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The city of Oruro lies on the edge of an extensive steppe, at the foot of ten successive hills, in the northern part of the department of the same name, which is located in the highlands of western Bolivia. The city was founded on November 6, 1606, with the name Villa Real de San Felipe de Austria de Oruro.1 The mineral richness of the hills and mountains drew the attention of Spanish conquerors searching for silver during the seventeenth century; by the late nineteenth century, the city of Oruro became, thanks to its strategic location, the most important mining and railroad center of the country.2 However, the Great Depression and the Chaco War (1932-1935) marked the end of the expansion and capitalization of the mining industry, and most mines were finally closed by the mid-1980s. Formerly known as an important mining, industrial, and railway center of the country, Oruro is today best known as the folklore capital of Bolivia, its Carnival parade being the most important social, cultural, and economic activity for which the population prepares throughout the year. UNESCO's declaration of the Oruro Carnival as an Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity produced a popular euphoria on May 18, 2001, when the local population watched the live transmission from Paris and the news was spontaneously celebrated by Orureños (people from Oruro) residing in different parts of the world. According to Yves de la Menorval, who was UNESCO's representative in Bolivia at the time of this declaration, a particular feature of the intangible is that it is not necessarily linked to a physical heritage, and it can also be interpreted in different ways.3 In relation to this, I have suggested, apart from its various interpretations, that the Oruro Carnival involves both the materialization of the intangible and the incorporation of physical-topographic features into the immaterial sphere of myth and dreams.4 The incorporation of cultural and sociopolitical transformations into the spatial sphere of the festival has also been explored before.5 In this chapter, I propose that the cultural intangibility of the festival could also clearly be identified in relation to its temporal and musical dimensions. Although the documents submitted by the Bolivian government to UNESCO do not specifically mention the musical temporality of the Oruro Carnival, they do underline the musical richness of the festival, an important component of Carnival temporality in the city of Oruro. The Andean Carnival season extends from All Saints' Day in November until the end of Carnival in March. Although I will make reference to the importance of seasonal temporality for an understanding of the musical sphere of Carnival, my analysis will concentrate on the effects of music upon temporal perception through a description of the Alba rite (arguably the climax of the Oruro Carnival, during which hundreds of musicians play different Morenada tunes simultaneously), which takes place between the Saturday Carnival pilgrimage and the Sunday Carnival parade during late February or early March.6 The celebration of Carnival is often interpreted as a dramatization of social-temporal processes in which the symbolic representation of time takes a central place. Such an approach contributes to the identification of different elements of analysis and to an understanding of complex phenomena in an orderly way. Although I recognize the value of such an approach, my own exploration of temporal perception in a specifi-cally enhanced musical context demands the simultaneous discussion of specific features of the ritual process (such as the transformation of behavior according to the specific temporal phases of a ritual) and the practical organization and scheduling of such activities. I also incorporate ethnographic vignettes and personal memories within theoretical discussions to illustrate the ways in which different elements often overlap or merge together. Therefore, I start my exploration of musical-temporal perception by recalling a specific experience that has been particularly helpful in the processes of reflection on the contexts, issues, and perceptions involved in the temporal-musical sphere of Carnival.