Founded in 2003 the Kuyayky Foundation (KF) is a federally recognized non-profit organization dedicated to the promotion and development of Andean music and culture. Our mission is to support and encourage the study of Andean traditions while elevating the stature of Andean artists in different disciplines by providing new performing arts venues for them to develop and showcase their work. To this end we teach children and youth, create concerts, documentaries, audio and video recordings, produce podcasts, film festivals, lectures, workshops, and visual artworks that practice and disseminate Andean creativity.
Our foundation has developed and produced a number of collaborative performing arts projects with international artists and international organizations: the dance and music Concert for Peru with the American Red Cross at the Joseph Caleb Auditorium (Miami), Kuyayky Live! (Baden, Switzerland) Kuyayky’s Xauxa Live at the NMAI (Washington DC), Charango Maestro Federico Tarazona in Concert at PAX (Miami), 20 Años Despues Kuyayky Regresa( Lima, Jauja,Peru) Yawar Chichhi: The Scissors Dance Live at the NMAI (Washington DC), ten Annual Bene t Concerts for the Children of Jauja (Miami, Naples, and Basel), the 2012 Miami Inclusive Arts Festival(PAX), Alma en Boca featuring Eva Ayllon (Colony Theater in Miami Beach) Xauxa: Back to the Beginning (Broward Center for the Performing Arts), and Miami Raymi (Area Stage Theater).
Our Ensembles: The Kuyayky Touring Ensemble, is our professional touring group. In addition to this, we have two well established ensembles, the Kuyayky Children’s Orchestra Miami and the Kuyayky Children’s Orchestra Jauja. We have also started the Kuyayky Children’s Choir Jauja. All of these work to promote the study and practice of Andean music by children and youths.
Our long-term projects: MAHAC ‘s mission will be to celebrate not only the past of Andean culture, but also the present. As such it intends to be a center for exhibition, research, and performance where Andeanists from around the world will be able to meet, study, learn from, and teach. On March 2019, we openned the doors to our new pilot MAHAC Viva venue, a small green-designed multipurpose venue for exhibitions, performances, and rehearsals in Yauyos, Jauja.
Our foundation has also been directly involved in earthquake and poverty relief projects collaborating with the Latin American NGO Un Techo Para mi Pais to build 15 new homes in the Independencia, Humay and San Andres Districts in Peru. And has over the past eleven years reached more than 8 thousand impoverished children and mothers in the central Andean highlands of the Mantaro valley.
To disseminate our work and research on Andean culture KF’s members have served as research consultants for both academic and corporate projects, most recently for FIU students doing ethnomusicology research in the Amazon, and for MTV News producers working on a story on the scissors dance. KF also uses web community building, social media marketing, social entrepreneurship and experience design to reach a worldwide audience. Creating static and dynamic content for its web-portal kuyayky.com, as well as by managing content on third party Web 2.0 platforms.
Over the years our foundation’s projects have been praised by academic institutions and scholars of Andean studies as well as by the Interamerican Development Bank’s Youth Leaders Program, the Smithsonian National Museum of the American Indian, and Peru’s National Institute of Andean, Amazonian and Afroperuvian Development (INDEPA)., among others.