Ibero-American Guitar Festival: More than just Santana
Argentinean classical guitarist Victor Villadangos hosted a master class—and invited the audience to participate— at the National Museum of the American Indian, as part of the 3rd Annual Ibero American Guitar Festival. (photo by Berta Rojas)
By Rebecca Park, Contributor
The guitar may not come of as the most exotic of instruments, almost banal in its omnipresence in American musical culture. But this year’s Third Ibero-American Guitar Festival, at the National Museum of the American Indian’s Rasmuson Theater, demonstrated how a diversity of traditions can transform the seemingly simple stringed instrument into a music as complex as the cultures of the Americas, Spain and Portugal.
The fruit of cross-cultural cooperation by the Association of Ibero-American Cultural Attachés, the festival brought together musicians from across the globe. Inspired by the celebrated Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959), to whom the festival was dedicated, artists took up the guitar and its offspring—mandolin and traditional instruments like the charango and bajo sexto—for a celebration of jazz, folk, and classical music.
Saturday afternoon, fleeing from a torrential downpour, Texas’s own Max Baca was a welcome relief, strumming warm, deep sounds on his bajo sexton, a 12-string marriage of guitar and bass. Traditionally an accompaniment to the accordion, he played a few rousing polka-esque numbers with fellow Los Texmaniacs band member David Farias. But he also struck out on his own, blending traditional folk and modern blues in a toe-tapping freestyle. “I kind of try to take this traditional instrument and do something a little different,” he explained. His audience was well warned.
Dani Cortaza of Paraguay emitted an even more dynamic stage presence, as the auditorium seemed to overflow with his lively band and the unspoken repartee between him and the percussionists. Specializing in Latin jazz—with a polka thrown in for good measure—he started with a slow, gradual build-up, fooling the listener into thinking that he had found a calm retreat from the stormy weather. But throw in a bit of piano and bass, blend in some rollicking drums and thoroughly mix with bongos that thump and bounce and sway. It’s a recipe for an energetic performance of North American traditions meeting South American styles.
And if Saturday’s performance—and the entire weekend-long Guitar Festival—didn’t fully satiate the appetite, think of it as an appetizer to the main course that is “Las Américas: Un Mundo Musical,” a division of this year’s Smithsonian Folklife Festival.
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