Latinoamerican Musicians and creators

Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) was a Brazilian composer, considered the best figure in XX century at Brazilian art, and has become one of the best-known South American composers of all time.

Villa-lobos was born in Rio de Janeiro. His father Raul was a librarian and amateur musician, who gave him his first musical lessons. In Villa-lobos´s early childhood, Brazil was in a period of social revolution and modernisation, abolishing slavery in 1888 and overthrowing the Empire of Brazil in 1889. All this changes were reflected in nacionalism musical movements, who changed the European style of musical education, for a more traditional folk one. In this way, Villa-lobos received learnings in traditional harmony and counterpoint at the “Music Conservatory” of Rio, but only a few abortive ones, instead he learnt music by observation of the musical events who his father organized, with a free practice of the cello, guitar and clarinet. In 1905 he travelled to the Amazonas to know the native Brazilian musical culture. Then he began studies in the Music Nacional Institute, with a permanent criticism view to the academy, always sharing with popular music bands and cultures.

The legacy of Villalobos is based in the fact that he influenced to many composers to create with an open perspective of music, not a elitist one, instead showing a way of relationship with different styles: folk, popular, jazz, classic. He showed that in all his compositions, a mixture of colours, with a free spirit. All that facts, the free way to live the music mixed with the focus of academic one, is what I love from this man and figure.