Ellis Reyes Montes聽is a PhD researcher in Musicology and recipient of the 2024-2025 Research Alive Student Prize. His research focuses on the pipe and tabor鈥� a flute and drum played in tandem鈥攖hrough pre-contact Peruvian iconography and the聽Codex Trujillo (c.1782), a collection of over 1,400 watercolour depictions and musical transcriptions documenting music-making, dance, and rituals in the colonial era Viceroyalty of Peru.聽
Collaboration has been central to Ellis鈥� work, from engaging with Schulich musicians and Peruvian folkloric dancers to refining his presentation with mentorship from Jill de Villafranca and Professor Stephen McAdams. During his Research Alive presentation on March 11, 2025, his interdisciplinary approach will culminate in a live taki鈥攁n Indigenous storytelling tradition combining song and dance鈥攆eaturing selections from the Codex Trujillo performed on the pipe and tabor, alongside a soprano, cellist, guitarist, and dancers. 聽
Read on to learn more about Ellis鈥� experience as a PhD researcher at the Schulich School of Music, and to delve into his expert knowledge.听听
Research Alive | 隆Guaitinaje! The Pipe and Tabor Player as Dance Master and Knowledge Keeper in the Viceroyalty of Peru
March 11, 2025 at 5:00pm
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As the recipient of the 2024鈥�2025 Research Alive Student Prize, how does it feel to have your work recognized in this way? How do you see this impacting your research and future projects?听听
I am grateful to all who have provided this opportunity to share my research! Research Alive has helped me to go deeper into my project through my research and my collaborations with my musician friends and with the Peruvian folkloric dancers. This is my first time ever working with dancers, despite having been a performer for most of my life, and I hope to continue this collaboration in future projects.聽
The coaching sessions with Ms. Jill de Villafranca and Professor Stephen McAdams have helped me immensely in organizing my thoughts into a concise and effective presentation. They have also helped me think about my current research endeavors in different ways, making me consider different sorts of questions and ideas to pursue.聽
Having my work recognized gives me a sense of community and connection that is not always apparent in the research process. I often feel myself getting bogged down in books and articles or even in my own practice, thinking that I am alone in my journey, but these opportunities to share with different audiences, especially with the public, help me to see that there are people interested in hearing what I have to say and play. Also, presenting in a public space allows me to hear questions and commentary from other voices I may have overlooked.聽
The Codex Trujillo contains 1,400 watercolour paintings that offer valuable insights into 18th-century Peruvian society, along with twenty musical scores and depictions of performance. What initially inspired you to research the music of this specific time and place? 听听
My first encounter with the Codex Trujillo was through a fellow Peruvian student back in my undergraduate studies. He roped me into a project of performing some of this and other 18th century Peruvian music with other friends. It was the first time I had even considered early written music from Peru, and I was excited to be able to engage with my own culture in a different way. Fast forward about a decade, and I was deciding on my final project for Professor Rachelle Chiasson Taylor鈥檚 Iconography in Early Music seminar. I remembered that there was this codex with some iconography, so I took a closer look, and realized that the pipe and tabor were depicted over and over in different contexts. This was also the first time I had seen the pipe and tabor outside of lists of random medieval instruments, so I began looking at the music in the codex. This led me to seeking out more articles and books about instruments from Peru before colonialism, showing me the different traditions that resembled the pipe and tabor depicted in the Codex Trujillo. 聽
Doing this project has inspired me to play the pipe and tabor in its many forms. As you will see, I have been learning to play music from the Codex Trujillo (in fact, it is possible to play most of the pieces with the pipe and tabor) alongside traditional Peruvian music. Playing these instruments has also compelled me to learn about the other pipe and tabor traditions around the world and throughout history. There are many depictions of the pipe and tabor in European music throughout the ages, and I have been experimenting with playing them in medieval music with my ensemble, Ursa Major, and in renaissance and baroque music, mostly through social media.聽
How has collaborating with Schulich musicians鈥攕ingers, instrumentalists, and dancers鈥攈elped shape your interpretation and presentation of this repertoire? 听听
Collaborating with other musicians has helped me think about the music in different ways. The scores are quite sparse, and some are riddled with apparent errors, so it has been interesting to try out different arrangements with my colleagues to express ourselves through the music.聽Because many of the pieces in the Codex Trujillo instruct the performers to 鈥渄ance while singing,鈥� I decided to collaborate with dancers in this presentation, and I am grateful to be working with the Asociaci贸n Cultural Baila Conmigo Canada. The music does give some hints as to what the rhythmic accompaniment would have sounded like, but the pieces have not been incorporated into the folkloric dance tradition. So, a large part of this collaboration has been to figure out what kinds of dances and choreographies suit these pieces best. In our performance, we will have huayno, contradanza, festejo, and land贸 steps featured throughout. The collaboration has also helped me to learn more about what the dances mean nowadays. For example, the contemporary contradanza de Huamachuco is a dance that satirizes European contradance, and it may even have its roots from the Codex Trujillo, which is from the same region.聽I have learned so much from seeing how the dancers respond to our musical phrasing and inflection. Seeing how this music can be embodied through sound has been quite informative.聽
As a musicology PhD student, what have been some of the most rewarding and challenging aspects of your research journey? 听听
One of the most rewarding aspects of my research journey has been the ability to collaborate with different scholars and performers. I came to 9I制作厂免费 specifically because of the resources for research and performance, and I have learned so much from my collaborations with my peers. Performance has helped me embody more of my research and consider my topics from different angles. The research environment has been encouraging, especially for working with different peers and colleagues on different projects. I am constantly learning from each one of my peers, especially those who are researching and/or performing music that I am unfamiliar with. I can often incorporate these new perspectives into my own research.聽
One challenge has been trying to find a focus in my research. I am grateful to the faculty at 9I制作厂免费 for encouraging me to learn and research so many different topics, but now that I am in my dissertation writing phase, I need to focus my attention on a topic so I can finish my degree. This presentation has helped me consider some other aspects of this topic, and I intend to incorporate it into my dissertation research.聽
Your research highlights the absence of the pipe and tabor in recent recordings of music from the Codex Trujillo, despite its ubiquity in the text鈥檚 imagery. Why do you think this instrument has been overlooked in contemporary interpretations?聽 听听
I have some theories about this. While the scores are sparsely notated, they all have instruments specified, usually violin or voice and bass (as in basso continuo). Even in the one piece that specifies pipe and tabor, the staves still say violin and bass. Thus, aside from adding a chord instrument to fill out the harmonies, many performers choose to stick to a violin as the main melody instrument, a soprano voice for the texted parts, and a cello for the bass. It is also likely that those who choose to perform this literature are not as familiar with the iconography from the same collection.聽
While the pipe and tabor (sikuris, gaiteros, voladores, tambourinaires) traditions are alive in different parts of the world, many of us musicians are not aware of them. Even here in Montr茅al, I can only name a couple of other pipe and tabor players. Despite growing up listening to and performing traditional Peruvian and other Latin American musics, I was not even aware of this phenomenon of simultaneously playing a wind and a percussion instrument until I started this research project. In Peru, the pipe and tabor are used only in very select dances and ceremonies, and the sikuris (panpipes and drums) only perform on specific occasions throughout the year. If anything, social media has started bringing the sounds of the pipe and tabor players accompanying the voladores de Papantla in Mexico to a larger audience, although the musicians are not always shown in footage or pictures of these ceremonies.聽
I hope that through my research and performance I can connect with players of these instruments or even inspire other musicians to pick them up. I am grateful to have one student right now, and I have learned so much from him because he is Proven莽al and is learning the tambourinaire repertoire.聽
