This Peruvian girl’s Michael Jackson cover will make you want to learn the dying language of Quechua [View all]

[Judi Lynn]

This Peruvian girl’s Michael Jackson cover will make you want to learn the dying language of Quechua

by Nidhi Prakash
August 18, 2015 8:18 AM

In the middle of ancient Incan ruins in the foot hills of the Peruvian Andes, 14-year-old Renata Flores Rivera brings together two things dear to her heart: the ancient Indigenous language of South America, Quechua, and Michael Jackson’s “The Way You Make Me Feel.” The result is gorgeous:

Renata Flores Rivera "The way you make me feel" Michael Jackson - Versión en Quechua


Flores spoke to Fusion from home on Monday afternoon after a full day at school.

“It’s a project called ‘Las juventudes tambien hablamos Quechua‘ (the youth, we speak Quechua too),” she said. She said it’s important for her “to be able to appreciate this language again, because we are losing it here in Peru.”

Flores’s mother, Patricia Rivera Canchanya, kicked off the campaign this year through a cultural association, la Asociación Cultural Surca, which she founded 11 years ago to promote arts and Peruvian culture in their home city of Huamanga (also known as Ayacucho). Rivera is also a musician, and set up a music school through the association. She said she saw an urgent need to pass on Quechua to younger generations, before the language is forgotten in Peru.

“I speak Quechua, but not very fluently anymore because we don’t use it,” she said. “They teach a lot here, English, which is also really important because it’s the global language, but we can’t abandon our roots because this is ours, it’s a heritage that we shouldn’t allow ourselves to lose.”

More:
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