Eduardo Falú is a well-known Argentine folk music guitarist and composer.

Life and work

Eduardo Falú was born in El Galpón, a village near San José de Metán

San José de Metán

San José de Metán is a city in the south of the province of Salta, Argentina, 160 km from the provincial capital Salta, on National Routes 9 and 34. It has about 29,000 inhabitants as per the . It is the head town of the Metán Department....

 in the province of Salta, Argentina in 1923. His parents, Juan and Fada Falú, were Syria

Syria

Syria , officially the Syrian Arab Republic , is a country in Western Asia, bordering Lebanon and the Mediterranean Sea to the West, Turkey to the north, Iraq to the east, Jordan to the south, and Israel to the southwest....

n immigrants. Raised in rural surroundings, he was strongly influenced by the folk traditions of Salta (which remain, in Falú's words, "something lively, dynamic and evolutionary").

Falú was given his first guitar

Guitar

The guitar is a plucked string instrument, usually played with fingers or a pick. The guitar consists of a body with a rigid neck to which the strings, generally six in number, are attached. Guitars are traditionally constructed of various woods and strung with animal gut or, more recently, with...

 as a gift during childhood, and he began to perform traditional folk tunes of the Argentine Northwest

Argentine Northwest

The Argentine Northwest is a region of Argentina composed by the provinces of Catamarca, Jujuy, Salta, Santiago del Estero and Tucumán.-Geography:The region had 5 different biomes:* Sub-Andean humid Sierras of the east...

 as a troubadour

Troubadour

A troubadour was a composer and performer of Old Occitan lyric poetry during the High Middle Ages . Since the word "troubadour" is etymologically masculine, a female troubadour is usually called a trobairitz....

. He formed a duo with César Perdiguero, and became well known in the region during the 1940s. Largely self-taught, Falu deepened his knowledge of the guitar through study of the 19th century masters and was trained in harmony

Harmony

In music, harmony is the use of simultaneous pitches , or chords. The study of harmony involves chords and their construction and chord progressions and the principles of connection that govern them. Harmony is often said to refer to the "vertical" aspect of music, as distinguished from melodic...

 and theory

Music theory

Music theory is the study of how music works. It examines the language and notation of music. It seeks to identify patterns and structures in composers' techniques across or within genres, styles, or historical periods...

 by the prominent Argentine composer Carlos Guastavino

Carlos Guastavino

Carlos Guastavino was an Argentine composer.Carlos Guastavino was born in Santa Fe Province, Argentina. He studied music in Santa Fe with Esperanza Lothringer and Dominga Iaffei, and in Buenos Aires with Athos Palma...

.

His increasing renown brought him to Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...

, in 1945, and recorded his first album there, in 1950. Among the volume of collaborations with many of the leading Argentine poets, perhaps the best-known are his compositions for lyrics written by Jaime Dávalos, among which some of the most popular are "Zamba de la Candelaria", "Trago de sombra", and "Canción del jangadero". Falú wrote music for a number of Argentine historical epics, as well, including "Romance de la Muerte de Juan Lavalle

Juan Lavalle

Juan Galo de Lavalle was an Argentine military and political figure.-Biography:Lavalle was born in Buenos Aires to María Mercedes González Bordallo and Manuel José de La Vallée y Cortés, general accountant of rents and tobacco for the Viceroyalty of the Río de la Plata.In 1799, the family moved to...

" (written by Ernesto Sábato

Ernesto Sabato

Ernesto Sabato , was an Argentine writer, painter and physicist. According to the BBC he "won some of the most prestigious prizes in Hispanic literature" and "became very influential in the literary world throughout Latin America"...

) and "José Hernández" (by Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Luis Borges

Jorge Francisco Isidoro Luis Borges Acevedo , known as Jorge Luis Borges , was an Argentine writer, essayist, poet and translator born in Buenos Aires. In 1914 his family moved to Switzerland where he attended school, receiving his baccalauréat from the Collège de Genève in 1918. The family...

).

He performed overseas for the first time in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

, in 1959. This was followed by performances in Rome

Rome

Rome is the capital of Italy and the country's largest and most populated city and comune, with over 2.7 million residents in . The city is located in the central-western portion of the Italian Peninsula, on the Tiber River within the Lazio region of Italy.Rome's history spans two and a half...

, Los Angeles

Los Ángeles

Los Ángeles is the capital of the province of Biobío, in the commune of the same name, in Region VIII , in the center-south of Chile. It is located between the Laja and Biobío rivers. The population is 123,445 inhabitants...

, Madrid

Madrid

Madrid is the capital and largest city of Spain. The population of the city is roughly 3.3 million and the entire population of the Madrid metropolitan area is calculated to be 6.271 million. It is the third largest city in the European Union, after London and Berlin, and its metropolitan...

, and numerous other cultural capitals. He was particularly popular in Japan

Japan

Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...

, where from 1963 to 1973, he gave over 200 performances. In subsequent years, he also performed regularly in duos with his son, Juan Falú

Juan Falú

Alfredo Juan Falú is an Argentine classical guitarist and composer.He was born in Tucumán in 1948, and his uncle, Eduardo Falú, was by then an increasingly well-known folk guitarist...

.

Arguably the creator of Argentina's modern folk song movement, Falú has set over 150 poems to music. These have included Borges' and Dávalos', as well as those by Leon Benaros, Manuel J. Castilla and Alberico Mansilla. Known for his Chamamé

Chamamé

Chamamé is a folk music genre from the Argentine Northeast, Mesopotamia and in the south of Brazil. Paraná, Santa Catarina, Rio Grande do Sul and Mato Grosso do Sul....

, Chacarera

Chacarera

The Chacarera is a dance of Argentine origin. It is a genre of folk music that, for many Argentines, serves as a rural counterpart to the cosmopolitan imagery of the Tango...

 and Zamba compositions, Falú more recently composed two suites, "Primera Suite Argentina" (1996) and "Segunda Suite Argentina" (1999).

The Government of Perú

Peru

Peru , officially the Republic of Peru , is a country in western South America. It is bordered on the north by Ecuador and Colombia, on the east by Brazil, on the southeast by Bolivia, on the south by Chile, and on the west by the Pacific Ocean....

 bestowed on him a Distinguished Service Award and Falú's work earned him an important recognition by his colleagues in 1985, when he received the highest honor in the Argentine cultural realm, the Konex Award

Konex Award

Konex Foundation awards, or simple Konex awards are cultural awards from the Konex Foundation to Argentine cultural personalities.Created in 1980, where conceived as a way to reward the Argentine personalities and institutions of different fields, as well as to stimulate the beginners.Even though...

, as well as a Grand Prize by the Argentine Society of Music Composers

Sociedad Argentina de Autores y Compositores de Música

Sociedad Argentina de Autores y Compositores de Música is the entity that gathers all musicians and authors of Argentina, and the Argentine performance rights organisation that keeps registry of musical works, and collects and distributes royalties on behalf of the artists.Founded on June 9,...

(SADAIC).