For this reason, a lot of music was lost. Baca spent years searching the coast for singers of those songs, and compiled them for a book project, began an archive, released several CDs of the music and with her husband began a conservatory of Afro-Peruvian culture, the Instituto de Negrocontinuo. It has studios, archives, performance spaces and a library. Food, dance, singing, it was around me all of the time. I got these things from my aunts and my grandmother.
Culture is brought through the women.
But so much of the music and culture has been lost. None of it was written down, and very little was recorded. I was always around black music, but I never heard about it on the radio. You could never learn about it in school. But now you can.