Description

EL CONDOR PASA

El Cóndor Pasa (Spanish for “The Condor Passes”) is an orchestral musical piece from the zarzuela El Cóndor Pasa by the Peruvian composer Daniel Alomía Robles, written in 1913 and based on traditional Andean music, specifically folk music from Peru.

Since then, it has been estimated that around the world, more than 4000 versions of the melody have been produced, along with 300 sets of lyrics. In 2004, Peru declared this song as part of the national cultural heritage. This song is now considered the second national anthem of Peru.

It is the best-known Peruvian song in the English-speaking world due to a 1970 cover by Simon & Garfunkel on their Bridge over Troubled Water album. Their version is called “El Cóndor Pasa (If I Could)“.

In 1913, Peruvian songwriter Daniel Alomía Robles composed “El Cóndor Pasa”, and the song was first performed publicly at the Teatro Mazzi in Lima. The song was originally a musical piece in the Peruvian zarzuela (musical play), El cóndor pasa.

Its music was composed by Daniel Alomía Robles in 1913 and its script was written by Julio de La Paz (pseudonym of the Limenian dramatist Julio Baudouin). The piano arrangement of this play’s most famous melody was legally registered on May 3, 1933 by The Edward B. Marks Music Corp. in the Library of Congress, under the number 9643. The zarzuela is written in prose and consists of one musical play and two acts.

In July 2013, the Colectivo Cultural Centenario El Cóndor Pasa cultural association re-edited the original script which had been lost for a period of time, and published it together with a CD containing the recorded dialogues and seven musical pieces. The music from the original score was reconstructed by musicologist Luis Salazar Mejía with the collaboration of musicians Daniel Dorival and Claude Ferrier and the support of cultural promoter Mario Cerrón Fetta, and re-released on November 14, 15, and 16, 2013 at the Teatro UNI in Lima to celebrate its first centenary. The zarzuela included the famous homonymous melody, without lyrics, based on the traditional Andean music of Peru, where it was declared a National Cultural Heritage in 2004.