Remember those releases from an artist called Agua Clara that I was trying to edit? Well, it got muddy.
It turns out I also have Vol I (actually un-numbered, just called “Music of the Andes”) to go with Vols IV & V. I know it’s the same series, even though the artist name is different, because Vol IV shows pictures of the previous 3 volumes on the liner notes (yes, I did get my hands on the physical releases since last week). So I entered a merge and figured they just started mainly using the Spanish version of the name rather than the Quechua version (Ch’uwa Yacu and Agua Clara both translate to Clear Water in English, which also appears on all their releases) so I could sort it out with aliases. That still seems to be the case, but I cancelled the merge until I get this new wrinkle sorted out.
There’s this other artist, Ch’uwa Yacu Bolivia, who certainly based on this release looks like the same artist. Then I was finding other releases credited to them that have Vol #s on them that conflict with the ones I’ve been looking at, like this Vol II. Discogs thinks they’re the same, but I kept going back to the release series shown on my Vol IV, which has this Vol II.
After a lot of digging, ebay came through for me and I found some performer credits on the Ch’uwa Yacu Bolivia releases that mention Javier Zapata. He seems to be the main performer/arranger. He is ALSO credited on Music of the Andes, the Vol 1 of my series in hand, but the liner notes say “Thanks to Javier Zapata … for participation!”, so he sounds more like a guest artist.
Meanwhile, the Agua Clara releases I have give top billing to Faustino Cutipa, who is the first artist listed on Music of the Andes. My sense from the liner notes is that he could be considered the lead musician on that release, followed by Angel Marin, who also appears on the later Agua Clara releases (where Zapata does not).
To sum up:
It looks like Music of the Andes was sort of a launching point for these two artists, Agua Clara and Ch’uwa Yacu Bolivia, both of whose next release was a Vol. 2. (Ch’uwa Yacu Bolivia, Zapata’s group, might consider this their Vol. 1 - but I don’t think it makes much difference.)
I’m inclined to merge Ch’uwa Yacu and Agua Clara after all. They explicitly claim “Music of the Andes” as their release, and three of the musicians on that release appear on later Agua Clara releases, so it seems like a continuation of the same group.
I don’t guess you could call either group a sub-group, they’re just arists that sort of overlapped at one point in time. More like a Venn diagram, lol. I’ll put in the performer relationships, of course. And add an annotation? Is there anything else I should do to clarify this for the next person who comes along?
I might even have time to scan in the artwork I have access to this week. Fingers crossed.