Chuquimamani-Condori and Joshua Chuquimia Crampton Release Debut Los Thuthanaka Album: Listen

Chuquimamani-Condori and their brother, Joshua Chuquimia Crampton, have released a new album under the name Los Thuthanaka. The self-titled album was surprise-released on Saturday, March 22, and marks the follow-up to Chuquimamani-Condori’s DJ E and Joshua Chuquimia Crampton’s Estrella por Estrella. Find Los Thuthanaka below.

In a note to Pitchfork, Chuquimamani-Condori, the Bolivian American artist who previously made music under the moniker Elysia Crampton, wrote, “This record is a milestone for me & my brother, bringing prayers for rain & gratitude. The music is part of our ayni to the relatives & our queer guardian, Chuqi Chinchay.” The statement continues:

My friend Juan Vargas Rollano reminds us of a saying in our maternal language, told to him by Elizabeth Yana, that goes: “Don’t pity q’iwa (queer) people because they walk looking at the stars”

[ Janiwa llaqisañaqiti q’iwanakata jupanakaxa warawaranakana uñxatata sarnaqaphiwa ].

For us, the star is also called Chuqi Chinchay, who the great Aymara chronicler Joan de Santa Cruz Pachacuti wrote was “muy pintado, de todos los colores, dizen que era apo de los Otorongos, en cuya guarda da a los ermafroditas, yndios de dos naturas”.

We should recall the earliest known carbon-dated depiction of God in the Americas is a gourd etched with an image of Chuqi Chinchay as the “staff god”— Chuqi Chinchay’s iconic fusion with what we call Viracocha. A key attribute of Chuqi Chinchay’s qillqa (iconography or language) throughout millennia has been their hominid, simian, avian, reptilian, amphibian, & insectile transformations, among others.

Read about Chuquimamani-Condori’s DJ E at No. 9 in “The 100 Best Albums of the 2020s So Far.”