To Be Inca or Not to Be Inca?

This chapter explores three different discourses on the prehistory of Ecuadorian music, from the Inca supporters, namely, composers Pedro Pablo Traversari and Sixto María Durán, to the Inca detractors such as Segundo Luis Moreno. The first two wrote about the origins of Ecuadorian music following European music histories of the time, without calling into question the real extension of the Inca legacy. Traversari not only supported the system proposed by the d’Harcourts, but even claimed that he discovered the pentatonic system before Alomía Robles. Sixto María Durán based his understandings of Inca music on a lecture-recital Alomía Robles gave in Quito in 1917. Segundo Luis Moreno accepted the same musical principles as his colleagues as representations not of Inca music, but of an Andean indigenous music that already preceded Inca ruling (sustaining the myth of the Kingdom of Quito) and challenged the pentatonic system proposed by the d’Harcourts. These two historical approaches have nonetheless produced compositions with a similar mix of indigenous pentatonic (considered Inca or generally Andean depending on the composer) and European techniques.