Post by Blue on Dec 31, 2015 14:24:43 GMT
www.npr.org/2015/12/30/461484380/with-no-museum-thousands-of-mexican-instruments-pile-into-this-apartment
There's a place in Mexico City that's filled with thousands of musical instruments from all over Latin America — some of them more than 100 years old. It's not a museum or music school. It's an apartment. Actually, the collection's grown so much, it now fills two apartments. It's the result of a lifelong passion for the instruments and their history, as well as a determination to share them.
Guillermo Contreras is a brawny 63-year-old with gray hair and a beard, wearing blue jeans and a black dress shirt, but when he opens the door, you barely notice him. There are instruments everywhere. It's more than any museum collection I've ever seen.
"No, I've filled one museum with 300 pieces," Contreras says. "I can tell you, there are more than 4,000 instruments here."
He's got Jaranas, vihuelas, guitarrones, bajo quintos — all Mexican offspring of the Spanish guitar, which was brought here during the colonial period. There are also violins and harps of every size, marimbas, dozens of percussion instruments, and wind instruments of every shape, length and sound.
He pulls out a reed flute and says it was played by the Aztecs. The instrument is still played in a region of northeastern Mexico.
Contreras was an architect by profession when he traveled to a small town south of Mexico City in the late 1960s. He met a group of old musicians, some born in the late 1800s, who were playing instruments from that period.
"They thought it was amusing that a guy from the city would visit them and have so much interest in their music, which was sort of dying," Contreras says. "Many of them wanted to give me their 10-string guitars, and I couldn't take that away from the family."
A few months later, he went back and found that some of the musicians had died. He asked their families about the centuries-old instruments — and says he was stunned by what he heard.
"An instrument from the 19th century, already destroyed, had been turned into a chicken feeder; another one became a little kid's wooden horse."
Contreras decided then and there that he would dedicate his life to documenting and preserving his country's musical heritage.
There's a place in Mexico City that's filled with thousands of musical instruments from all over Latin America — some of them more than 100 years old. It's not a museum or music school. It's an apartment. Actually, the collection's grown so much, it now fills two apartments. It's the result of a lifelong passion for the instruments and their history, as well as a determination to share them.
Guillermo Contreras is a brawny 63-year-old with gray hair and a beard, wearing blue jeans and a black dress shirt, but when he opens the door, you barely notice him. There are instruments everywhere. It's more than any museum collection I've ever seen.
"No, I've filled one museum with 300 pieces," Contreras says. "I can tell you, there are more than 4,000 instruments here."
He's got Jaranas, vihuelas, guitarrones, bajo quintos — all Mexican offspring of the Spanish guitar, which was brought here during the colonial period. There are also violins and harps of every size, marimbas, dozens of percussion instruments, and wind instruments of every shape, length and sound.
He pulls out a reed flute and says it was played by the Aztecs. The instrument is still played in a region of northeastern Mexico.
Contreras was an architect by profession when he traveled to a small town south of Mexico City in the late 1960s. He met a group of old musicians, some born in the late 1800s, who were playing instruments from that period.
"They thought it was amusing that a guy from the city would visit them and have so much interest in their music, which was sort of dying," Contreras says. "Many of them wanted to give me their 10-string guitars, and I couldn't take that away from the family."
A few months later, he went back and found that some of the musicians had died. He asked their families about the centuries-old instruments — and says he was stunned by what he heard.
"An instrument from the 19th century, already destroyed, had been turned into a chicken feeder; another one became a little kid's wooden horse."
Contreras decided then and there that he would dedicate his life to documenting and preserving his country's musical heritage.