A completely different sound could be heard outside the unofficial cultural centre of Barga – Da Aristo’s in Barga Vecchia this week as Paraguayan harpist Eugenio Leon brought his instrument – arpa paraguaya (Paraguayan harp) and played to an enthusiastic audience, the majority of which hearing that instrument for the very first time.
Paraguayan harpist Eugenio Leon has been playing the nylon-stringed national instrument, Paraguayan harp since he was 8 years old.
Eugenio – at home with contemporary, classical, Latin, and Caribbean styles – has toured globally for years, visiting South America, North America, Europe, and Asia as a soloist, in a duet and as a group member, finally settling in the Cayman Islands in the early 1990s.
From this, and a love of performing, Eugenio developed the passionate and free-spirited style which is characteristic of the music he creates today.
The diatonic harp, Paraguay’s emblematic instrument, constitutes a symbol of identity for most social groups in the country. First used as a liturgical instrument associated with the Jesuit missions during colonial times, the transplanted European diatonic harp underwent local transformations and was adopted into the folk and traditional music vocabulary of Paraguay and the Río de la Plata region.
Receiving the designation of arpa paraguaya (Paraguayan harp) in the twentieth century, the diatonic harp became Paraguay’s unofficial national folk instrument through a series of socio-historical processes.
Since the commercial success of Paraguayan harpist Félix Pérez Cardozo in the 1930s in Argentina, the symbolic value of the Paraguayan diatonic harp as an icon of social, cultural, and national identity has been articulated and validated through musical performances and other local traditions associated with popular folk music festivals and formal recitals of traditional music.
Not only have the Paraguayan diatonic harp and its traditional music become part of the practices associated with local folk traditions in the twentieth century, but the instrument has also become a symbol reinforcing the socio- cultural values associated with paraguayidad (Paraguayan-ness), a national sentiment closely connected to the culturally imbedded idea of the Paraguayan tekó (the way of being), concepts which consequently serve to construct Paraguayan identity.
The Paraguayan harp, like all Latin American harps, is played with the fingernails, which are kept long. The right hand is used for the upper octaves and the left is used for the lower octaves. The right thumb is used for percussive rhythmic “thumping” on the bass strings and glissando on the upper strings. The left hand carries the rhythm on the bass strings
