I am from Ciudad del Este, Paraguay, on the Brazilian border. I am 26 years old. I came to Málaga in February, 2023, just more than one year ago. I started playing the guitar when I was about 13 years old. At this time, I went to an art school outside my regular school and signed up for a drawing course. It was a municipal jobs school, to become an electrician or these kinds of jobs for older kids, but it had an art program for younger kids. I always drew a lot when I was a kid. Now I don’t paint much, but I could have become a painter. I chose music instead or the music chose me – or both! My older sister was a singer taking a singing course at this school. I would take my sister to the singing classes, and after a while I just joined the singing class and spent 4 years in these classes.

When I joined the singing class, my friends were playing guitar, so I bought a guitar and started playing with my friends and to accompany myself when I was singing. Nobody in my family played music. They only listened a little, too. My dad gave me a harmonica when I was 9 years old, and I taught myself how to play out melodies. It was easy. I also always played the harmonica and watched a lot of YouTube videos. In Paraguay we learn the recorder in 7th grade. When I was in third grade, my sister was in 7th grade and learned two or three songs. I fell in love with the instrument when she played, and I would ask her for the recorder to play 3 or 4 years before 7th grade. My dad gave me a flauta dulce, a recorder, and I already knew how to play 15 songs on the recorder before 7th grade. I liked to watch and play Maná, a musician from México, and also blues songs, but I didn’t really sing until I joined this singing class when I was 13. You can’t sing when you are playing a flute or harmonica!

I worked in a supermarket in Paraguay where they hired underaged kids to bag the groceries. One day when I was coming home, I saw a guy playing music on a bus. I got very excited because I would love people from all over the city to listen to my music, and I thought this guy was on a bus that picks up a lot of people. If I get on 10 busses, everybody is going to listen to me, so I began working as a musician when I was 16 years old. Then, I began playing on the busses not the street. On the bus, I played and sang. There are a lot of tourists and a lot of commerce in my city in this border city.

I come from a working-class family, very humble. The minimum salary was around 70 Paraguayans per day and in the grocery store I made 30 per day. When I went to play in the bus, on the first day I made 70 Paraguayans. And one week later, I quit my job in the supermarket. I was making 150 Paraguayans in a few hours. In Christmas, I made 200 or 300 each day. My parents were very happy!! I didn’t finish high school. I left two years before graduating because I was making good money playing music. And I’m not a guy for school. I’m a real bad student, but the teachers loved me because I was cheerful and outgoing and used to make concerts in the school. In the years after I left school, some of the teachers would invite me to come back to play at events like when a teacher was retiring or there was a party in the school. And even in 2022 when he was coming to Spain, they were calling me.

It's funny. When I was 24 years old, I played all the time in many places. I played on TV. I played on the radio. I made private concerts for good money in Cumbia bands and Folkloric bands. I was making a lot of money at 17 and 18 years old, and I didn’t know what to do with the money, I began collecting instruments. I had over 25 instruments in my room. I taught myself how to play all my instruments. I stopped playing all of them now, but when I had them, I knew how to play like 15 instruments. Guitar. Guitarrón. Cuatro. Mandolin. Charango. Requinto. Cavaquinho. Vihuela. Violin. Ukulele and more. Trumpet. Piano. Harmonica. Cane Flute, which is an Andean instrument made of bamboo very popular in Peru, Chile and Bolivia. It’s a magical instrument. I had a real collection of instruments. I slept on half of my bed because the instruments were spread everywhere even on the other side of my bed! I directed the choir at church, too. The violin and trumpet were hard, but in one year I was playing the violin well. A friend played guitar while I learned violin. When I was 15 years, I studied in a classical piano class and learned how to read sheet music. I learned the 12 major and minor scales on the guitar and piano and transcribe them to the other instruments. But I never really read any music until 2022, I wanted to learn classical guitar, so I joined a class and got back into reading sheet music. I read really fast and finished 4 years of classical guitar in one year.

One of my personal dreams is to make guitars, to be a luthier, a guitar maker. During the pandemic in Paraguay, everything was closed. There was no work. Before the pandemic, I had already bought some tools, so I began building instruments and mostly repairing instruments during the pandemic. While working as a luthier in Paraguay, I would play in the street much less because I had to come back home to work on the instruments. Before the pandemic, I had traveled all over Paraguay with friends and made a lot of friends playing in busses and bus and train stations and restaurants and at the rivers with big beaches. I went to Encarnación every year. That has a beautiful fresh water beach. We would make like 500 Paraguayans in one night just playing for family parties and gatherings. I would go up to them an offer music and say, “Hi. I am a music player. Do you want music for a donation?” The money was incredible. I had a lot of work.

After the pandemic, I had a lot of work as a luthier, and I made about 20 instruments – guitars, ukuleles, charangos and requintos. And I was about to open my own guitar shop. I had everything I needed when my girlfriend told me that she wanted to come to Spain because her mother lived here. I didn’t want to come because I had a lot of projects lined up in the radio and TV and recordings on top of the music shop. I was reluctant to come. I told her, “You can go on your own. I also don’t have the money. The flight is a lot of money.” With my girlfriend it would cost $3,000. I was reluctant, but I thought, “I am young, and I want to learn how to build Spanish guitars, so I’m going to go to Europe and improve my luthier skills and then go back to Paraguay and rejoin my projects.” So, I’m here mostly to learn how to be a better luthier.

And I like Málaga, but it’s very different than Paraguay. The life is very different. The life is tougher here. And the housing situation is much harder. We have to pay 1000 Euros for our own flat, so we have to share an apartment. In Paraguay, even the poorest person has a place. And the people here are very friendly. And I love the climate. In Paraguay it can be 45 degrees Celsius. Here, it’s still warm, because I don’t like the cold, but it’s softer.

I came here on a Saturday and on Monday, I was playing in the terrazas. I told my girlfriend, “I have no job and we don’t want to be hungry.” And without papers, you can’t get hired or maybe just get hired in construction if you are good at it. Last year, I played at the port for 6 months and made 70 or 80 Euros a day. In the terrazas, I would play 39:00??

When I came, I was looking to ask musicians where and how to play. I even went to the city council to ask as well. Back them, musicians could only play at the port, and I would play Samba and Bossa Nova with a Brazilian drummer that I met. Then the port authority banned people playing in the port. Then I went to construction work. I had to tear down walls with a sledgehammer and haul the rubble out for 50 Euros a day, but I had to pay rent. And since then, my voice has been terrible, really raspy. Maybe from all the dust and for people without papers, they don’t give us even gloves or mask. Nothing. I worked in construction only one month, and then I worked in a restaurant in a kitchen and started playing in the streets again. Nowadays, I have a duet with an Argentinian girl, and we go to restaurants in Benalmádena on the weekends, and I play the terrazas the rest of the week in Málaga.

46:30?

Since my throat became bad and I can’t sing, I have to figure out how to make music, so I started this instrumental performance with guitar, harmonica and my foot tambourine. And all this walking and foot percussion is tiring.

I want to be free, a man of the world. I want to travel the world and have enough money so that if I want to go somewhere, I can, and when I want to come back, I can come back. I want to have the money to buy land in Paraguay. It’s really easy to open my shop with even just 2000 Euros. I want to invest my money and have regular income so I can be free. I have a friend in Paraguay in the countryside that for 5000 Euros he bought a hectare of land. One of the biggest deposits of underground water is in Paraguay. The land is really fertile and I can set up a farm with relatively little money and I can hire someone to run the farm.

55:00

I love music because playing in streets is basically gifting music, gifting energy. It’s an honor. Before any of this, I need to love what I am doing. If I love what I’m doing, I can transmit it to people and it makes people happy. One of the reasons I want to invest the money I make to have a regular income is in order to be free of the commercial constraints of making music. I know life can be hard for a musician. In the future, my dream is I would like to have financial security in order to make music only for fun without pressure. This is the problem for so many musicians. Music is energy. Music is powerful. Music is wonderful. Many times, musicians are living off music but not very well, just surviving. And they don’t really enjoy, so they don’t transmit good energy, You transmit your feelings with music, so it’s counterproductive to what they are doing because they are not giving out good energy. I want to be able to always give out that good vibes because I really like it when someone comes to me and says, “Listen, you made my day with this song. It was just what I needed.”

59:00

Ten years from now I want to have a steady income because I want to make music. I compose music and write lyrics, and I don’t want the anxiety of chasing fame or make a hit. I want to be able to make music and lyrics that make sense for me and record that music and create a legacy of my music that may or may not be useful for someone in the future. I don’t to have to chase money to do so. I want to have enough autonomy to do things that are not necessarily commercially successful but is what I want to do. Chasing fame would just be full of emptiness for me. I like reading and writing poetry and I want to be able to compose lyrics that are interesting for me. If I have a chance to make these projects come true, I would really like this. And I know I’m going to make it come true. I know I’m going to get there because nothing has been able to stop me so far. When I set my mind on something, I have achieved it, and I’m going to do the same here.

1;02 – listen again. Long segment

A funny thing is I’ve played all over the place. I’ve been hired by people with a lot of money and really poor people, but I consider myself a musician of the people. There are many stories playing for people. I am a seasonal musician. On Christmas, I will sing Christmas songs. On Mother’s Day, I’ll play folkloric songs that talk about mothers. I’m not just singing the song. I’m interpreting the song.

I would get in the bus and sing these songs on Mother’s Day to the mothers, and they would cry and give me money. Some days when it was raining, I sang these romantic love songs as if I have lived the song.

I’m always bringing good energy and I get that energy back, especially from waiters. If waiters hate you, you are really bad, but the waiters like me. Also, because I play a lot of different styles, this allows me to connect with many people. When I play Bossa Nova, the Brazilians love it. Or with Cuban music. After all, sound is linked with memory and images. If you have a particular experience listening to a song, that experience comes back to you.

1:09 very long passage

If my inner child would ask what we are doing, I would answer, “We are being happy.” I am fulfilling my dreams. When I was 10 years old, I would look at YouTube videos of people building a guitar or playing a concert, and I thought, “I hope I can build a guitar or play a concert,” and I have done both. I have to be happy. It’s difficult to bet on and persevere your dreams. It’s not easy, but I’m a dreamer. 1:14 I have to chase my dreams. If not, when I am old and if my inner child asks, “What did you do?” what am I going to say? that I did the opposite of what I want or I did what I want? Many people do exactly that. They give up, but I think I can do anything. There is nothing I can’t do. If someone else has done something, why can’t I do it? In my mind, that’s it.

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