate these insights into new compositional practices. Rather than imitating ancient music, it engages with Nasca principles—acoustic, structural, and symbolic—to generate contemporary works. These include compositions for modern instruments interacting with reconstructed antaras, as well as pieces that integrate alternative tuning systems derived from measured frequencies of archaeological specimens. My works Spirals of Wind and the Antara Études for BitKlavier exemplify this approach, exploring resonance, scordatura, and microtonal fields underpinned by the Nasca tuning systems.

Ultimately, this research and creative project proposes a shift in perspective: from viewing ancient instruments as static artifacts to understanding them as sources of compositional knowledge. By bridging archaeology, ethnomusicology, and contemporary music, the project opens new pathways for engaging with the past—not as a distant or closed system, but as a dynamic and generative presence in today’s sonic imagination.