El Cóndor Pasa

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Upon learning of this assignment, I immediately intended to write about Simon and Garfunkel’s version of “El Cóndor Pasa,” which they officially titled on the album as “El Cóndor Pasa (If I Could).” I automatically assumed that Simon and Garfunkel had covered a traditional originally Spanish-language folksong, merely based off of its simple lyrics (I assumed they had been translated) and the use of an instrument that sounded to me like some sort of wooden flute (I associated this with folk music/assumed this flute to be a folk instrument). The flute was featured, indeed, a traditional Andean flute called then quena. Apparently, Simon and Garfunkel also assumed “El Cóndor Pasa” was a folksong, and that is why they covered it. However, both of …show more content…

In actuality, Armando Robles Godoy’s father, a Peruvian composer and ethnomusicologist named Daniel Alomía Robles, composed what we know as the melody of “El Cóndor Pasa” as part of a seven part orchestral musical score for a 1913 Peruvian zarzuela (Spanish musical genre) named El Cóndor Pasa (Cerrón Fetta). Only the two parts known as the “pasacalle” and “kashua” are performed in the recorded versions. In all known recordings, the pasacalle is performed before the kashua. In most versions incorporating singing, including the Simon and Garfunkel version, the kashua is omitted (Cerrón Fetta). Once the melody we know as “El Cóndor Pasa” began to be played independently of the zarzuela, Daniel Alomía Robles patented/legally registered the piano arrangement on May 3, 1933 by The Edward B. Marks Music Corp. in the Library of Congress, under the number 9643 (Wikipedia, “El Cóndor Pasa”). Some sources argue that on this date, Alomía Robles actually sold the rights to the Marks Music Corp., not legally registered it (Cerrón Fetta). It is also said that when Los Incas recorded “El Cóndor Pasa,” when wondering how to credit the song, he contacted the Sociedad Argentina de Autores y Compositores de Música to figure out whether or not there was a composer associated with the work. In turn, the …show more content…

In 2004, Peru declared this song as part of the official national cultural heritage (Guerra). However, commenters from Bolivia, Ecuador, and elsewhere often try to claim the melody as their own, and these countries have tried the same on a much larger scale. In 2009, Bolivia's Cultural Minister, Pablo Groux, officially recognized the song as Peruvian, not Bolivian (Guerra). However, there is some merit to their claims, as Alomía Robles acknowledged himself that the song was inspired by the folksongs he collected in the Andes. Alomía Robles spent the majority of his time in Peru collecting stories and myths of the folk music of the Amazon jungle regions and the mountains of the Andes, but also visited Bolivia and Ecuador (Wikipedia, “Daniel Alomía Robles”). There is no way to tell the extent to which Alomía Robles utilized the songs he collected in his composition, from mere inspiration to downright copying. The musicologist Luis Alberto Salazar Mejía evidenced that the first ten notes of the pasacalle are similar to those of other musical themes, among them one of the Preludes of Bach, the Turkish March of Mozart, “Canto de las Ñustas” by Leandro Alviña, and almost a dozen pieces that appear among the compilations

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