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Alwa: Indigenous Bolivian rapper breaks down barriers
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Reaching for her star: Alwa, the first female rapper from Bolivia’s Aymara indigenous community, performs on April 22 during a street concert in La Paz. (AFP/Aizar Raldes)
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lwa stands rigidly in front of a microphone, wearing a traditional puffy pollera skirt, a picture of serious concentration as Andean panpipe music starts up in the background.
The scene is set for a typical melancholic traditional Bolivian song, but suddenly, the 26-year-old breaks out into a rap, lifting up her arms with jerky hand movements.
Alwa says she is the first Aymara rapper from Bolivia, and wants to make a living from her voice one day.
"I don't care if people like my music. Just tell my mother that fear won't stop me. She won't beat me. Tell her also that I'm going to live off rap," she sings in her first song, "Endless Beginning”.
Alwa, whose name means "dawn" in the Aymara language, has just performed her second concert in the atrium of a public university in La Paz.
Her first album should come out in the middle of this year, she tells AFP.
Born in El Alto, the sprawling satellite town overlooking La Paz, Alwa is the first indigenous woman to dedicate herself to a style of music that has little in common with the melancholic sounds of traditional songs.
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