As a child Gustavo Pazos Conde received his first guitar lessons from an old
teacher in El Cordón, a Montevideo neighbourhood. It was he who helped
him make a transition, within a few years, from the classical guitar to the
traditional gaucho rhythms of milonga, vidalita and estilo.
These unique guitar styles let their musical mark on him for good, aided by his life
experiences from early childhood and adolescence in the countryside of Tacuarembó, in
the heart of Uruguay.Years later, he receives a more academic training. But his true
professional school occurs onstage. He had already started performing in public at the
age of 19 playing in groups, solo and in several cases accompanying traditional music
singers. It was during this time that he created his first songs, wich were released in
different recordings. His first instrumental cd, "Papas Calientes" (Pan Records), appeared
in 1998, with Dutch classical guitarist Esther Steenbergen with own works for two guitars,
and later the solo cd's "Caraguatá" and " Estación Edén" (Saphrane) were released.
On the two previous cd's with guitar music from Uruguay, Gustavo defines his guitar
as the expression of a world of emotions and landscapes. This new musical work follows
the same path and once again converges past and present through his vision of several
musical traditions of the Gaucho. Gaucho tradition is not limited to Uruguay but it also
extend to Argentina. Besides his own work, the cd aIso includes two composers from
Argentina closely related to Gustavo’s musical world: the guitar player Ernesto Snajer and
the bandoneon master Dino Saluzzi. Finally a Peruvian yaraví is included, the mestizo
version of the pre-Columbian jarawi or harawi (lyrical love songs). The Yaraví is the source
of several musical forms of the Gaucho traditions like the triste and the estilo, therefore
very linked to Argentina and Uruguay. That is the reason one yaraví is included, for its
beauty and because of the respect Gustavo has for the Peruvian guitar tradition.