Ernesto Cavour

Ernesto Cavour Aramayo (born April 9, 1940 in La Paz, Bolivia) is a Bolivian folk musician, composer, singer, and inventor of musical instruments, including a wide range of modifications for the Andean charango. He is recognized as an esteemed master of the instrument, and is also a music educator, being an author of numerous manual textbooks. Cavour began his career in 1957 as a solo instrumentalist. In 1962, he created the "Museo del Charango" and later in 1984, with the expansion of the venue and the addition of more than 2000 Bolivian and foreign musical instruments, it was officially re-established under the name "Museum of Musical Instruments of Bolivia". Distributed in its rooms are various pre-Hispanic instruments, chordophones, membranophones, aerophones, idiophones, and of recent creation, many of them created by the artist himself. In 1997 the museum is institutionally consolidated with the category "Museums of the City of La Paz". In 1966, Cavour founded the group Los Jairas (which in Aymara means 'lazy') composed of Gilbert Favre, Julio Godoy, and Yayo Jofré, with whom he undertook a prolonged tour to Europe between 1969 and 1971, in order to popularise Bolivian traditional music. In 1971, he dissociated himself from Los Jairas and returned to Bolivia, forming his own group with Mario Gutiérrez, Luis Valdez, and Luis Cavour. Further group endeavors include the trio Bolivia, Corazón de América, formed together with Nilo Soruco and Luis Rico. Cavour participated in the International Guitar Festival at the Alter Oper, along with other world-renowned artists such as Paco de Lucía, Stefan Jeremías, Manuel Barrueco and the Moskaner Philharmonic in 1985. In October 1986, he performed at the International Guitar Concert in Hamburg, at the Music Hall in Germany, where he shared the stage with artists like Andrés Segovia, Pepe Romero, Raúl García Zárate and other great consecrated people Read more on Last.fm. User-contributed text is available under the Creative Commons By-SA License; additional terms may apply.