Ramón Ayala, an unavoidable reference in the music of the Argentine coast, died

Ramón Ayala, an original, exuberant creator and reference par excellence of coastal music and an example of a way of approaching the artistic fact that is elusive for the media, died this Friday, December 8 at the age of 96 in the City of Buenos Aires.

Those close to the artist indicated that Ramón Ayala died at the Güemes Sanatorium where he was hospitalized and in delicate condition for just over 10 days due to the worsening of pneumonia.

Born in the province of Misiones, his real name was Ramón Gumercindo Cidade and his occupations were multiple: composer, performer, guitarist, painter, storyteller; all exercised without stopping at the barrier of exaggeration. His birth certificate is dated March 10, 1927, in Garupá.

An intuitive and brilliant musician, he claims to be the creator of a rhythm, the gualambao, and is the composer of songs of enviable beauty, at the same time carrying a voice of social denunciation: The raft, The menu, The harvester, Song to the Uruguay Riveramong many others.

Beyond the hard biographical data, at least two merits stand out: in a folkloric environment in which Los Chalchaleros, Los Fronterizos, and so many groups copied in a mirror ad nauseam burst at one time, Ayala worked in another, more careful line.

Just as Eduardo Falú or the Dúo Salteño emerged in Salta and Tucumán, on the coast, Ayala, forged its own tradition.

It will also be necessary to calculate that he burst into a scene dominated, on the coast, by Corrientes music and there he also managed to build his own path.

Ramón Ayala was born in 1927 in the town of Garupá, 15 kilometers southeast of Posadas, in front of the Paraná River, and on the border with Paraguay. He was the eldest of five brothers.

As a teenager, after the death of his father, he moved to Buenos Aires, with his mother and He started, intuitively, learning the guitar.

He accompanied the Cuyo singer Félix Dardo Palorma and, encouraged by maestro Herminio Giménez, began working on the coastal repertoire.

Throughout the 1950s, Ayala He was part of the Sanchez-Monjes-Ayala trio (along with Arturo Sánchez and Amadeo Monjes), with whom he covered a wide variety of songs, from the Guaraní to the most Buenos Aires, without neglecting the boleros.

Around 1960 he created the gualambao with the idea of ​​giving his province his own unique style (he had a public counterpoint with Chango Spasiuk about the origin of that species).

The gualambao is made up of two polka rhythms linked by a permanent syncopation that gives it a particular physiognomy. It is written in 12/8 time signature (twelve eighths), meaning that each measure has 12 eighth notes distributed over 4 beats.

In 1962 he traveled to Cuba, invited by the Cuban Institute of Friendship with the Peoples. There he was able to meet the revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara, and see that his song The menu It had been sung in the revolutionary hearths of the Sierra Maestra during the Cuban Revolution.

“In 1963 I composed The harvester, which was a huge success. AND The raft, which Mercedes Sosa sang like no one else. Since then I haven’t stopped composing,” Ayala himself said.

Journalist Sergio Pujol wrote: “Let’s say that The harvester is the metonymy of Ayala: his entire being is there, perfectly alluded to. There is his quasi-tropical baroque, his painterly instinct, his rhythmic nerve, his talent for melody. There is the embodied landscape, and the man turned landscape. There is the freedom of the one who sings and the condemnation of the one who works: ‘Heading for the harvest, I will be the harvester.'”

Ayala, creator of more than 300 compositions, he recorded his first solo album in 1976, The return of Ramón Ayala El Mensú.

Beautiful Posadeña, The river returns, My little love, Prayer zambitaare other of his recognized works.

“There is a kind of discovery with my work. Or maybe everyone is carrying me,” Ayala joked a few years ago about the multiple ramifications of his music, especially among students and young musicians.

It was the center of a documentary filmed by director and photographer Marcos López, in 2013, as chaotic as the character he intended to portray. He described it this way: “Ramón is exaggerating, he is always declaiming the moment of the fragility of existence, he is a mystic, he could be like a Walt Whitman, but in the Guaraní jungle, a kind of monk and philosopher.”

His journey was related, due to his solo form, his inclination for social song and his proximity to nature, with the figure of Atahualpa Yupanqui. Beyond tastes, Ramón Ayala resists that comparison.