October 2, 2025 https://accad.osu.edu/news/kichwa-otavalo-community-sound-archive-summer-2025

This summer (2025) Jean-Yves Munch and Michelle Wibbelsman embarked on a research collaboration supported through an Arts and Humanities Accelerator Grant to work with Kichwa Otavalo community partners in the northern Andean region of Ecuador for the creation of an audio register of local songs and traditional instrumental music. 

An invitation from these communities to help document musical traditions in the area by way of a sound archive in the hands of the community itself at Escuela de Música Yarina (EMY) along with a prior interdisciplinary teamwork experience for a GAHDT Artist Residency with Kichwa Otavalo musician and composer Ati Cachimuel in 2023-2024 at MOLA in collaboration with ACCAD and CLAS prompted Wibbelsman and Munch to bring together their research interests and expertise once more. Munch’s specialization in on-location audio recording and spatial audio production complemented Wibbelsman’s long-term ethnographic involvement with communities in the area since 1995 and her current research on Indigenous transnational migration and musical diversity among Otavalan global diaspora communities. 

The Kichwa Community Sound Archive project builds on a decade-long relationship between Ohio State and the Centro Intercultural Comunitario Yawar Wauki, a community partner umbrella organization in the region that has participated with OSU in a series of community-engaged research, production and programming. These strong intellectual connections developed over time have cultivated ongoing conversations, research collaborations, scholarly publications, student involvement and community engagement across various units and departments at Ohio State and beyond, and have brought the resources of our institution to bear on meaningful, impactful and sustained scholarly commitments with partnering Kichwa Otavalo communities as well as our campus communities and broader publics in the U.S. 

Guided by the interests and priorities of this community partner and fundamentally designed to support, amplify and collaboratively contribute to their work, Munch and Wibbelsman worked intensively with a core team of administrators and technicians to capture on-location traditional musics in challenging acoustic settings. We recorded the Campanilleros de Caluquí—a group of octogenarians recognized by the state as intangible cultural patrimony of Ecuador—during a live processional festival; Andean harp, panpipes, violin and rondín (harmonica) players including an elderly mama rondinera(rare female harmonica player); a luthier who demonstrated bandolín, charango and guitar unique local tunings; ritual flute players; and a women’s choir among others. 

Munch and Wibbelsman also conducted a series of workshops for interested public participants with three-way translation in English, Spanish and Kichwa (with a little French thrown in too!). These dynamic sessions covered an Introduction to recording–from preproduction to recording using Zoom H3 high definition recorders; Live capture in different acoustic scenarios with Earsight ORTF mics; Mastering and editing recordings using Reaper DAW; Syncing sound and video. In between workshops and recording sessions, we made time for processing data, archiving and storage, planning next steps, developing workflow documents for data management and on-site recording practices, and reflecting as a group on archival considerations in the context of a community-held repository including issues of access, copyright, and uses. 

Creation of this audio register supports further studies of diverse tunings, acoustics and musical aesthetics across Kichwa communities as a basis for the eventual development of methods manuals and pedagogical methodologies. The Kichwa Otavalo Sound Archive also supports EMY’s objectives of promoting the development and transmission of traditional musical knowledge and songs in Kichwa as tools for social transformation and cultural resignification/revalorization. It provides the infrastructure for EMY’s vision of expanding research on Kichwa songs and instruments, techniques, forms of expression, and methods of transmission, and involving the entire community in the formation of musicians and the transmission of Kichwa language and musical practices to new generations. 

Munch and Wibbelsman will continue to meet virtually with the Kichwa Otavalo Sound Archives team to gather feedback and jointly evaluate the impact, significance, challenges moving forward, and future possibilities of the sound archive. The hope is that we can build on the success of the 2025 project to compete for additional funding that will sustain the project for the next three to five years. Connections to an R1 institution like Ohio State will, in turn, allow EMY to pursue national and international grants as well. 

We look forward to sharing the archive with the Ohio State community eventually when it goes live!

For more information on the Kichwa Otavalo Sound Archive, please feel free to reach out to wibbelsman.1@osu.edu  or munch.30@osu.edu

In the fall of 2024, Dr. Zoë Brigley Thompson, Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the Ohio State University, brought her Introduction to Poetry course to visit the Kawsay Ukhunchay Andean and Amazonian Indigenous Art Research Collection. During the visit, Dr. Brigley Thompson and her students wrote poems inspired by artifacts from the Collection.

In spring of 2025, Dr. Brigley Thompson published her concrete poem inspired by non-linear narratives in Andean story gourds in Inkfish Magazine. She has invited us to share this creative work.

Beyond her classes at Ohio State, Zoë Brigley is the author of three poetry books and winner of the Eric Gregory Award for the best British poets under 30 and the International Dylan Thomas Prize for the best international writers under 40. She is also editor of one of the UK’s leading poetry magazines.

In her author’s note, Dr. Brigley explains how her visit and interaction with Andean etched story gourds shaped the writing of her concrete poem:

Knot is designed to be printed out and made into a box/cube by cutting out the shape, folding along the squares’ dividing lines and gluing the flaps. It was created in response to an open house at the Kawsay Ukhunchay Andean and Amazonian Indigenous Art and Cultural Artifact Research Collection at the Ohio State University. Curator, Prof. Michelle Wibbelsman, and poet, Victor Eudoro Vimos Vimos, inspired my poetry class and I to create our own versions of calabazas / mates tallados or etched story gourds that appear throughout the Andes. Prof. Wibbelsman explains “Story gourds depict specific events … The tactile, sonorous, organic nature of the gourd prompts us to ‘read’ the piece using multiple senses. The spherical shape … invites us to turn the piece in our hands and presents us with a non-linear narrative structure that, in contrast to Western narratives, has no clear beginning, middle, or end. Etched story gourds depict clear delimitations of space and activity … divided into … distinct spatial-temporal zones.” Read “Knot” below or on the publisher’s website.

Intergenerational Heritage Workshops and Children’s Book Series

In 2024-2025, a collaboration between The Ohio State University and Bexley Public Library launched the Bigger Than Me: My Story, My Culture intergenerational workshop and children’s book publication series. This pilot program, co-sponsored by SPPO, HI, GAHDT, OAA, Office of Engagement, Center for Ethnic Studies, OSU Libraries and Bexley Public Library, supported children 8-11 and their families to produce published books on their family heritage. 

You can now view the first five books in the Bigger Than Me: My Story, My Culture children’s book series in the Folklore Library (HH498), SPPO (HH298), Global Arts and Humanities (HH150), and the main lobby of OAA. And if you’d like to purchase a copy, Wexner Center Bookstore has the books for sale. 

Pilot program funding also enabled us to place hardcover library sets at the Bexley Public Library, the participants’ elementary school libraries, State Library of Ohio, Ohio Connection Library, Bexley Historical Society, Thompson Library and the Wawakunapaq Children’s Books Library in SPPO. Two communities in the Andes and Amazonia with interest in participating in the series in the future with their own heritage stories also received sets for their community centers. 

Since the book launch last spring, kid authors have been invited by OSU Area Centers for interviews and gone on to present their books in their classrooms, participate in book exchange events with award-winning children’s books authors, and present at the Columbus Book Fair and multiple public library events. You can read more about the impact of the pilot program on the Bigger Than Me website.

The Bigger Than Me program gave us a chance to reconnect and collaborate once more with OSU graduates as networks that began at Ohio State extend beyond our institution into the community. Hallie Fried, class of 2022 majoring in Spanish and International Development, former Kawsay Ukhunchay Andean and Amazonian Indigenous Art Collection researcher and now a K-12 educator in Central Ohio, joined Michelle Wibbelsman (SPPO) and Leticia Wiggens (Ethnic Studies Librarian) as co-facilitator for the workshops in 2024-2025. Fried not only brought her sensibilities with K-12 audiences to the workshops but also her experience with applied pedagogies of play, emergence and curiosity explored during her time with Kawsay Ukhunchay. 

We also worked with local artist Hakim Callwood (@hakimsartnstuff) who sketched author portraits while listening to their stories and gave children pointers for their artwork for the books. 

The success of the Bigger Than Me pilot program has prompted the community to ask for a new iteration of the program. For 2025-2026, the number of registered participants has more than doubled! This year’s cohort also includes two OSU families and two returning families!  

The second iteration of the program launches this autumn of 2025 with a new group of families and kid authors, so keep an eye out for our spring 2026 book launch and exciting new additions to the Bigger Than Me publication series! 

We have volunteer opportunities for OSU students to help with workshops and events, mini language lessons, blog posts, photo/video documentation, and editing. So please reach out to wibbelsman.1@osu.edu with any questions, interest in getting involved, or support. 

Last week, Kawsay Ukhunchay curators welcomed Professor Carlos Rivas, specializing in Latin American Art, and Professor Aaron Katzeman whose work focuses on decolonial museum studies, to the Collection to discuss their work and explore a potential collaboration between Kawsay Ukhunchay Andean and Amazonian Indigenous Art Research Collection and the History of Art Department at Ohio State University.

The Kawsay Ukhunchay Remote Displays initiative, which give visibility to the Collection across campus, provided the opportunity to collaborate around curricular integration with History of Art classes and use the remote display essentially as a mini practicum site.

Kawsay Ukhunchay has three remote displays across campus. One at the Barnett Center of Integrated Arts and Enterprise, (located in Sullivant Hall 141)  focused on Tigua art and artists at the intersection of indigenous artistic production, indigenous entrepreneurship, and global arts markets. A second cabinet at the Humanities Institute (located in Hagerty Hall 455) in collaboration with the Center for the Study of Religion on religion, ritual, and shamanism.  And now our third cabinet in Pomerene Hall in the History of Art Department. Each remote display seeks to intersect with different disciplines for unique configurations of research inquiry. If you’re in these buildings be sure to look for our displays, which we endeavor to mobilize as a resource to the university community.

If you or your department is interested in a collaboration with Kawsay Ukhunchay’s Collection, please reach out to Dr. Michelle Wibbelsman at wibbelsman.1@osu.edu

In the autumn of 2024, Lily Crider, senior at Columbus Alternative High School, joined the Kawsay Ukhunchay Andean and Amazonian Indigenous Art and Cultural Artifacts Research Collection as a high school intern with a passion for museum and curatorial studies. She embraced the collection’s interconnected culture right away, working with undergraduate and graduate students to develop a better understanding of Andean and Amazonian cultures. As the first high school intern, Lily quickly became an important member of the team, bringing new perspectives and enthusiasm to the collection’s work. 

Lily’s contributions to the Kawsay Ukhunchay collaborative include her work on a new initiative involving remote exhibits around campus. Recognizing the opportunity for increased participation, she assisted in bringing Andean and Amazonian art into new spaces, making the collection’s rich histories more accessible to a wider audience. For the remote exhibition at the Barnett Center for Integrated Arts and Enterprise, she researched Tigua art from Ecuador’s Cotopaxi region, a lively artistic heritage known for its colorful landscapes and depictions of indigenous life. 

Lily, driven by interest and initiative, expanded her research by contacting renowned Tigua artist Julio Toaquiza Tigasi. She spoke with the gallery director of his art in Spanish through WhatsApp and had meaningful conversations about his artistic vision, aesthetic concepts, and experiences as an indigenous artist navigating the global art market. By forging this direct connection, Lily gained a better understanding of Tigua art while also improving the collection’s ties to contemporary Indigenous artists. 

We are incredibly lucky to have Lily on our team! She has infused the group with new energy and brought a wealth of new insights and ideas to the group.  

---

Telling stories has always been part of family life, with tales and traditions passed down from generation to generation. But family storytelling just got a boost from a community-engaged collaborative program offered by The Ohio State University and Bexley Public Library. The Bigger Than Me: My Story, My Culture series empowers children and their families to explore their unique cultural histories and heritage together, and ultimately share their stories as a published book.

The pilot program, co-sponsored by Ohio State’s Office of Diversity and Inclusion, College of Arts and Sciences Office of Engagement, OAA Office of Outreach and Engagement, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Humanities Institute, Center for Ethnic Studies, Global Arts and Humanities Discovery Themes “Archival Imaginations,” The Ohio State University Libraries and Bexley Public Library Youth Services, supported a series of workshops in autumn 2024 that allowed participants to explore listening and storytelling techniques, oral histories, material culture, library research methods, recording technologies and narrative strategies.

Led by Michelle Wibbelsman (Department of Spanish and Portuguese at Ohio State); Leticia Wiggins (Ethnic Studies librarian, Ohio State University Libraries), Hallie Fried (Ohio State alumna and local educator) and youth librarians at Bexley Public Library under Julie Perdue’s direction, the pilot program included a small number of families with children 8-12 years old and a wide diversity of cultural backgrounds.

The workshops were modeled on Wibbelsman’s children’s book, On the Wings of the Condor (2022), which celebrates her son’s Andean heritage and was featured on a 2024 WOSU segment of the Columbus Neighborhoods series. Bigger Than Me: My Story, My Culture thus far has been especially impactful for children who either don’t know much about their heritage or have grown up away from their families’ countries of origin.

One parent participant commented, “I like the idea of being in the weeds with something with my son, who keeps asking me ‘why do we have this Arabic stuff around the house?’ This program was the perfect way to open his eyes to the meanings and stories behind our traditions.”

Similarly, Davida Osei, another mom who attended the workshops with her 11-year-old son and 9-year-old daughter, says, “I loved the opportunity for them to learn more about their heritage. I am American, my husband is Ghanaian, and the kids have always been very interested in learning more about their heritage.”

Most importantly, the sessions were offered in a casual, not-overly-academic setting. “The workshops were loosely organized around how you create a story, while also making the sessions inviting, informal and fun,” explains Leticia Wiggins. Workshop facilitators introduced the children to analogue technology new to them, such as tape recorders and microphones and miniature printers. Children were equipped with research notebooks and special pens for notetaking. They also received small “expedition trunks” to store their research materials. As a special component, the program also brought in local artist Hakim Callwood to sketch “author portraits” of the kids while he listened to their stories and coach them on their book illustrations.

By the third workshop session, the books began to take shape in the minds of their authors, evolving as creative ways to tell their families’ stories. “They used their imaginations to come up with their books’ plots,” Perdue says. “One child is using a fictionalized version of himself as the main character who rubs a lamp that lets him travel back in time to his grandfather’s childhood. Another student’s book is a mystery, where the main character finds a wooden box from Ghana, and it’s a gateway to finding out about her family from there.” Other books feature sports themes, migration journeys and holiday celebrations. And one child entirely redefined the notion of heritage with a futurist orientation in the absence of family to interview.

Wibbelsman says the workshops also differed from after-school activities where parents drop their child off for a music lesson or sports practice and pick them up afterward.  “It’s really about the parents and kids coming together as partners, dedicating time with each other, and celebrating their shared heritage,” she explains. “We focused on the process of the books, of course, but also on forming habits of conversation, of collective imagination, of collaboration and joint problem-solving.”

As Osei comments, “More than anything, it turned out to be an opportunity for us to spend time together. We are a busy family, so it’s so nice to pause together. It turned out to be an opportunity for the three of us to foster our relationship … to talk about things like the history of our names and to have deep conversations. That has been the gift in all of this.”

Lena Feldman, whose eight-year-old son was the youngest participant, commented that for her, an experience that stood out was “watching mothers’ faces when their kids were retelling their family stories… seeing that look on other moms’ faces was one of the most memorable moments.”

The final result of the workshops is a self-published book creatively authored by each child and reflecting their family’s unique story. The books will be spotlighted at a celebration for the young authors at the Bexley Public Library this spring. Find more information about the program.

Program facilitators are already planning the next iteration of the Bigger Than Me workshops and thinking about how to sustain, develop and amplify this community-engaged collaboration. Adds Wiggins, “As a land grant university with all of these incredible resources that we can share with the community, it would be amazing to make this a model that other libraries could use throughout the country.”

But the best outcome of the workshop series may be a little closer to home. “Every family has a story. Whether or not it garners attention from others, it’s meaningful to your kids,” says Davida Osei. “I can’t say enough good things about the program. It’s been beautiful for us to bond as a family, and that connection is what truly matters.”

This autumn, Ohio State and the Bexley Public Library are collaborating on a series of intergenerational workshops to support children and their families research and write their own heritage stories.  Bigger Than Me: My Story, My Culture is a new children’s book series that nests personal stories within broader family and cultural histories, empowering children who have grown up away from their countries of family origin to connect or reconnect with their cultural heritage.  

This pilot program led by Dr. Michelle Wibbelsman (Department of Spanish and Portuguese), Leticia Wiggins (OSU Ethnic Studies Librarian), Hallie Fried (OSU Alumna and Educator) and youth librarians at Bexley Public Library is modeled on the children’s book On the Wings of the Condor featured in WOSU’s Columbus Neighborhoods segment “Genealogy for New Generations.”  

The workshops bring children and parents/grandparents/other family members together as partners in researching, gathering materials and conducting oral history interviews for their unique stories. Workshops equip participants with resources and research methods by “teaching on the sly” and approaching collaborative research as quality family time and fun.  

The program will culminate in a series of self-published books co-written by children and their families. Bexley Public Library will host a showcase in spring 2025 to celebrate the Bigger Than Me: My Story, My Culture series and allow participants to share their published stories and workshop experiences. 

This community-engaged initiative received generous funding support from OSU Libraries, the Office of Diversity and Inclusion, College of Arts and Sciences Office of Engagement, OAA Office of Outreach and Engagement, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Humanities Institute, Center for Ethnic Studies, OSU’s Global Arts and Humanities Discovery Themes “Archival Imaginations,” and Bexley Public Library Youth Services.  

For more information on these intergenerational heritage workshops, collaboration with community partners, or the Bigger Than Me children’s book series, please reach out to Michelle Wibbelsman (wibbelsman.1@osu.edu) or Leticia Wiggins(wiggins.65@osu.edu). 

In summer 2024, Micah Unzueta, Alec Kingsley, and several other collaborators brought to fruition a full-scale model and implementation of the Muyuchina Quechua Verb Wheel—a long-term interdisciplinary collaboration supported by the Kawsay Ukhunchay Andean & Amazonian Indigenous Art and Cultural Artifacts Research Collection, Quechua Language Program, Department of Spanish and Portuguese, The STEAM Factory, Center for Latin American Studies, Department of Design, Department of Art, Department of Engineering, Studio for Art and Design Research (SADR), College of Nursing Innovation Studio, Center of Science and Industry (COSI), Language Science Research Lab at COSI, Whitten Scholarship Fund, and an Ohio Sustainable Energy Partners (OSEP) grant.

The Muyuchina Quechua Verb Wheel is a hands-on language tool that encourages users to engage with Quechua by allowing them to construct verbs in the language. In Quechua, muyu is a seed or a circle. Combined with the suffixes /-chi/ and /-na/, Muyuchina means ‘that makes spin’ or, in Spanish, ‘que hace girar’. The wheel is a tool for student-led discovery and dialogue around Quechua as an agglutinative language where verb meanings and function are defined by the addition of suffixes.

(Alec Kingsley with the Muyuchina at COSI)

Quechua or Runasimi is one of more than 600 indigenous languages in South America. Today, it is most commonly spoken in Bolivia, Ecuador, and Peru—present-day countries that partially map the extent of the pre-Columbian Inca Empire, known as the Tawantinsuyu. Quechua is spoken by more than 10 million people, making it the most spoken indigenous language in South America.

There are many varieties within the Quechua supralect. However, native Quechua speakers across South America all use suffixes in agglutinative fashion, to construct the meaning of verbs. A single verb can accommodate more than a dozen suffixes!

(way’kurparimpuwankimanpischu means ‘and would you please quickly go cook for me?’)

As students interact with the Muyuchina they can learn about Quechua morphology in connection to Quechua culture. Long, continuous verb structures arguably mirror social values that characterize Quechua culture—extended relationships, elaborate storytelling, and intricately interconnected weavings are a few examples. As such the activity is also an entry point for conversations about indigenous Andean cultures.

(Micah Unzueta explains how one verb in Quechua can equal more than a dozen in English)

As an undergraduate at The Ohio State University, Micah Unzueta developed the idea for the Muyuchina and presented it at the 2021 Kawsay Ukhunchay Andean and Amazonian Indigenous Art and Cultural Artifacts Research Collection Tukuypaq Open House. Students gathered around and built their own Quechua verb wheels to learn more about Quechua language and culture.

(Micah Unzueta presenting the Muyuchina at the Tukuypaq Open House 2021)

The original Muyuchina workshop connected users to a space of inquiry and oriented them within the Collection by centering language. By analyzing Quechua, participants were introduced to cultural takeaways that led them to a more profound understanding of the art and cultural artifacts in the workroom. This educational intervention, focused on Quechua morphology, demonstrated the intimacy and interconnectedness of the language, a motif present throughout other Andean traditions and meaning-making practices.

Funding from an Ohio Sustainable Energy Partners (OSEP) 2023-2024 grant allowed Unzueta to return to OSU post-graduation to work as a research consultant for Kawsay Ukhunchay and develop a full-scale Quechua verb wheel for implementation with diverse audiences at COSI (Center of Sciences and Industry), as well as other venues.

(Unzueta captures a photo of the mounted design of the Muyuchina)

Unzueta collaborated with engineering and advanced Quechua student Alec Kingsley to fabricate various full-scale verb wheels based on Unzueta’s initial designs. Together, they worked with Elivia Andia, Quechua language instructor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, Josh Gagliardi at the College of Nursing Innovation Studio and Paul Tenwalde at Ohio State’s Studio for Art and Design Research (SADR) to develop the final products.

The Muyuchina design features an empty space for the placement of a verb root at the center of the wheel. This space is surrounded by multiple outer rings containing different suffixes in Quechua that can be rotated into place to create increasingly complex meanings.

(T’usuchkani means ‘I am dancing’)

(Kingsley tests the Muyuchina at SADR)

The table-top design of the Muyuchina is paired with a miniature computer that generates a simultaneous translation for the verb wheel using distance sensors and indicators of varying depths to register each suffix’s location on the verb wheel.

(Kingsley assembles the wiring for the simultaneous translator)

Kingsley designed two Quechua to English translation programs for the Muyuchina. The first is a program for simultaneous translation. The second is a program that requires manual input.

One of the challenges of the project was adapting the Muyuchina to reach beyond its original context of the Kawsay Ukhunchay Research Collection to tap broader audiences. Ohio State’s STEAM Factory was integral to connecting Unzueta and the Muyuchina project to a broad interdisciplinary network including Laura Wagner, Director of the Language Sciences Research Lab at COSI. Dr. Wagner guided the team in terms of implementation with diverse audiences and, in summer of 2024, invited a pilot of the project at COSI’s Language Lab.

(Kingsley shares his translation program with Dr. Michelle Wibbelsman, Associate Professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese and Director of Kawsay Ukhunchay)

Micah’s ingenuity and his vision for collaborative interdisciplinary work have contributed an exceptional resource for ongoing student research, classroom application, and public outreach and engagement opportunities with Quechua language and culture.

(Anais Fernandez Castro examines the Muyuchina)

The future of the Muyuchina includes plans for Quechua language students to present the Muyuchina and facilitate public interactions once per semester at the COSI Language Sciences Research Lab. Beyond this, the project lends itself to presentation at conferences centered on education, pedagogy, Andean and Amazonian studies and Quechua language. As Micah heads to The University of Texas at Austin for graduate school, inclusion of the project in AILLA-UT (Archives for Indigenous Languages of Latin America) might be a possibility. And eventually, Micah looks forward to implementing the Muyuchina in educational settings in the Andes. 

Congratulations to Micah and his team of collaborators for this exciting project, and stay tuned as the project goes out into the world!

Tinkunakama

---