Series: Podcast

Maria Soledad Lucas, known artistically as Luna Monti, is a singer of immense talent, with a wonderful voice and enormous charisma. Her mother was born in the province of San Luis. She moved to Buenos Aires at 19 and married a young widower with four children shortly thereafter.

The successful musician, composer, and guitar master showed his passion for the guitar from a very young age, as he listened to his father playing huayno melodies. Later, he fell in love with the guitar of Alejandro Rodríguez from the group “Los Embajadores Criollos.” From then on, his world revolved around the guitar.

I visited Rosa Guzmán at her home in the Barranco neighborhood of Lima, accompanied by the Quechua singer Consuelo Jeri. Rosa told me how, in her childhood, musicians would gather at her father’s house, a guitarist and composer, to eat beans and play together. And she talked to me about the Peruvian origins of the Cajon and how Paco de Lucia discovered it at a concert by the legendary Carlos Caitro and then integrated it into flamenco.