Traditional music
The harp is the emblematic instrument of Paraguay. The instrument introduced by the Jesuits immediately seduced the Guaraníes who became great instrument makers and excellent musicians. The Paraguayan harp has undergone transformations compared to the traditional harp. It has its own sound and requires a special technique. It has 36 strings (sometimes 38 or 40), has no pedal and its sound box is quite wide at the base. To understand the love that Paraguay has for it, one only has to listen to Luis Bordón, a harp legend with eight gold records, or Félix Pérez Cardozo, who composed his most famous piece Guyra campana. Another figure of the Paraguayan harp is Ismael Ledesma, one of today's greatest performers and composers, who lives between France and Paraguay. The Festival Mundial del Arpa in Paraguay takes place every year in September or October. The concerts take place at the Teatro Municipal Ignacio A.Pane Municipal Theatre and in the squares of Asunción. In October 2013, the Paraguayan harp entered the Guinness Book of Records
, with the concert of an orchestra of 420 harpists under the direction of Maestro Luis Szarán.Of course, the harp is at the heart of guarania and polca, two traditional Paraguayan musical genres. Polca is the lively music that can be heard at all the village festivals. It illustrates the history and traditions of the country. Every political party or football team has its own polca orchestra! The polca (or polka) has little to do with the Bohemian polka, from which it got its name in the middle of the 19th century. The rhythms are very different. The Paraguayan polca has many variations that are more or less fast and joyful: the galopa (danced by a group of women, the galoperas that go around in circles and swing with a jar in their hands), the polca kyre'ÿ (very joyful and lively), the polca popo (with jumps)... The most popular polcas at parties are : Che la Reina, by Emiliano Fernández, La Chuchi, by Maneco Galeano, or Paraguaya Linda, by Mauricio Cardozo Ocampo. Campamento Cerro León
, by an unknown author, is a real national anthem! As for guarania, it is the most beautiful music in Paraguay. It awakens in all Paraguayans far from their country a deep nostalgia. It is a soft and sentimental music, played most often by a trio composed of a harpist and two guitarists. This musical style was invented by José Asunción Flores in 1925. The first guaranias, Jejuí, Kerasy and Arribeño Resay, were a huge success. Paraguayans were used to listening only to fast and joyful music that did not necessarily match their mood or character. Unlike the polca, there is no dancing on the guaranias. Flores later created India, Mburicaó, Panamby Verá or Cholí. Gerardo Arroyo, Ayala Báez, Cardozo Ocampo, Florentín Giménez, are other famous guaranias. Less fortunate, Oscar Safuán remains famous for trying to mix the country's two great genres, polca and guarania, in a new style called Avanzada. In spite of some support, this novelty never took off. Another institution of Paraguayan music was Augustín Pío Barrios (1885-1944). Specialists agree that he is one of the best guitarists and composers of all time! His stage name "Nitsuga Mangoré" is a combination of his first name written backwards and the name of a dreaded Guarani cacique. Among his 300 compositions, La Catedral, Las Abejas and Danza Paraguaya are the most played. Other great classical guitarists include Sila Godoy (1919-2014), Felipe Sosa, Luz María Bobadilla and Berta Rojas.Classical music
Paraguayan classical music revolves essentially around one man: Luis Szarán. A world-renowned conductor, he conducts the Asuncion Symphony Orchestra (OSCA) which meets at the Teatro Municipal Ignacio A. Pane. This beautiful late 19th century building offers a rather varied programme of quality - theatre, classical, dance - and occasionally hosts the Paraguayan Congress Symphony Orchestra. This relatively recent formation (2012) has two interesting personalities: Diego Sánchez Haase, its director and conductor, a great Bach specialist, and tenor José Mongelós, the great lyrical voice of Paraguay.Current music
Some may remember Alberto del Paraná (1926-1974), the Paraguayan artist who sold the most records in the world, with his group Los Paraguayos. But today, Paraguayans mainly listen to and produce rock music. The genre exploded in the 1990s, just after the fall of the long Stroessner dictatorship, where any form of artistic expression deemed subversive was prohibited. An important scene flourished, influenced by Argentinean and English groups. Local groups included Flou, Revolber, Salamandra, Paiko, Tierradentro and Kchiporros. Paraguay, and especially Asunción, is full of places to listen to rock music, starting with the Rockero Popurrí Nocturno, THE rock bar in Asunción! The biggest bands perform outdoors, in the big football stadiums, or at the Jockey Club. Finally, a small jazz scene is emerging and an international festival, AssuJazz, takes place every year in October. Musician and singer Ricardo Flecha was one of the first to combine traditional country music with jazz or rock, with the group Ñamandú, in the 1980s. But the real star of the moment is the Orquesta de Instrumentos Reciclados de Cateura (Cateura's Orchestra of Recycled Instruments). Since 2012, this orchestra of about 40 young Paraguayans from Cateura, a shantytown in Asunción, has been giving concerts all over the world. The children and teenagers play with instruments they have made themselves, using waste from the huge rubbish dump nearby. Oil cans, paint pots, coins, forks, tins, bottle caps, etc., are transformed into double basses, guitars, trumpets, flutes, trombones, saxophones, violins... And the musical result is amazing: from classical music to rock metal, jazz and tango, the kids have talent and an impressive repertoire. The tours follow one another, making it possible to finance more and more social and educational projects for the families of Cateura.
Theater and dance
Augusto Roa Bastos, the most famous Paraguayan writer also shone in the theatre. His work is less prominent, but just as committed, and includes an adaptation of his seminal novel Moi, le Suprême (Me, the Supreme). But the greatest Paraguayan playwright is Julio Correa (1890-1953). He was one of the founders of the Guaraní theatre, with highly critical plays about social injustice and the Chaco war. Cuerpo y alma (1945) is one of his best known poems. In theater, among his twenty or so plays, all in Guarani, we can mention Sandía yvyguy or Pleito riré. In the narrative genre, he is the author of several tales, collected in 1969 in the posthumous collection Sombrero ka'a y otros cuentos (Sombrero ka'a y otros cuentos
). Another great playwright is Josefina Plá (1903-1999), a multifaceted artist (poet, journalist, plastic artist, painter, ceramist...) who was very committed and who, among other things, created the country's first theatre school. Under the López regime, many professional European dancers came to Paraguay and influenced the creation of new dances such as the cuadrilla (descendant of the quadrille), el chopi (couple dance), el londón karapé (squat dance) or la mama cumandá (a variant of polka), which was practiced on the battlefields to boost the morale of the troops during the Triple Alliance War. Mrs. Lynch herself, the companion of the dictator Francisco Solano López, put all her energy into it! But the most typical traditional dance is undoubtedly the danza de la botella ("dance of the bottle"). The only individual dance in folklore, it sees women carrying one bottle on their heads, then two, then three... and up to ten bottles on top of each other! An exercise that requires a lot of skill. And let's not forget the energetic ballets of the black community of Kambá Kuá that take place during the Saint Balthazar celebrations on January 6th. In classical and contemporary dance, the National Ballet of Paraguay has earned a very good reputation under the direction of Rolando Rasmussen, a choreographer of international stature. The National Ballet performs at numerous dance festivals around the world. Both dance and theatre are enjoyed on the stage of the Teatro Municipal Ignacio A.- Pane, and cultural centres such as the Centro Cultural Juan de Salazar, Centro Paraguayo Japones, Manzana de la Rivera, La Serafina, or the Teatro Arlequín, where national and foreign plays, both classical and non classical, are presented.
