A legend of Argentine folklore and charango
Today we are dedicated to a legend of Latin American folklore: the charanguista Jaime Torres.
I visited him at his home on the first of January 1994. His rehearsal room was filled with instruments, records, paintings and books about Quechua culture – and on the walls hung the memories of his unmentionable tours around the world.
Jaime Torres, the son of Bolivian immigrants, was born in Tucuman on September 21, 1938 and grew up in Buenos Aires. Since recording misa Criolla with Ariel Ramirez in 1964 and making his first European tour in 1965 he has made Charango famous all over the world. In 1974 he played at the opening of the football world championship in Germany.
Ten days before our talk, he had performed with the Buenos Aires philharmonic orchestra at the beautiful Teatro Colon during the Christmas concert, another highlight of his long career. Jaime Torres died on December 24, 2018 at the age of 80.
Listen for yourselves to what Jaime has told me about the Charango and his various musical adventures!
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Part of the interview
Well, actually, what I could tell you as a project are what they were, until yesterday, for this year that has just arrived, right? This… I think it’s a time where people, man, person, everywhere in the world know that we started, well, like with new energy, as if things are separate, when in fact it’s very little like that.
I have had, in recent years, with many activities of different kinds, of different kinds. And I say this because I have an instrument, which is the charango. I am united by a life of almost 50 years and with the instrument and with the music, and I think that these years, the last years, perhaps, have been years of bonanza, of harvests. I believe that man always, throughout life a little, reaps if he has sown. And I think that the previous ones, who have been my teachers, have undoubtedly sown.
And I say sown because they are particularly unknown instruments and in recent years they have just taken certain spaces and places that really, I think, correspond to them. When I talk about these instruments I refer fundamentally to the charango, as it is also, of course, the quenas, the sikus and all the instruments that make that world of the music of the altiplano, that altiplano so similar in countries such as Peru, Ecuador, Bolivia, the north of Argentina, the north of Chile and that were previously a single homeland, a single land, it was a viceroyalty, belonged to a viceroyalty all these peoples that were defined with a culture, well.
Eh, they are instruments, if you like… that of stringed instruments, relatively new instruments for the world. Instruments that have been somewhat relegated in the places of origin themselves. So how can we not celebrate? How not to have a deep excitement to know that today an instrument like the charango is lucky to be able to share audiences and moments in Europe, in almost all the countries of Europe and I would say that almost in the world everything right? Last year, ’93, I had a beautiful tour, unforgettable, because I arrived in Southeast Asia; to Singapore, to Kuala Lumpur, to Jakarta, to Bangkok.
Tour that I do this year 94 again in the month of May. So, the fact of having been linked to music for so long I think has not been in vain and that there is a whole work that, I repeat again, last year, recent year 93, in the month of December, on December 22, I received something yes as a culmination of a stage that has passed, in this case, the interpreter too, right? which was to share a Christmas concert at the Colón Theater with the… this prestigious and beloved philharmonic orchestra of Buenos Aires, the Colón Theater.
And, surely it is like a long dream cherished by many, by many men who have had and many others who maintain in these instruments and their music an unwavering faith, because behind all the music, behind the instruments is always man, and here what is involved is, fundamentally, to bring man closer, to the men of the earth.
WIKIPEDIA
Jaime Torres (San Miguel de Tucumán, September 21, 1938 – Buenos Aires, December 24, 2018)1 was a prominent Argentine folk musician, originally from Tucumán. He has gained great worldwide repercussion for his great skill with the charango.
In 1974 the instrumentalist, along with his band, participated in the opening show of the football world championship in Germany. A year later, Torres organized a local meeting of regional instrumentalists, an event he baptized as Tantanakuy (Quechua word to denote “encounter between peers”), repeating the same meeting until 2015 and in parallel, from 1980 to the present day, the same experience with children and adolescents that he nicknamed “Tantanakuy Children and Youth”.
In 1988 he composed the music for the film La deuda interna.
He has played in all kinds of stages with identical fervor and dignity, his extensive performance ranges from the modest stages of the Tantanakuy, (the streets of the villages, at the foot of monuments or under centennial trees), to the prestigious Teatro Colón de Buenos Aires, passing through the Berlin Philharmonic, the October Hall of Leningrad and the Lincoln Center.
His first tour of Europe, in 1967, he plays in Stuttgart, (Liederhalle); Düsseldorf, (Rheinhalle); Braunschweig, (Beethovenhalle); Berlin, (Neue Philarmonie); Hamburg, (Musikhalle); Rotterdam ( Concertgebow ) and Brussels ( Palais de Beaux Arts).