Wonderful are the releases that come out of nowhere to serve as doorways into sounds from distant, often secluded cultures. Living Legend of the Ayacucho Guitar, a new cassette featuring Gustavo Yashimura on the titular instrument in the regional Andean style, is one of those. It features Yashimura solo on nine tracks with accompaniment on four by second guitarist Luis Sulca Galindo and vocalist Greys Berrocal Huaya. Produced by the Sounds of the Andes label under the direction of Hankel Bellido, the set, rich in tradition but infused with contemporary vitality, is out now on cassette and digital through Hive Mind Records.
As Living Legend of the Ayacucho Guitar begins, Gustavo Yashimura’s mastery of the guitar quickly comes into focus. Furthermore, it’s easy for a non-expert to ascertain that his command of the numerous styles of his homeland, that’s specifically the Ayacucho region of the Peruvian Andes, reaches far above the competent.
Info on the artist isn’t exactly free flowing, but Hive Mind does offer that Yashimura began playing guitar in 1987 and two years later was studying music at La Casa de la Guitarra in Montevideo, Uruguay. At some point after that, he ended up in Japan, where he played classical guitar for a few years before returning to Peru in 2004 to commence a deep-dive into the music of his home region.
This included receiving tutelage from the 80 year old guitarist Don Alberto Juscamaita Gastelú, who is also known under the more succinct sobriquet of Rahtako, and whose knowledge of various Andean songs and styles is immense, if not unparalleled. Of course, this is something of a well-grounded supposition on my part, since background info on Rahtako is even less prevalent than it is for Yashimura.
But as Yashimura is being described as a living legend in the title of this release, it’s unlikely that the claims made above relating to either guitarist are overstating matters by much, if at all. The tape is an absolute joy all the way through, with the solo cuts amply establishing Yashimura’s deftness but with an prevailing emphasis on the song’s beautiful energy, a duality only magnified by the tracks with second guitar and voice.
Those trio cuts, with the first, “Hegra del Alma,” serving as Living Legend of the Ayacucho Guitar’s opener, help to ensure the contents never settle a the standard newfound guitar ace introductory spotlight, not that those are necessarily bad records to have around. The spikiness of the melodies in “Hegra del Alma, ” with the first few seconds briefly bringing Joseph Spence to mind, do simultaneously underscore Yashimura’s prowess, as Galindo and Huaya strengthen a streetcorner café vibe, an aspect further enhanced by Yashimura playing a Spanish guitar.
This aura unsurprisingly carries over in the solo tracks, with the audio clarity in “Utkupankillay” so rich that the friction on the strings is intermittently audible (elsewhere on the tape, Yashimura’s breathing can be heard). In “Las Prendas del Corazon,” the atmosphere shifts from streetcorner café to a border town in the Southwestern USA, though clearly this is through the lens of my own personal experience and is not something Yashimura is deliberately striving to attain (this is crucial to the music’s success).
What’s not so plain, at least without being steeped in the traditions the guitarist is extending on this tape, is just how much individuality enters into each track’s equation. It’s a nice mystery. The level of intensity suggests the personal spin is significant and yet subtle, as the pieces maintain a timeless quality throughout. This is especially apparent in “Chunkullay,” a standout selection from a release that’s pretty seamless as a whole.
It’s important to note, as related by Hive Mind, that the Spanish guitar was an instrument retained by the Quechuan people in Ayacucho as the rest of Spanish colonization was rebuffed, so that these songs, long ago played on harps, Andean pipes, the charango, and the mandolin, were already given a kick of modernization long before Yashimura recorded them. Knowledge of this fact only magnifies the sense of fascination, as Living Legend of the Ayacucho Guitar emerges as one of 2022’s most pleasant surprises.
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