Arranged by Ian Gammie
Corda Music Publications: score and double set of separate parts (8, 2, 2, 2, and 2 pages respectively)
This folk melody comes from Peru and Bolivia and has that haunting and very recognizable sound that folk music from those places often has.
It is a quite short piece (a little more than 3 minutes) but the actual parts are relatively simple, which suits the musical character wonderfully well. After a short introduction, the tune begins on the first guitar and then throughout the forthcoming bars passes across all the others. There is an amount of freedom with the fourth guitar part, as, although it could be played as written, the idea is that, should there be an ensemble, and therefore several 4th guitar players that a tambora on chords (the symbols for which are there under the score) could be constantly played as a background to the very sad and serious melody above, which I could see working very well indeed. It certainly would suit just four players , in which case the 4th guitar player might need to improvise some of that , when appropriate to his part, but it would definitely be better with a larger ensemble, who would not have to be too advanced to cope with it.
Altogether, this is an atmospheric little song full of character that any decent ensemble could make a great deal of, without it taking too much technical wizardry to play it successfully.
Chris Dumigan
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