22753. (Fake Shark-Real Zom­bie!) Zebra! Zebra!
22754. (Jiten­dra Abhishe­ki) Raga Shiv­mat Bhairav
22755. (Jiten­dra Abhishe­ki) Raga Puriya
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If you are bored with the famil­iar reper­toire for clas­si­cal gui­tar (what you might call the Segov­ian Canon), then you might try the com­po­si­tions of the Paraguayan poly­math Augustín Bar­rios (1885–1944). Gui­tarist John Williams has led the revival of his work. A poet, math­e­mati­cian and jour­nal­ist, as well as a per­former and com­pos­er, Bar­rios was a Paraguayan mes­ti­zo, flu­ent in the Guaraní Indi­an lan­guage as well as Span­ish. His com­po­si­tions are warm, imag­i­na­tive, and vir­tu­osic enough to chal­lenge and excite any gui­tarist. Yet under­neath they have a sol­id archi­tec­ture. For exam­ple, the piece called La Cat­e­dral seems as del­i­cate as a snowflake, but it’s struc­ture is as strong and dis­ci­plined as a Bach par­ti­ta. Most of the pieces that I heard have this “float like a but­ter­fly, sting like a bee” qual­i­ty. Oth­er pieces that espe­cial­ly move me are Una Limosna Por el Amor de Dios, Acon­qui­ja, Max­ixe, and Chôro da Saudade. But, they are not excep­tions: every piece I’ve heard is worth lis­ten­ing to sev­er­al times. Paraguayan folk music influ­enced his work as much as the famil­iar baroque and clas­si­cal sources, giv­ing it a flavour you won’t find else­where. Williams offers sev­er­al record­ings. I’m lis­ten­ing to The Great Paraguayan, which offers sev­en­teen rep­re­sen­ta­tive pieces.