769791980419

Impossible Love Songs From Sixties Quito

Benitez & Valencia

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Format: 2LP

Cat No: HJRLP083

Release Date:  11 March 2022

Label:  Honest Jon's Records

Packaging Type:  Gate Fold Vinyl

No of Units:  2

Barcode:  769791980419

Genres:  World Music  

  • Description

    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.

  • Tracklisting

      Disc 1

      Side 1

      • 1. Lamparilla
      • 2. Suplica
      • 3. Tormentos
      • 4. Lindos Ojos
      • 5. Quimera
      • 6. Corazon Que No Olvida
      • 7. Las Tres Marias
      • 8. Dicha
      • 9. Mi Panecillo Querido
      • 10. Sombras
      • 11. Amor De Mi Linda Guambra
      • 12. Vestida de Azul
      • 13. Amor En Tus Ojos
      • 14. Arbol Frondoso
      • 15. Carnaval de Guaranda
      • 16. Plegaria
      • 17. Tus Ojeras
      • 18. Limosna
      • 19. Invocacion Sentimental
      • 20. Nocturno
      • 21. Desesperacion
      • 22. Imploracion Indigena