Music, Indigeneity and Digital Technology in Bolivia

This chapter examines how digital technology has transformed music production and consumption among Indigenous and low-income populations in the Bolivian Andes. It traces developments from the arrival of the audio CD in the 1980s to the widespread use of smartphones and social media in the 2020s. Bolivia’s digital trajectory, it is argued, diverges significantly from that of the global North. Around the turn of the millennium, the country’s formal recording industry collapsed; an industry geared to the middle and upper classes and based on the CD. This collapse coincided with the arrival of VCD (video compact disc) technology, an inexpensive format that rapidly displaced the analogue audio cassette and opened a new world of audio-visual entertainment among low-income and Indigenous populations. The VCD also fostered the emergence of a decentralized, informal music economy characterized by small-scale home studios, new forms of Indigenous self-representation, and extreme levels of media piracy. Over time, however, this optical disc-based economy has gradually been displaced by the internet.
High costs, limited infrastructure and cultural factors, slowed access to the internet by low income and Indigenous Bolivians, who were widely using internet kiosks by the late 2000s. Through the 2010s internet access increased, driven by the smartphone and declining costs; expanding dramatically from 2019 with the COVID 19 pandemic. Social media now host diverse expressions of Indigenous music and heritage, fostering pride, revival, and mass participation, while also reproducing inequalities, ambivalence, and new forms of exposure in the digital public sphere.