Name: Impossible Love Songs From Sixties Quito
Brand: Benitez and Valencia

Bonus disc

Bonus disc: No

Catalogue number

HJRLP083

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Colour

black

Colour details

Discogs ID

Discs

Download code

Download code: No

Rough Trade Exclusive

Rough Trade Exclusive: No

Extended format

Extended format: No

Format detail

Format Music GB

Limited edition

Release date

2022-03-11

Signed copies

Signed copies: No

Supplier GB

Proper

Tax rate GB

UPC / Barcode

769791980419

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2 / Extended format: No / LP / Rough Trade Exclusive: No / Signed copies: No / black

Artist

Benitez and Valencia

Genre GB

Latin / South American 

Label GB

Honest Jons

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 infuence 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 &amp; 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&amp;M and Pallas.

Impossible Love Songs From Sixties Quito

Music GB