FAMILIA PILLCO

Violins from the Andes TUMI101

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Biography

Manuel Pillco Cuba came to Cuzco with his godmother in 1910 at the age of 6. His parents hoped he would find a better future there than in the village of Zurite where he was born. Cuzco was then a city of grand houses where people spoke mostly Quechua, the ancient language of the native Incas. They still clung to the traditions of the previous century, and the central square remained a village market place where peasants from surrounding regions would bring their produce to sell to the city folk.

Manuel became apprenticed in a small fireworks factory and entered the world of music at an early age, learning the harp when he was 14 years old. He was mostly self-taught and later went on to teach many others, including some of his own sons and the composer and orchestra director Armando Guevara Ochoa.

He developed his unique and deeply moving style of playing which included traditional Peruvian rhythms as well as more formal religious pieces. He also performed in the many cafes and meeting places of the city. It was probably during one of these gatherings where he met the photographer Martin Chambi, and they came up with the idea of forming a group to collect and spread the rich artistic inheritance of Cuzco. So began the Cuzco Centre of Native Art in 1924, which came to be the most important folk art centre in Peru.

In 1934 the local historian Luis Valcarcel helped them to set up a touring group of artists and musicians and they went to Buenos Aires in Argentina. They performed at the famous Colon Theatre, causing a considerable stir in such a Europeanised city where music from the Andes was still something unheard of. The group toured other countries in the Americas, always performing to great acclaim.

Reynaldo Pillco Oquendo was born in 1934, the fourth of eight sons of Manuel Pillco. He began to learn the violin at the age of six, taught by his father, and accompanied him wherever he played. Thus he absorbed technique, style and the meaning of the music surrounding him. At the age of ten he joined the Cuzco orchestra and later formed the Chamber orquesta of Cuzco. After a period in the National Music Conservatory, he took over as musical director of The Cuzco Centre of Native Art. There he helped to create the sound which marked a brilliant epoch, during which ten albums were produced, all directed by him. Reynaldo's unique and brilliant technique made him one of the most famous violin players in Peru.

The musical influence of the Pillco family did not stop there, but carried on into the next generation. At the age of eight, Enrique Pillco Paz began playing the violin with his father Reynaldo as well as helping him at the music school. He also accompanied his father at the The Cuzco Centre of Native Art, and later became a full member of the cultural society his grandfather had founded. He combined traditional musical elements with his own natural spontaneous style.

In 1982 he became a member of the chamber orchestra of the Institute of Advanced Musical Studies and in 1986 he formed a string quartet with his father and two Dutch musicians. After studying anthropology at the San Antonio Abad University, he started to experiment with a fusion of classical music and religious indigenous sounds of sixteenth century Cuzco.

Reynaldo and Enrique Pillco come from a family that has maintained a musical tradition for over eighty years. In this recording they are attempting to bring to light some strands of traditional Peruvian music popularly played in the first half of the twentieth century, but which have since then become neglected and partially submerged in the stereotyped and simplistic image of Andean music.

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