La Luna Nueva — Miracle Theatre Group's festival of Hispanic arts and culture from around the world in celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month — opens in just a couple of weeks, and we couldn't be more excited about the diverse line-up (see the whole schedule in English; vea el horario completo en español). Our Marketing Assistant Stefanus Gunawan continues his look backstage visits with our guest artists, offering an inside look at their life, their passion, their art. Here, guest blogger Stefanus Gunawan chats with guitarrista, Alfred Muro.
How did you start playing the guitar?
Music and the guitar was something natural for me to learn considering that my family was 100% musical, singers, musicians, painters and poets etc. As you can see, I have been exposed to music since I was a kid. My first encounter with the guitar occurred when I was 9 years old. The beautiful sounds that resonated from that magical box called the guitar captivated me, and so I decided that I wanted to teach myself the guitar. By observing and watching others, and having a great musical memory, I immediately learned new chords on the guitar. Later, I decided to study the guitar formally with the best guitarists in Peru. I remember they always said, “The guitar is an instrument that is easy to play badly and hard to play well.”
I have seen you perform through some videos online, and I have noticed how you manipulate the guitar to produce and resonate, in clarity, superb tones and qualities. In your own words, what becomes of you when you play, emotionally and physically?
That is a very interesting question. When I play the guitar on stage, immediately I experience a metamorphosis—the way that I express technically and physically change when I have the guitar on my hands. Everything that I play, every note and every single string, has a meaning for me. Remember that for an instrumentalist it is a difficult task to do, since you have to express all your feelings to the audience through the guitar, so the guitar works as a nexus between the artist and the public.
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Well, Octavio Ticona and Carlos Hayre had a very strong influence on my style and especially in the creative process of harmony. I remember that there had been a traditional way to play Peruvian music, and these great masters started a new approach on the guitar using modern harmony, with a strong influence from Brazilian music (bossa nova and choro) and Cuban music (bolero). For me, that way to play the guitar was something new along with studying with Carlos Hayre. This gave me the opportunity to explore new possibilities in guitar harmony, and Octavio Ticona allowed me a lot of freedom to use harmony. I remember he showed certain harmonic progression for a song to me then he said, “Well Alfredo, next time you show me how to play a different song using that harmony;” it was a great way to apply that new harmony on the guitar. Peruvian folklore is so rich and, rhythmically speaking, is very complex for someone that was not born in Peru. Peruvian folklore consists of Peru’s history, ethnicity, customs, and it is a way of life, so to understand that one must have breathe the air in Peru since birth. Now, we have to be very careful of the way we use modern harmony in Peruvian music. I believe in evolution of music but not in substitution, I mean we can be modern but always being respectful of the musical forms. It is important not to lose our own musical identity.
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