"The most important aspect of anthropological fieldwork is the perspective of longue durée."  said my professor one day long ago, as his class lecture spilled into the hall of the department. He was admonishing us to take a focused scientific approach to the data that we were going to collect in the field and to look for trends and tendencies that would allow for hypotheses and predictions of human actions instead of mere descriptions. I listened intently that day and resolved to be a scientist of the first order. My fieldwork would be impeccably scientific and I would work to establish a pattern of social structure to explain how and why there were cultural differences between us and them.

Since that time, I have worked in a small Andean community in northwestern Argentina for more than 13 years, and during those years there have been numerous changes. Births, deaths, migrations, and shifts in the existing social structure have created a complexion of change that has manifested some degree of pattern in movement. But then one day, something out of the ordinary occurred. That day, totally unexpected, there was a powerful change in the sequence of anticipated events, an occasion that forever changed who they were and who they are today. It was on that day that the first "musical stereo system" was brought into the community.

In I99I, when I first met him, Héctor worked as a caretaker at the local boarding school, where students live from mid-day Sunday until mid-day Friday, as distances to and from the school can be as much as an eight-hour hike each way. Because he was a federal employee, Héctor was paid with money and not exchange goods, even though there was neither a store nor a cash economy in the community at that time. Every month he would collect his pay from the Director of the school and put it aside, calmly biding time until he could travel to the city to spend his earnings. This engendered a lot of excitement, and surely some envy, from other village folk who spent many evening hours advising Héctor on his upcoming expenditures and speculating what he really might do. Since people were not at all familiar with financial cost, this led to amazing stories, some even betting that Héctor would take his pay and buy a house in a very wealthy area of Buenos Aires and leave them forever.

At the end of I99I, with the approaching holidays and rainy season, which would cut the community off from the main road for three months. Héctor at last traveled to the cit, where there was a large and notorious contraband market filled with all kinds of Western clothing, shoes, electronic equipment, and furniture. He was gone for a week, and in his absence, everyone discussed endlessly how Héctor might be spending his fortune. It seemed the day for his return would never come. Men would congregate in fields to discuss the probability that he would ever return, and women would stop mid-sentence during an interview with me, to ask what I thought he might be doing in the city at that moment. At the time I was as eager as they for him to return, because I wanted daily life to return to its patterned sequences.

Well, his arrival day came, and several community members gathered at the school to wait for him. It was late afternoon when a young woman finally spotted the hired truck beginning the 45-minute descent into the valley. As the vehicle traversed one curve alter the other, the word spread quickly that Héctor was arriving, and more people joined the group. When, at last, the truck rounded the last hairpin curve and careened into the school ground, the excitement was so intense that the crowd was virtually breathless with expectation and anxiety. Everyone pressed forward to get a first glimpse of Héctor and the long-awaited surprise.

Héctor opened the door of the truck and there were no greetings from either side. Everyone waited. He slowly climbed down from the truck in a very solemn manner, evoking a heavy and weighted moment. He asked everyone to step back. With great care, he lowered a large box which was tied closed with a rope. In respectful and reverent tones, I began to hear some murmuring within the crowd about the great size and weight of this box, anticipation building. After a sufficient interval to regain his composure, Héctor untied the rope and opened up the box, choosing one of the community elders to help him lift the object. Everyone leaned forward expectantly and gasped when out came a very large "musical stereo system."

It was immediately obvious that this was no ordinary stereo system: it had two incredibly large speakers, a turntable, an AM/FM radio, a six-disc CD player, and a double tape deck attached. It was one of the largest and most complete stereo systems that I have ever seen. Everyone was exclaiming its beauty and marveling over the features, as I struggled to make sense of this: there was no electricity in the community, no one had ever seen a CD. only one old man down at the river owned records (and those were from an old Victrola), and Héctor owned two cassette tapes. But I also noticed that I was the only one who acted puzzled. Everyone else seemed quite satisfied solely with Héctor's ownership of this remarkable stereo system.

After some of the excitement began to die down and Héctor had told the story of how he purchased this stereo system and how he traveled over such a long distance with such a fine piece of equipment, one man, a respected community elder who had begun to feel impatient with the attention that Héctor continued to get, asked him to ''fire it up." We all quieted down and watched him, again mesmerized with anticipation. He then unloaded a smaller box that I had not noticed previously and took out a car battery with a ''lifetime warranty" advertised on the plastic enclosure. Methodically, with purposeful care. he stretched out the long wires on the brand new stereo system and slowly stripped them. First positive, then negative, he attached the naked wires to the battery. Immediately, with no forewarning, the radio began to crackle with music from some far­away station. The crowd started squealing with delight, saying that this was the finest radio they had ever heard! The mood shifted to elation and boisterous excitement, although Héctor remained aloof from his neighbors. After a few minutes of failing to capture a clear station, surrounded by Andean peaks in excess of 3500 meters. Héctor calmly pulled out one of his two cassettes and turned the volume of that spectacular musical stereo system up to its most capacitated decibel. That was the day that mountain music was born.

Since that day, every afternoon when he finishes work. Héctor puts on a cassette (he now has a collection of I7 cassettes of Andean folk music) and lets the speakers blare out. I have heard the noise while as much as two hours from the school, echoes reverberating off the snow-covered peaks. Héctor's presence and participation has become vital at all celebrations in the community: he gladly loads up the hallowed stereo system on two donkeys to collaborate in all festive occasions. Since that time. Héctor has married well, produced six children, and become the unofficial spokesperson for the community. He was even briefly considered for a provincial political post in the regional district. His meteoric rise in social status and influence, so clearly tied to his very wise investment in such an outstanding musical stereo system, serves to remind me often of the arbitrariness and idiosyncrasy of change, and the probable roots of so many of life's most hallowed structures.