Candid Carnival: Song Videos and Social Media Intimacies in the Peruvian Andes

This article addresses the impact of increasing social media access on carnival music and the ways musicians accommodate their performance practices to these changing contexts. Young musicians in the southern Peruvian Andes experience an imperative to participate in new media by publishing candid videos of carnival songs. These videos shift the context of carnival performances from a relatively guarded, insider space to one that is available for different audiences, social settings, and expectations. I argue that women use musical performances to manage these contexts by challenging expectations about courtship and foregrounding intimacy among women singers.