Eduardo Falú – the master of the folk guitar
Today I present to you the fourth edition of encounters with the greats of Argentine Folklore. More information about them and the transcript of the interviews can be found on our site www.tangodiario.com.
More than 20 years ago, I had the great honor of chatting with the wonderful guitarist and composer Eduardo Falù at his home.
Eduardo Falú was born on July 7, 1923 in El Galpón, province of Salta. His parents had emigrated from Syria and ran a Ramos Generales business.
At the age of 11, Eduardo Falu began to play the guitar in a self-taught way. From 1937 he studied in Salta and wrote his first songs.
In 1945, he moved to Buenos Aires and began performing on the El Mundo radio station. With the outstanding poet Jaime Dávalos, he wrote wonderful songs such as “Zamba de la Candelaria”, which immediately became a success throughout Argentina and beyond the country’s borders.
Eduardo Falú also composed music for lyrics by other great Argentine poets such as Manuel Castilla, Ernesto Sabato and Jorge Luis Borges. From the 70’s until 1998 Eduardo Falú toured all over the world.
In our conversation, Eduardo Falú told me why Argentina has such a wealth of folk rhythms. It has to do with the different landscapes of the enormous country and with the influences of the origin and the various languages of all the immigrants who arrived in Argentina.
In northwestern Argentina, Spanish influences merged with Inca culture. This gave rise to Zamba, Baguala, Carnavalito, Bailecito and Chacarera, among others.
The landscape of Salta inspires him for his compositions, Eduardo Falú told me. He takes it inside, although he lives in Buenos Aires since his youth.
Listen for yourselves to everything this great teacher who passed away in August 2013 at the age of 90 told me.
Buy the interview transcript
Eduardo Falú: In the northwestern part of Argentina they are influenced by music, let’s say, there is a bit of European music, of course, Spanish; a symbiosis with the music of the Indian, of the Incas that mix many things with it.
Many things in Peru, in Bolivia. And that also feed the Argentine north. Later it has in the part of Cuyo, where the cueca and the tonada are cultivated; the tune is a kind of free song.
Interviewer: And there is also just folklore with hype, right? with percussion The chacarera, right?
Eduardo Falú: No, but that’s in Santiago del Estero, huh? It has nothing to do with Cuyo’s music. Whose is Mendoza, San Juan and San Luis. It is called the province of Cuyo, which plays the cueca, the cat and the tonada fundamentally. The chacarera is not from there.
Interviewer: Sure. But is the bass drum only used in the chacarera?
Eduardo Falú: The hype starts to be used later, but no, no, no. It is used in the cat sometimes, in that dance that has percussion and stuff.
Interviewer: And today there is something like a renewal or an interest of the youth for folklore. There are many young musicians and…
Eduardo Falú: There are many young people who want to study the instrument and what do I know, who present themselves as they are. But they don’t know the origin of things, they don’t know where it comes from; They listen, they learn it and they play it, right?
But it has a lot to do with the history of the country, right? with the history of these countries, with the Spanish conquest, what the Spanish brought: the tunes, all those Andalusian songs. The guitar itself is an instrument brought by the Spanish. And here the singing of the Americans, of the indigenous, is adapted, right?
Wikipedia
From a very young age he lived in Metán, where his father had a general business. His parents, Juan and Fada Falú, were Syrian immigrants. He began to play guitar in a self-taught way at the age of eleven, and in 1937 he settled in the city of Salta where he studied.
From 1945 he lived in Buenos Aires. He composed folkloric pieces of inestimable value, both from a musical and aesthetic point of view, based on lyrics by great poets such as Jaime Dávalos, such as “Zamba de la Candelaria”, “Las Golondrinas”, “Trago de sombra”, “Tonada of old love”, “La Caspi Corral”, “Renacer”, “Love, it’s called love”, “Milonga del alucinado”, among his best known; as well as with Manuel J. Castilla, (“Minero Potosino”, “Jealousy of the wind”, “Puna Sola”); Osiris Rodriguez Castillos, Leon Benarós, Hamlet Lima Quintana and Marta Mendicute.
He also composed others of an epic nature such as the Romance de la Muerte by Juan Lavalle , in collaboration with the writer Ernesto Sabato or José Hernández , based on texts by Jorge Luis Borges. He also collaborated with folk music using his guitar fully, thus he has works such as: “Choro del Caminante”, “Camino a Sucre” and “Trémolo”, among others. He compiled and made famous with his arrangement for guitar, the traditional zamba “La cuartelera”, born in the 19th century on the Argentine battlefields.
In the Suite Argentina he shows his knowledge of academic music focused on folk rhythms, and his high level as a guitar player, executing this work together with the Camerata Bariloche, directed by Elías Khayat.
He was Konex Platinum Award 1985 as Instrumentalist of Folklore. In 2015 he posthumously received a new Konex Award, the Diploma of Merit in the Instrumentalist discipline.
As a living tribute to Eduardo Falú , an amphitheater in his honor was inaugurated on April 16, 2011, on the 429th anniversary of the founding of the city of Salta.
He died on August 9, 2013 in Buenos Aires at the age of 90 .
Documentary
zamba de la candelaria, the guitarist died, alone with my guitar, impacts of eduardo falu