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This dissertation contrasts two parallel moments in Afro-Peruvian music history:(1) the theatrical performance of José Durand's “Pancho Fierro” company in 1956, which brought Afro-Peruvian music from the private realm to the public eye in Lima and inspired an Afro-Peruvian revival, and (2) the emergence of Afro-Peruvian music as world music performed by Susana Baca in the 1990s, bringing awareness of Black Peruvian music and culture to audiences in the US and Europe. Through a social history of the period connecting those moments, from the 1950s to 2000, I analyze the ways in which the first event catalyzed a Pandora's box of competing inventions of history and performance styles, which was replicated on a larger scale by the second event. Decade by decade, I retrace various historical “reinventions” of Afro-Peruvian music.