Tone Glow 206: Joshua Chuquimia Crampton

An interview with the California-based Aymara musician about activated ceremonial music, the importance of loudness in his compositions, and his new album 'Anata' (2026)

Joshua Chuquimia Crampton

Photo courtesy of the artist

Joshua Chuquimia Crampton (b. 1983) is a California-based musician and artist belonging to the Great Pakajaqi Nation of Aymara people. Starting in 2020, Crampton has released multiple full-length albums of guitar compositions: THE HEART’S WASH (2020), 4 (2021), Profundo Amor (2023), and Estrella Por Estrella (2024). Last year, Crampton released an album with his sibling Chuquimamani-Condori titled Los Thuthanaka (2025), which was Tone Glow’s favorite album of 2025. Crampton is set to release his fifth album on February 6th, 2026. It’s titled Anata, and it features seven tracks that expand on his unique compositional approach to guitar.

Crampton will play an album release show for Anata on February 6th. It will be part of a community event in San Francisco and hosted by BAAITS and Sacramento Red Road Gathering. The event will feature a screening of the film that he and his sibling made, Amaru’s Tongue: Daughter (2021). More information can be found here. Joshua Minsoo Kim spoke with Crampton on January 19th, 2026 via Zoom to discuss the responsibility he feels when presenting music, the importance of loudness in his compositions, and the ideas informing his new album.

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Joshua Minsoo Kim: What are the earliest memories you have of being really enamored with the arts?

Joshua Chuquimia Crampton: I can’t think of anything specific, but it has to be from when I was a kid, like elementary-school age, and connecting with nature. I had a lot of experiences living in a rural area in Mexico. There were a lot of moments I had in nature that I had never experienced before, and I always tie these moments to my creativity because, in seeing a wide-open space, I had a lot of freedom. The reason I mention freedom is because my mind felt very open—away from the dogma and religion that was around my family at the time. When I moved back to the US, everything felt a lot more restricted, a lot more inhibiting.

The mindset I go into now when I make music is related to those early moments—it was always a goal to go back into those feelings of freedom. The smells, the time of day… it made you feel open and not anxious. You’d see an ox tied to a tree in a field, and you were really taking in the moment and not worrying about anything else. You weren’t thinking about school or societal pressures or your role in the family and who you’re supposed to be. Your mind is free, your emotions are free, and everything is bright.

Are there specific things you do to get back into that mindset? Do you have certain routines?

Over the years I learned how to balance all the responsibilities in my life. I find pride in being able to do those things, to find time to work on myself. Through working on myself and being self-reflective—and being generous to myself in where I can grow and how I can help people around me—I can be taken back to those moments. Doing all this connects me to the medicine of Aymara people and my family and other music. All those gifts allow self-reflection to go beyond something egotistical. The reason I saw everything back then as so pure was because it didn’t have a face, it didn’t have a name. It wasn’t like, “I’m touching this medicine,” even though I was. It didn’t have a name for a god or a deity—it wasn’t deified for me—and it was outside of spirituality or any folklore with a name.

Now, I’m in a much quieter environment so it’s a lot easier to do, even when things get stressful in my daily life where I’m balancing work and creativity and being a parent. I’m used to that kind of grind. Learning how to be creative, how to be self-reflective, how to touch the medicine in my life in those moments, is what has gotten me to the most comfortable way I’m able to do it now. I wouldn’t reduce this to being a work ethic, but I’m picturing my past self taking the bus and walking through a busy city and finding peace in those moments—learning how to do that is tied to creativity. In the past, I didn’t know it was the same thing, but seeking that feeling is tied to how I get better at expressing myself. It’s one and the same.

You were talking about responsibilities, and I’m wondering if you feel a specific responsibility towards yourself or your audience or to your ancestors in your creative practice. How do you navigate that, and what are your actual responsibilities?

I do feel a sense of responsibility when presenting music. I’m representing my people, for example, because I choose to present that ancestral lineage in the work. It’s named and I’ve chosen to represent that, and there’s a pressure there, but at the end of the day I’m still going to represent it from my point of view and experience. I’m also representing the parts of my family who aren’t Aymara and their medicine in my life. There’s a lot of complications with that, and learning to navigate that over the years has made things more meaningful. This feels more natural to me because it’s less about arguing and more about sharing. I’m always trying to bring that out with the music. How can you represent this in a way that isn’t just in a glass case in a museum? How can you represent this in a way that’s natural and that people from this lineage can be proud of through seeing it from my perspective?

I’m curious about that aspect of the music and how you go about presenting it. For example, I saw Los Kjarkas live a couple months ago. Me and my friend were definitely the only non-Hispanic, non-Native people there, and it was crazy because it was maybe the loudest concert I’ve been to in my life, and I’ve been to multiple K-pop concerts where people are always screaming. I was really blown away by how people were singing every single line, and a lot of people brought their own country’s flag and were waving it around. It was really great. But of course, this sort of audience would respond differently to your music, even when knowing it’s coming from a similar lineage. I’m curious how you’re navigating all this when your music may not be immediately legible to someone who’s already familiar with these traditions from Bolivia. I guess this brings into question what authenticity actually is when you’re building on tradition.

I wouldn’t really look at it that way. A Kjarkas audience, for example, would still understand what we’re doing at the heart, they just might not recognize how the q’iwa/queer aspect in the music is not just anti-colonial, but also anti-state. That sounds ridiculous coming from someone based in the US, but it’s a view based on my experience. This is further complicated because we’re on the inside through our blood and our land ties, but we’re on the outside because of where we live, though the Great Pakajaqi Nation exists wherever its people are, so we’re all still connected no matter where we find ourselves in the world. This is a concept that’s difficult to explain to many people.

Me and Elly [Chuquimamani-Condori] saw Los Kjarkas as kids. Our family took us to see them, but we can’t remember if it was them or Smashing Pumpkins that was our first show. They were our very first concerts, though, and I remember how loud they seemed to me. The Smashing Pumpkins one sounded so scary-loud to me, but I was also so moved by that. That was just the shit. And what I remember about the Los Kjarkas concert was that it was just as loud even though they weren’t a rock band. That always inspired me. That’s part of the way our people do things, that’s part of our medicine. When you see me or Elly or Los Thuthanaka play, we like being loud, and that’s part of the physical experience—you’re supposed to feel the sound. It’s not supposed to be painful, but it’s supposed to change you, it’s supposed to make you feel healed in some way.

Los Kjarkas represent a different era of Aymara music. They’re iconic, they’re legendary, and I’m glad you got to enjoy a piece of that, but they’re part of a different generation that is much more connected with the patrimony of the state of Bolivia that buries Indigenous sovereignty. But that loudness, that thing of ceremony—people still connect to it with our music. They don’t really find it that strange. There was someone from Bolivia who wrote a review of our album and they said that what we’re creating wouldn’t be out of place in an urban ceremony because it is a representation of “activated ceremonial music.” It’s something you’d hear on the street—the energy is still there.

When you perform, what is it that you want from the experience, and what is it that you want the audience to experience? Or do you not want to prescribe anything? Is it better to have things open and to not have certain expectations?

I have to be open to the possibilities. I have my own views but they skew into a fairy-tale realm, and that can be a bit egotistical. I always try to shed that in my life even though it’s impossible—when you’re a performer, it comes with a certain amount of self-confidence, and it’s just part of the game, and it’s fun.

You were talking about the loudness of concerts you went to as a child. And I remember the Hearing Things interview where you talk about Boris and BAND-MAID and the Velvet Underground’s White Light/White Heat (1968). I’m interested in thinking about the different ways in which you can capture loudness, and consequently this means that there are different ways that an audience can experience it. I’m curious to know how you approach loudness, especially since you’re primarily using guitars and not like a drum kit to do that.

Loudness is very important to me and, especially now, the density of it and those textures are something I’m really attracted to. With the interview you’re referencing, all those albums have a different texture, and in my own music I like to represent them all, though the blown-out, saturated thing is more represented in my work.

My first record [THE HEART’S WASH (2020)] was very minimal, and the loudness of it was meant to be the silent moments. Now, all the layering is inspired by ceremonial music because there’s a looseness to it, it’s free, but it’s still working together. Part of the reason I don’t use drums and don’t write for vocals on my records at the moment is that those things ground a lot of stuff too much. I’ve been there—I’ve been a singer, I’ve written like that. And I used to write melodies on guitar, so I still approach it that way even if the melodies are abstracted. In my records, I don’t like the ego of the vocalist, where you’re just focusing on them; I want you to focus on everything working together, and I feel like that mentality is part of the medicine of the music.

A guitar teacher might tell you certain things are errors, or they might say, “Why would you keep that in there?” but it gives the songs this sense of moving fluidly without being too grounded in one specific image. I’m trying to remove anything that grounds this in you looking at me doing this. And that’s why there aren’t photos of me on the album covers. There’s nothing wrong with that whatsoever, but the ethos of my music at the moment started from deconstructing things and putting the spirituality into the music. I needed to go back to those moments of freedom from when I was a child, when I didn’t know how to name the medicine but I felt it. It was more free than anything else, and that’s what I’m always chasing in the music.

I’m thinking about your love for Japanese music, and we DM’d a little bit about Mamoru Oshii’s films, too. Something I always think about with Japanese music and some of their films is that given their place in history for the past 100 years, there’s a certain remove that they have from cultural trends in the West. They can then reappropriate them in a way that is stripped of what people would call “authenticity.” Musicians are forcing you, intentionally or unintentionally, to grapple with what each sound signifies, and that’s something I hear in a lot of what you’re saying.

Like, if I’m listening to a group like BAND-MAID, I know that if an American rock band were to play the same sort of music—and we can just ignore the vocals and the difference in language—it would be seen in an entirely different light given the history of rock music in America. Audiences would consider it cheesy. There’s a certain embrace of the totality of what music can be and mean and signify when I listen to certain Japanese artists, and I’m wondering if that’s the sort of stuff you ever think about given what you’re talking about with the representation of your culture being legible. Your guitar playing may signify older eras and styles and ideas—are you thinking about that, or not at all?

I try not to consider that because it’s so easy to do, and it’s probably my biggest frustrations with being a guitar player. It’s something that’s ridiculous to argue about, too. It’s like someone is standing in a grass field and it’s technically not grass even though it’s lush and green. Like, it’s not fucking grass, it’s some other plant—get it right!

Just because it wasn’t my intention when I composed it doesn’t mean I can deny that it’s something that someone else would think. And they might interpret textural, sonic, and melodic qualities that my music shares with certain eras or styles of music. I’ve learned not to get too frustrated or argue with any of that, and I welcome those audiences, but the line that is drawn is that I don’t use that as a definition for myself. In the world of promoting and talking about music, that’s why genres exist. I’m not a genre person at all, but I understand why people use them to discover music and build community. But someone who calls my music shoegaze would probably realize that I’d never be on a shoegaze label (laughter) or align myself with certain bands.

I grew up with My Bloody Valentine and I loved those records, but I’ve never been a Kevin Shields worshipper, or a worshipper of anybody where I wanted to copy their gear. I’ve never been that type of musician. Maybe when I was little I would look into that sort of stuff to figure out how to do things, but it was always my own delusional headcanon of what someone was trying to do (laughter). Like, “Oh, I can’t do that so I’m just gonna do it my own way.” That’s genuinely how I came up through music.

Although I feel hesitant talking about it due to the possibility of people inscribing its influence onto my own work, I’ve loved Japanese music for a long time, especially rock music. And I think a lot of it is its melodic nature. Everything’s about melody. I feel like in Japanese music there’s the super minimal side, which I’m attracted to, and there’s the super maximal side that’s really melodic. It’s calling upon these different times and textures, and because of the nonchalant spiritual nature of Japanese culture, it’s something I relate to with my own spirituality. I think that’s why Asian things, especially Korean and Japanese shows and styles and anime and music, are so popular in places like Bolivia. I think people inscribe that into themselves because for Aymara people, that representation of spirituality is there. It’s in the pop culture, and that removal of the same type of elitism or authenticity over songwriting and energy is what sets Japanese rock music apart.

Like you said, if an American band tried to approximate what BAND-MAID does, it would be seen as something different. A good song is a good song, but it would be perceived differently because you’d only see what’s over the top about it. For example, an American power-pop band might be on some weak shit musically and not have the same aggressive energy and songwriting flex as the band you just mentioned, but its power and authenticity would lie in the political stance of the artists, their ethics or where they’re from. On the other hand, to a Western audience, this Japanese band could be seen as hollow because the ethics are private and not part of the musical identity. To me, the focus on musical power and energy—there’s something spiritual about it, even if the people in the band aren’t making it about that. I feel like there’s no performative aspect of that either. Or maybe that’s just me making shit up.

With the minimal aspect, it’s something about the Pacific Ocean and its energy that’s been shared between many peoples throughout time. As someone who’s lived on the West Coast for most of my life, there’s something about that water that makes people wanna do things in a minimal way and make the most out of nothing. I feel like that’s shared when you look at the West Coast composers and the Japanese classical composers, and even the rock music. Even the whole grunge shit is based on a more minimal aesthetic than being gaudy and technical. When you go to the Japanese stuff, even though a lot of it is technical, it’s still different to me even if some of it is looking towards excess. It’s presented in a different way, and that connection is interesting to me.

This isn’t to say that I’m trying to write a J-rock riff, but make it Aymara—that’s not the way I listen to music. It’s the underlying thing I’m inspired by because it’s something shared. I don’t want to say it’s “spirituality,” because it sounds like I’m trying to inscribe something mystical inside of it, but you know what I mean—there’s a heart to it that resonates with me. And that’s something I try to get across with my music too. That’s sharing energy without taking style. I’ll swear by all of that music any day, but I would feel horrified if someone wrote about a JCC or Los Thuthanaka album and tried to say they were inspired by Kenji Kawai or something. I feel the same way about Brazilian music, too, which I was introduced to by my partner many years ago.

With your new album Anata (2026), there’s a note you sent that says you’re presenting the music as if you’re “trying to capture a ceremony or a natural phenomenon with a phone camera.” I’m interested in that idea, of the distancing and abstraction that results from documenting something. Obviously there’s a difference between being at a ceremony and then looking back at it through a recording. How are you trying to capture that experience musically?

It comes from that same idea of making activated ceremonial music—not just on paper or through a cleaned-up recording, but something you’d see on the street. You’d feel the energy, it’s loud, and it’s not strict or refined. That’s something I always try to keep in the music I make, and I think it’s really obvious when you have drums. With Los Thuthanaka, that’s a really good example of us representing activated ceremonial music, but it’s a lot harder to see when it’s just a guitar, but that’s how I’ve approached all the Joshua Chuquimia Crampton records. I expanded it a little this time though by adding more clear rhythms and even a ceremonial drum to a few of the songs, just to make that energy more undeniable.

In my last record [Estrella Por Estrella (2024)], I was inspired by a lot of the textures and layering and compositional styles of Andean music, but I used a lot of melodies and chords that were from country and folk and norteño, and different people connect with that medicine. It goes to show that without those obvious rhythms… well, some people tell me that they feel it in the music, but it’s not so obvious without the drum. When you hear the salay beat or the huayño rhythm, you know it, but I’m trying to bring it out in this music with only guitar. And I can’t really approach albums the same way, even though I try. Even if a process worked in the past, it just never works again; the universe never wants me to create the same way twice (laughter).

For my last record, I had maybe one and a half songs done, and I had a certain textural direction, but then I had a burst of creativity. I was reading a lot of space-opera books and I was in a weird mode of being a new parent. I was learning to process new emotions and fears and responsibilities and pride. Making that album had this very cosmic, astral-explosion kind of moment. I tried to approach this record like that at the beginning, but it didn’t work. Some of the songs on Anata were made while we were finishing up the Los Thuthanaka album, and then enough time went by where I realized that I was in a different place. I needed to look at these songs again from where I was at right now.

For the production style, it’s texturally dense but whereas the last album was trying to distill a moment, this one is me not being able to approximate it at all, so I’m just trying to take a photo. It’s like I couldn’t even really capture it, so it’s so blown out but you can still feel the energy. There are so many videos on YouTube of an Andean ceremony where you can barely tell what the audio is, and that’s really inspiring to me. I can tell what it is because I know these ceremonies, but with the way the sound comes out, it becomes even more moving.

I end all my interviews with the same question and I wanted to ask it to you as well. Do you mind sharing one thing you love about yourself?

My willingness to self-reflect to help those around me and to make all our lives better together. Starting with that kind of energy is when you can make a difference in the world on a greater level. That’s how change starts—whether it’s a societal change or a change in your own relationships or in the way you deal with the world—it starts small. And that’s what I put into my creativity. That’s part of the responsibility I have in my music, but because it’s wordless, it can touch so many types of people and different ways of thinking. Nothing needs to be said with words, and that form of communication is something I’m always aspiring towards.

Joshua Chuquimia Crampton’s new album, Anata, is out February 6th and can be pre-ordered at Bandcamp. An album release show is taking place in San Francisco on the same day—more information can be found here.

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Thank you for reading the 206th issue of Tone Glow. No words.

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