Magaly Solier

On Wednesday night Diego, Jacho and I went to Barranco to see Magaly Solier, who was appearing the La Noche nightclub.    We thought that she might just perform a few songs to prommote her album, Warmi, but were pleased to find that she performed basically the entire album, plus a couple of other songs, including a rendition of Ricardo Dolorier's "Flor de Retama" which was among the nicest Ive heard.

"Flor de Retama" was written about the brutal police repression of a popular strike for education in Huanta in 1969, but it regained popularity in the 1980s as an oblique protest against the police and military repression endured by the population of Ayacucho during the civil war.     Solier's own songs also reflect her experiences and those of the region's populace during the war years, expressed -in Warmi- through the voices of several female characters (warmi means "woman" in Quechua),  like those of "Citaray", who lost loved ones to political violence, and of "Maribel", the main character and a "young woman who dares to help other women who are determined to not let themselves be abused by their men".

All three of us were impressed with what a nice, simple person Solier seems.   She's famous, with a several movies out, a musical album, and her face on Nescafé adds all over the place, but she's still able to confess that she gets "very nervous" whenever she steps on stage to sing for an audience.  The audience was small, but the space was also small, which lent the event a bit of intimacy, and there were some people she knew among the audience and she seemed comforted and pleased by their presence.

Nonetheless, she didn't seem to let her nervousness affect her performance:

Magaly Solier performing 'Ripu Ripusajmi' at La Noche, August 4, 2010

All in all, we were very impressed and glad that we made the effort to go to the concert, and I made sure to buy the album the first chance I got (in fact I'm listening to it as I type).