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PRICE:
$16.00
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ARTIST
TITLE
Living Legend of the Ayacucho Guitar
FORMAT
Cassette

LABEL
CATALOG #
HMR 018CS HMR 018CS
GENRE
RELEASE DATE
8/26/2022

Gustavo Yashimura-Arce comes from humble origins in the Ayacucho region of the Peruvian Andes. He started playing guitar in 1987 and two years later he travelled to Montevideo in Uruguay to study music at La Casa de la Guitarra. After spending some years playing classical guitar in Japan, Gustavo returned to Peru in 2004 and began his intense studies of the Andean guitar styles of the Ayacucho region. Later, in 2008 he found the perfect teacher -- 80-year-old veteran guitarist Don Alberto Juscamaita Gastelú, known locally as Rahtako. Through Don Alberto, Gustavo was able to learn songs and styles from across the Andes, though the main focus remained on the traditional styles of the Ayacucho region. The Ayacucho Province of Peru is mountainous and remote and mainly populated by indigenous people of Quechuan descent, with the main language remaining Quechua, or Runasimi ("the People's Language"). The Quechuan people of the Andes remained resistant to Spanish colonization and fierce in their preservation of their culture but on this album, you will hear one of those strange, hybrid artifacts that can arise when cultures meet. The Spanish guitar was taken by the Quechuan people of the Ayacucho region and employed as a new means to convey their traditional music. The melodies you hear are versions of the traditional Huayno melodies usually played on harps, Andean pipes, charango, and mandolin. Gustavo is joined by Luis Sulca Galindo on second guitar and Greys Berrocal Huaya on vocals on four tracks on the album. Hive Mind Records worked with Henkel Bellido (Sounds of the Andes) to bring this beautiful music to light.