Carnavalito

The carnavalito is a festive circle dance and song form of the southern Andes, centred on the Quebrada de Humahuaca in Argentina's Jujuy province and extending into Bolivia. Couples and chains of dancers move to a bright binary beat played on quena and siku flutes, charango, guitar, erque and the caja drum, in music of pre-Columbian roots reshaped by the colonial carnival. Its emblematic piece, *Edmundo P. Zaldívar*'s "El Humahuaqueño" (1941), carried the form worldwide, and every February the towns of Humahuaca, Tilcara and Purmamarca still surrender their streets to carnavalito troupes for the carnival of the Puna.