Benitez & Valencia - Impossible Love Songs From Sixties Quito

Cat. no: HJRLP083
Format: LP2
Barcode: 769791980419
Release Date: 11 Mar 2022
Genre: World Music

Gonzalo Benitez and Luis Alberto Valencia were kingpins of the musica nacional movement in Ecuador - Check them out on the cover, on a rooftop in Quito's Old Town, surveying their dominion - In 1970, when Valencia collapsed onstage during a performance of the yaravi Desesperacion — 'My heart is already in ashes' — and died four days later, aged 52, his coffin was carried through those city streets on the shoulders of his fans.They began singing as a duo in their mid-teens 

During twenty- eight years together they recorded more than six hundred songs, for Discos Ecuador, Nacional, Granja, Ortiz, Rondador, Onix, Fuente, Real, Tropical, Fadisa, RCA Victor — and of course CAIFE.Their exquisitely romantic harmonising is a sublime blend of collected forbearance and abject self- annihilation, underpinned and elaborated by the heart-piercing, improvisatory guitar-playing of Bolivar Ortiz. Effectively the third member of the group. 'El Pollo' sets the tone and intensity for everything that follows: listen to his soloing at the start of our opener, Lamparilla.

Musically a pasillo — a cross between a Viennese waltz and the indigenous yaravi rhythm — Lamparilla draws its verses from a poem by Luz Martinez from Riobamba, written in 1918 when she was 15, under the influence of Baudelaire and Mallarme. Another pasillo here, Sombras is one of the best-loved songs in the musica nacional canon, setting lines about undercover sex and loss by the Mexican poet Maria Pren, which were considered pornographic on publication in 1911.

And Benitez & Valencia looked back still further, to the indigenous roots of Ecuadorian music, as the key to its future. Carnaval de Guaranda is their take on a song dating back to the era of the Mitimaes, a broad group of Bolivian tribes conquered by the Incas and displaced to Ecuador. 'Impossible love of mine / I love you for being impossible / Who loves what is impossible / Is the truest lover.'

Lovingly presented in a gatefold sleeve with spot-gloss, and printed inners, with stunning photos and expert notes. Excellent sound, drawn from original tapes, by way of Abbey Road, D&M and Pallas.

Tracks: Lamparilla / Suplica / Tormentos / Lindos Ojos / Quimera / Corazon Que No Olvida / Las Tres Marias / Dicha / Mi Panecillo Querido / Sombras / Amor De Mi Linda Guambra / Vestida de Azul / Amor En Tus Ojos / Arbol Frondoso / Carnaval de Guaranda / Plegaria / Tus Ojeras / Limosna / Invocacion Sentimental / Nocturno / Desesperacion / Imploracion Indigena