Ñandereko is a new dramatic cantata by Chilean composer Ramon Gorigoitia which weaves Indigenous songs from the Ava Guarani people of Northern Argentina into a contemporary sonic landscape, telling the story of the extraction of these songs under conditions of duress by a German anthropologist, Robert Lehmann Nitsche, in 1905. The singers were being held in bonded labour on a sugar plantation, La Esperanza, in the Jujuy province that was owned and managed by British industrialists from Rochdale, the Leach Brothers. Lehmann Nitsche recorded the songs on wax cylinders (an early recording device) and brought them to Berlin, where they remain in the Berliner Phonogramm-Archiv of the Humboldt Forum.
Ñandereko mixes extracts from these songs with accounts from the diaries of Lehmann Nitsche and other textual materials to tell a profoundly moving story of exploitation of Indigenous South American people by European colonialists, but also of the resilience of the Indigenous voice and its ever-present call for justice and reparation.
The project is the original conception of the Argentinian tenor Rafael Montero, founder and artistic director of the early music ensemble El Parnaso Hyspano, and a descendent of the people whose songs are represented in this composition. Montero will be the singer, and he is joined on stage by a hand-picked ensemble of specialist contemporary performers, mostly of Latin American descent: Sergio Teran (Flutes, Ethnic Aerophones, Saxophone); Isaac Andrés Espinoza Hidrobo (violin, strings); Leonard Gincberg {drums, percussion); Ramon Gorigoitia (piano, keyboards), with visual materials by videographer Antonio Uscategui.
NOTE: Following the concert, participants are invited to come along to Manchester Museum to chat with performers and organisers, and attend an object session concentrated on South American collections. Spaces are limited on the day.
A linked free public seminar/roundtable exploring the issues raised by the work will follow at 4.30pm in the Music Department’s weekly seminar series.
The production’s logo contains a traditional symbol of the Guaraní people’s cycle of communal work and ritual celebration.
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Ramón Gorigoitia (composer) lives and works in Cologne as a freelance composer, lecturer, and music publicist. His work is deeply shaped by the interplay between human experience and natural processes and have been performed by ensembles such as Ensemble Musikfabrik, E-MEX Ensemble, AuditivVokal Dresden, Ensemble Iberoamericano, Ensemble Senza sforzando (Ukraine), Schlagquartett Köln, Mannheim String Quartet, Taller Sonoro (Seville), Duo Scarbó, Taller de música contemporánea, and the Cuarteto Latinoamericano (Mexico).
Numerous grants, prizes, and commissions – including from the Kunststiftung NRW, Ernst von Siemens Music Foundation, German Music Fund, Gaudeamus Foundation, WDR, and Deutschlandfunk – attest to the recognition of his work. He received the World Medal for the film score of Verrat in Santiago at the 2004 New York Film Festival.
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Rafael Montero (project originator and singer) is founder and artistic director of the early music ensemble El Parnaso Hyspano. Rafael’s heritage is native American and Spanish. He specialises in renaissance Spanish and South American Baroque music and also in Romantic and contemporary chamber music from Hispanic South America and Spain.
He has researched and devised the programmes that El Parnaso Hyspano presents, drawing on his heritage and wide contacts in the Latin American world. In June 2024 he sang the title role in the UK premiere of the opera San Francisco Xavier, a baroque opera written by an anonymous indigenous composer to be performed by the people from whom he is descended. He has commissioned several composers to write vocal pieces for him, drawing on indigenous themes, the latest of which was the song cycle Dialogues with Ancestors, by British/Irish composer Dominic McGonigal, premiered in Cologne in October 2024. In August 2025 He devised and presented “Arete Guasu – Fiesta Grande, for the 2025 Migrantenalle Festival hosted by Kulturforum Witten.” This was a one-person performance with workshopped audience participation, based on some of the songs and narratives that will feature in Ñandereko.
