A few months ago, in his notes to one of our Latin-American records by Los Calchakis, their leader, Senor Hector Miranda was lamenting that every Tomas, Ricardo, and Enrique in France was stealing their act. No doubt he had in mind such people as Senor Cuevas and his group--whose makeup seems to owe as much to jazz as it does to Paraguay. (Almost in the same breath, however, Senor Miranda proudly observes that everyone in France is now tootling, plunking, and pounding on indigenous Indian instruments as a result of Los Calchakis' advocacy. Just back from a fairly extensive tour of France, I am a bit skeptical of his claim, having encountered not one South American instrument, in action or repose; but then perhaps the Holiday Inn (Auberge de Vacances) is not the optimum place to observe such things. But I did meet a lady who laces her beer with white rum!
Such records as this should ideally be accompanied with notes written by an ethnomusicological Ph.D. specializing in the Indian harp of Paraguay. But apparently the original publishers discovered that he was in the field (or woods) and perhaps reasoned wisely that we poor non-specialists would not have understood a word of his learned utterance. Which is o.k. with me. But why they opted instead for an essay on the habits and customs of the Guarany Indians, penned by the Paraguayan consul in Paris, is something of a mystery.
I suppose I should be grateful to Senor Duarte Barrios, since up to now all I've known about the Guarany was that they were the subject of an opera by Carlos Gomes. But Duarte Barrios' article is Impressionistic-Nostalgic-
Patriotic rather than factual and so does little to lighten my darkness. For illumination I turned to my antique Britannica, where I found the Guarany located somewhere between guano and Guaranty Trust of New York, and where I learned that they used to live in Paraguay, Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil, and were sedentary farmers who wore nothing but a long labret in their lower lips and lived on sweet potatoes and the flesh of their enemies. Nicolas Slonimsky [Music of Latin America] points up the thriftiness of the Guarany in noting that the victims' bones became musical instruments!
Slonimsky tells us further that the Guarany played wind instruments called memby, percussion things, and a primitive trumpet. Nary a word about harps in this connection; but elsewhere he notes that the harp--somewhat simplified by the natives--was, as we might have guessed, originally a European import, like the guitar.
Apparently European dance-forms assumed a hybridized form in Paraguay, so that we have the Paraguayan Polka and Paraguayan Galop (has nothing to do with the drinking water). Moreover, Paraguayans prefer, it seems, to sing their pop songs in Guarany, which gives them a piquant flavor if not comprehensibility. Finally, in that passion for indigenous music that swept the Western World a few generations ago, one Jose Asuncion Flores, seeking to unpollute Paraguay-an musical waters, invented the Guarania, described by Slonimsky as "a ballad in slow waltz time and usually in a minor mode," which became the nation's chief popular form and, I suspect, underlies what you will hear here.
