UN SOLO CAMINO – harp music from latin america

UN SOLO CAMINO

Harp music from Latin America

The harp arrived in Latin America in the beginning of the 1600s in the hands of the Jesuits who used music as a tool for evangelism. In 1604, the Jesuit province of Perù was divided and the new Jesuit province of Paraguay or «Paraquaria» was formed which included the territory that currently includes eastern Bolivia, southern Brazil, Uruguay, Paraguay, north-western Argentina and, initially, also Chile.
The Jesuits introduced European musical instruments, installed factories for their production and initiated the «Indians» in the art of music, both sacred and profane. After years of work with the inhabitants of the «reducciones», the fathers Antón Sepp, Domenico Zipoli, Martin Schmid and Luis Berger achieved such a high musical level that Pope Benedict XIV, in his encyclical dated February 19, 1749, stated that «there is almost no difference between the masses and vespers sung by the devotees in the province of Paraguay and ours».