{"product_id":"impossible-love-songs-from-sixties-quito","title":"Impossible Love Songs From Sixties Quito","description":"\u003cp\u003eGonzalo 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.\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eDuring 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. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eMusically 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. \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eAnd Benitez \u0026amp; 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.' \u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eLovingly 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\u0026amp;M and Pallas.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"Honest Jons","offers":[{"title":"Black | LP | x2","offer_id":50459085603147,"sku":"1144732","price":37.99,"currency_code":"GBP","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0867\/1120\/6219\/files\/9d8aae31-1bdd-47eb-8ef9-1490024987a2_thumbnail_4096.jpg?v=1727217104","url":"https:\/\/shop.roughtrade.com\/de\/products\/impossible-love-songs-from-sixties-quito","provider":"Rough Trade","version":"1.0","type":"link"}