Theres a great cultural value in this

music. It represents five centuries. Its

the musical heritage of Mexico.
Eduardo Llerenas was a respected professor of biochemistry when he
won a Rolex Award for Enterprise in 1981 for a project to preserve
Mexicos rich musical heritage. He is now the director of an
independent music label and is considered by ethnomusicologists to be
the world expert on Mexican traditional music. Among the many
factors that brought about his career change, the Rolex Award figures
significantly.
-

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erview#sthash.4QoTe1vq.dpuf

Sounds from the Heart

Like all true transformations, Eduardo Llerenass shift from
biochemistry to Mexican son a form of music with distinct regional
styles played throughout Latin America was a gradual process. It
stretches back to 1967, when Llerenas began travelling from his home
in Mexico City to the surrounding countryside. The original purpose of
these journeys was to discover nature and people, but he soon
discovered something else: a keen appreciation of folk music.
In the years that followed, Llerenas ventured out regularly on weekends
and holidays to small Indian and mestizo villages, seeking out patronsaint parties that featured local musicians. "Im always going to parties
Im not invited to," Llerenas says. This proved to be fortunate for the
musicians whose work he began to collect, and whose work he
eventually produced, distributed and even helped to bring live to
concert audiences around the world.
Llerenass first recording session took place in 1969. By then he had
teamed up with two friends, one a mathematics professor who took
care of the electro-acoustics and one a plastics factory manager who
was also a musician. The three friends decided that when they were not
busy with their regular jobs, they would create an archive of Mexican
traditional music. They then began a systematic musical survey of the

country.
Talent Seekers

Identifying and locating the musicians in their home towns was a

difficult task since the musicians were peasants who played in their
spare time. As a rule, Llerenas would arrive in a village and begin by
speaking with the people in the market or in the coffee shops. He would
find out whether the local musicians were playing and then go to hear
them. If they proved to be good enough, the team would record the
group.
"We looked for virtuosity as well as the most authentic repertoire of a
particular local genre," Llerenas explains. When they found it, they
recorded right there in the village. Llerenas set up temporary recording
sites in schools, homes, churches and bars anywhere with good
natural acoustics and where the musicians could feel at home and
family and friends could listen and watch.
"I knew we couldnt get the best quality if we recorded during the actual
fiestas, so wed all go back to a home or to some other appropriate
location. Thered be lots of interruptions. Neighbours would stop by,
dogs would bark, children would cry, but the result was great. If you
take these kinds of musicians into a studio, they die artistically," he
says.
A Relaxed Atmosphere

It was this strategy of recording in a relaxed atmosphere, combined

with the best standards of equipment and recording techniques that
assured the team that they were getting the truest possible
reproduction of the music.
Slowly but surely the archive was built. Today it includes more than
15,000 songs by 800 different groups scattered throughout regions that
make up about 60 per cent of Mexico. The purpose of the archive was
twofold: Llerenas and his friends sought to build something that could
be used in ethnomusical and historical studies, and they also wanted to
diffuse the music in order to preserve it both in the places where it
originated and in places that had never before heard it.
At first, Llerenas was afraid traditional music was disappearing. He
believed that as roads to remote villages were paved and television
satellites and cables were introduced, the influence of popular culture

would be devastating to traditional music. And this was unthinkable.

"Theres a great cultural value in this music. It represents five
centuries. Its the musical heritage of Mexico," he says, adding that
Mexicos music is particularly rich due to the blending of its many
indigenous cultures with Spanish traditions and influences. In
addition, Mexicos mountainous topography has accentuated the
individuality and variety of the music.
Career Change

With preservation of this varied musical heritage uppermost in his

mind, Llerenas applied for a Rolex Award for Enterprise. He hoped, in
the event he was selected as a winner, to finish the archives by
recording in regions of Mexico that his team had not yet explored. At
that time, he never dreamed that winning the award would change his
life but it did.
"Although the prize money, exposure and contacts of the Rolex Award
were all important," Llerenas says, "the real value was the stimulus it
gave me to share my recordings with the public, both in Mexico and
abroad."
After the Rolex Award in 1981, Llerenas and his friends received an
offer from a government agency responsible for promoting popular
culture to subsidise the production of materials from their archives.
The result was the Anthology of Mexican Sones, a collection of six
records (now three compact discs) released in 1985. Currently in its
eighth edition, the anthology was a great success and, it paved the way
for further unsubsidised releases.
The Rolex Award also served as a catalyst for other opportunities. Soon
after receiving the prize, Llerenas was invited to lecture and share his
collection with musicologists at congresses and festivals in the
Caribbean, the United States, and in Europe. He also produced several
radio series, including one that won a prestigious prize, the United
Latin American and Caribbean Radio Award.
Critical Step

In 1986, Llerenas made the critical step of leaving his position as a

research biochemist at the National Polytechnic Institute. It was not an
easy decision to make.

"Little by little," Llerenas says, "the music was taking up more and
more of my time. It slowly took over.
"For an entire year before I finally decided, I had nightmares every
night. I had a very good position at the institute and I had had a
rewarding career in science. But there were a number of circumstances
that had come together by that time: the important impetus of the
Rolex Award, the fact that we had produced and sold records, and my
growing feeling that I didnt want to be a passer-by on the music
scene," he says.
The decision is one that Llerenas has never regretted. He finds his
dedication to music both interesting and challenging from an
intellectual point of view, and he also finds he does not miss science.
Corasn, his independent label, is doing well and finding its own niche
in the world of music. "There really isnt any label on the market like
them," comments a spokesman for the company distributing Corasns
releases in the United States. "Theres no one doing what theyre doing
with Mexican music."
Sounds from the Heart

Together with his partner Mary Farquharson, Llerenas established

Corasn in 1992. The name itself is a play on words; taken from the
Spanish word for heart, corazn, and son. An outgrowth of an earlier
label Llerenas had set up called Msica Tradicional, Corasn set out to
commercialise the archives as extensively as possible, and it now has
over 30 titles on the market.
The company makes its products available to markets that are
unfamiliar with the music, for example, internationally or in places like
cosmopolitan Mexico City. It also makes a special effort to distribute to
the places that produce the music.
"Although the musicians we record are the stars of their communities,
very few of them have been recorded by other labels. By selling
cassettes locally, we hope to keep the music alive in the region that has
created it," Farquharson explains.
The desire to preserve the music, one that has motivated Llerenas since
the late 1960s, has not been dimmed by the pleasant discovery over the

years that the music seems safe and sound in the hands of a younger
generation. "Traditional music is not, as we had feared, dying out. It
remains stubbornly resistant to change and an important source of
regional identity. The verses, the context and in some cases the
repertoire and instrumentation are changing in the face of the cultural
homogeneity promoted by the mass media, but structurally, the music
remains intact," says Llerenas.
Musical Archive

His status as director of the independent label has not meant that he
has abandoned the continued expansion of the musical archive. In fact,
that has become a job that Llerenas now views as unending.
"The project turned out to be much more dynamic than Id imagined
since I discovered the importance of returning to regions we had
already explored in order to see how the music was evolving." In
addition, Llerenas now conducts personal interviews with the
musicians so that the archive includes biographical information and
visual support for the sound recordings.
Outside of Mexico, Corasn has also featured sounds from the
Caribbean and Central and South America and one of its releases
features African-influenced music from 19 different countries. Over the
years, Llerenas has recorded in Cuba, Haiti, Puerto Rico, Belize,
Honduras, Panama, Costa Rica, Trinidad and Tobago, Martinique,
Guadeloupe, St Kitts, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic.
Key to the success of Corasn today is what distinguished Llerenass
original winning project quality. "This isnt music for museums,"
Llerenas says. "Its not souvenir music for tourism. Its good music."
Published in 1997

See more at:

http://www.rolexawards.com/profiles/laureates/eduardo_llerenas/pr
oject#sthash.PF72hn0p.dpuf

In the 1960s, Eduardo Llerenas, a

university research scientist, discovered
Mexico's centuries-old tradition of folk

music while exploring the countryside

around Mexico City.
Fascinated by this national treasure, he soon began recording and
promoting it. In 1981, he won a Rolex Award to record music from
regions of Mexico he had not yet visited. The Award brought him and
Mexican music international renown. Within a few years, he was
able to give up his university job, turning his hobby into the focus of his
life. In 1992, he established Discos Corason, which is now Mexicos
leading traditional music label and has brought national and
international recognition to many musicians.
Having recorded thousands of songs by hundreds of groups, Eduardo
Llerenas is still as passionate as ever about folk music. He is currently
digitalizing his entire music archive and continues to work with
traditional musicians all over the world.
Published in 2012

See more at:

http://www.rolexawards.com/profiles/laureates/eduardo_llerenas/pr
ofile#sthash.0ZrO1ef9.dpuf

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