Music Lesson On The Moon

Valerio Condori was born forty years ago in Lambate, a small village at the base of the iconic Illimani mountain, the snow capped peak that appears on the cover of most guide books to Bolivia. He is Aymara Indian. Music is in his blood as his father was director of a group of Aymaran musicians teaching him to play the Tarka the Bolivian flute when he was a child. Not that he had time to play. From the age of 5 he worked with his mother in the fields. He did not go to school.There was no education for Indians other than to know the blessing of the earth and that life did not allow you to be lazy.

Before I met him I did not know the difference between a Charaugo, ( the small guitar pictured,) or a Tarka, ( the Indian flute in the background), but I do now, and I also know how to make the Tarka surrender up its music.

Valerio has been working at the Valle of the Luna providing traditional music for the tourists for three years. He worked on the land until the age of 15 and then began carving Tarka flutes for his father. The flute is made of llama bone and jacaranda wood. His father he told me was the best Zamponia player, (Aymaran reed instrument, made of small reed tubes), in the whole of the department of La Paz. He was a great musician with a perfect ear. The day he accepted a flute Valerio had made was obviously one of the proudest days of Valerio's life. Valerio had a passion for his instruments. When a group of Japanese tourists bought Tarka flutes from him and then wished to leave he was incensed. The idea was not just to sell to the tourists but to play for them.

I felt like the good child at school seating myself on a small bench that was the auditorium as the Japanese were brought to heel and seated in  an orderly line to observe the first of Valerio's greatest hits acted out.

Not only was he a passionate musician, he was great fun, he loved the idea of telling me about his life. He loved the idea that I wrote the facts down. Life for Valerio was and will continue to be one gift of song. He earns his living now by working at the Valle of the Moon and providing traditional music at weddings and Aymaran festivals. He is a living example of a man who does not work because everyday he gets up he spends his entire day doing what he loves to do. Which for someone who sacrificed his childhood to the needs of self sufficiency and agriculture seems really rather fair.