Guatemala is a tough place to find ANY trace of musical history. Latin america is musically unique in many respects, and an upcoming project I’m working on deals with the notion of language, identity and culture in the role of Spanish musics from Cuba and Mexico to Argentina and Chile. In all the months I’ve spent in Guatemala, seeking out musical performances, historical records, and radio broadcasts, I have always struggled to find anyone who knows anything of recorded music during Guatemala’s civil war days. “Music from the 70s and 80s? That doesn’t exist” is the common response. My search continues, and I have amassed a great deal of live and radio material, but my cassette searches have left me with little other than Costa-Rican manufactured cassettes of Mexican and Argentinian icons of Romantic and Bolero music from labels such as “Peerless” and “Embassy”. Here is a cassette I found in Quetzaltenango a couple months ago.
