Leda Valladares


Leda Valladares was an Argentine singer, songwriter, musicologist and folklorist, as well as a poet. Born in San Miguel de Tucumán, she grew up surrounded by both classical European music and the folk music of indigenous people living in the area. From a young age she studied piano and in her teens began a band with her brother that explored folk music, jazz, and blues. She published various works of poetry throughout her life. Though she began her university studies at the National University of Tucumán as an English major, after one year she changed course and began to study philosophy and education, eventually graduating in 1948. Her schooling was interrupted by a foray into the study of music both at the Academy of Fine Art and in independent research among those who performed traditional folk music.
Upon graduation, Valladares taught briefly before moving to Paris and forming a music duo with María Elena Walsh in the early 1950s. They sang traditional Argentine folk music for four years in cafés and cabarets. The two then returned to Argentina after the 1956 Liberating Revolution had removed Juan Perón from office. There was not a large appreciation for folk music in Argentina at the time and though they continued to perform and release albums, their audiences were limited. The two women split up in 1962 and Valladares embarked on a career of documenting the folk music traditions of Argentina. Her work between 1960 and 1974 produced a documentary series, Mapa musical de la argentina, which recorded and preserved folk music throughout varied regions of the country.
From the early 1970s, Valladares built bridges with popular musicians from other venues, like rock, in an effort to stop the commercialization of music. When the Argentine dictatorship ended, she joined the Movement for the Reconstruction and Development of National Culture and worked with other musicians to present and preserve the musical heritage of the country. Her last large work América en Cueros presented more than 400 folk songs from throughout the Americas and earned her recognition as a member of honor of UNESCO. She was recognized with a Konex Award in 1984, 1994, and 2005, and was the first recipient of the National Prize for Ethnology and Folklore, given in 1996.

Early life and influences

Leda Nery Valladares Frías was born on 21 December 1919 in San Miguel de Tucumán, Argentina, to Aurora Frías and Fermín Valladares. Her mother's ancestry came from the patrician family of Santiago del Estero Province and included and his son,. Her father was a writer, who published two books and was an amateur singer and poet. As Tucumán was a border region, in addition to European classical music, Valladares was exposed to the folk music of the indigenous peoples living in the Calchaquí Valleys. Both of her parents liked singing and often hosted musical evenings. From a young age, Valladares studied piano, initially with Sarah Carreras.
Valladares and her brother,, began studying jazz and blues music. As teenagers, they formed a group called Fijos made up of Adolfo Abalos, Manuel Gómez Carrillo, Gustavo "Cuchi" Leguizamón, Enrique "Mono" Villegas, Rodrigo Montero, and Lucía Claudia Bolognini Míguez, later known as Lois Blue. Valladares performed under the pseudonym Ann Kay. From well-to-do families, by performing together they sought to rebel against elite musical tastes. Valladares enrolled in the first class of the newly created National University of Tucumán in 1939, as an English major. After one year, she changed her area of study to philosophy and pedagogy. Valladares voraciously read European literature, focusing on French and Spanish symbolism and surrealism. She was also interested in avant-garde poetry and studied German philosophers, including Franz Brentano, Immanuel Kant, and Oswald Spengler.

Career

Poetry and later education (1940–1950)

Valladares began publishing poems in regional magazines like El mar in 1940 and the following year in La pirámide. She presented seven poems in the inaugural issue of Cántico, continuing to publish books of poetry throughout her life. She became friends with Olga Orozco and met Alejandra Pizarnik through that association. In 1941, while attending Carnival festivities in Cafayate, she first encountered, the folkloric style of music from the Province of Salta. She decided to leave her philosophy studies and in 1943 attended classes at the Academia de Bellas Artes de la Provincia. She learned to play the clarinet and also sang in a women's quartet specializing in Renaissance music. After a year, she quit, because she did not feel able to express herself in the curriculum's classical styles. She embarked on a journey and paid her own way to study the traditional music of La Rioja Province, San Fernando del Valle de Catamarca, and San Salvador de Jujuy.
On successfully completing her studies in philosophy and education in 1948, Valladares traveled to Europe with her mother and a friend, Nelly García Alvarez. On their return journey, when their ship docked at Bahia, she watched a Macumba ceremony and saw a commonality in the drumming rhythms with the purity of the music of baguala. She interrupted her trip home and instead went to Caracas to study Afro-Venezuelan music. Upon her return to Tucumán, Valladares read the book of poems, Otoño Imperdonable and began a correspondence with the author, María Elena Walsh. Valladares accepted a position and began teaching in Costa Rica in 1950. Deciding to move together to Paris, she traveled to Panama in 1952, where Walsh met her to complete their journey. During the two months they spent aboard the ship, Valladares taught Walsh, who did not have a musical background, the folk songs and rhythms she knew.

Partnership with María Elena Walsh (1952–1962)

Arriving in Paris, Valladares and Walsh, established a gathering place in their apartment and put together a repertoire which included various folk music styles from Argentina. The two women formed a duet, Leda y María and began performing music based on traditional bagualas, chacareras,, and zambas. They sang in the auditorium of the Sorbonne, in intellectual cafés like l'Écluse, and in cabarets like the Crazy Horse. They selected places frequented by Spanish exiles, who had fled from the Spanish Civil War, and other Europeans, as many Argentines in France felt that they were making their country look unsophisticated by their focus on folk music. They performed for celebrities including Charlie Chaplin and Pablo Picasso, and for José Luis Cano and his circle of friends. Though neither publicly disclosed that they were lovers given the era, their lesbian partnership was known and would later be acknowledged by Walsh.
The duo began recording albums; the first Chants d'Argentine was released in 1954. A year later, they recorded Sous le ciel de l'Argentine. They also made a test recording for Folkways Records in 1955. Though Alan Lomax acknowledged the quality of their music, he refused to produce it, because as members of the upper classes, their songs were not authentic. In 1956, after the coup d'état removed Juan Perón from office, Valladares and Walsh decided to return to Argentina. Almost immediately, they scheduled a lecture, El folklore como tarea poética, accompanied by some of their songs at the Caja Popular de Ahorros in Tucumán. Having experienced a celebration of Argentine folk songs in Paris, they recognized that there was not the same appreciation in their homeland. Until they broke up as a couple in 1962, after the Tucumán presentation, their performances were limited to intellectual venues.

Ethnography, musicology (1959–1999)

In 1959, Valladares received a scholarship from the National Endowment of the Arts to collect folk music and map the locations of Argentine musical heritage. She bought a recorder and began traveling to collect music from various provinces. The result of these collections was a documentary series released from 1960 to 1974 as the Mapa musical de la argentina, directed by Litto Nebbia on Melopea Records. In 1966, she was approached by Jorge Prelorán, a documentary filmmaker, to advise him and Augusto Raúl Cortazar, a folklorist, on the musical portion of their film Relevamiento cinematográfico de expresiones folklóricas argentinas. Their collaboration produced a series of short films, including Hermógenes Cayo and Valle Fértil, which were jointly produced with the National University of Tucumán.
In 1969, Valladares began performing as a soloist at educational institutions using a traditional two-sided hand drum, known as the caja coplera. She recruited groups of students to join her in her music making. At one point in the 1970s, she had over 30,000 students participating with her. Dressed in a poncho, she became a symbol of a countercultural movement against the commercialization of music and away from its spiritual roots, bringing her into contact with both rock and classical musicians. She assisted Anastasio Quiroga in creating the album Pastor de cabras, which led to a collaboration in their production of Folklore de rancho y rascacielos at the Teatro General San Martín of Buenos Ares, with Susana Lago and José Luis Castiñeira in 1971. This led to a collaboration with Lago and her quartet Cabrakán, which included Beatriz Arágor, Roberto Catarineau, and Jorge Fernández and later in a performance in 1972 at Tucumán with Lago, Quiroga and Henry Nelson. Around 1974, she began a collaboration with Arco Iris, led by Gustavo Santaolalla, and with the Chilean band Los Jaivas.
With the end of the Argentine dictatorship and a return to democratic rule in the early 1980s, Valladares joined other musicians in the Movement for the Reconstruction and Development of National Culture. They brought together well-known singers for a series of festivals to celebrate the musical heritage of Argentina. Following her earlier map of music, in 1985 she collaborated with León Gieco and Santaolalla in their production of De Ushuaia a La Quiaca. Valladares was honored three times with the Konex Award, in 1984, 1994, and 2005. Her last major work, América en Cueros brought together more than 400 folk songs from throughout the Americas. It was recognized by Unesco, which designated her as a "member of honor". For her work in mapping Argentina's musical heritage, Valladares was honored as the inaugural recipient of the National Prize for Ethnology and Folklore in 1996. Valladares retired from public life in 1999 because of complications of Alzheimer's disease.

Death and legacy

Valladares died on 13 July 2012 in Buenos Aires. In 2019, celebrations for the centennial of her birth were held throughout Argentina and the Día Nacional del Canto con Caja was proposed to honor her work in preserving the folk traditions of Argentina. She is revered as a significant figure in influencing the development of many Argentine musicians and for her preservation of Argetina's cultural and musical heritage.

Selected works

Poetry

Discography of Leda y María