“Mi Barrio Latino América” is a short series of biographical articles on people Ramon Hernandez and Karol Carranza are interviewing throughout their travels in Central America and Mexico. The articles highlight personal stories, concerns, opinions and issues in the words of the people interviewed.
Ligia Lima, Ciudad de Guatemala, Guatemala 2011.
In Guatemala’s past, the sound of hand-cranked street organs filled the air of public spaces like the Aurora Zoo in the capital city’s 13th zone, el Templo de Minerva in the Hypodromo del Norte and el Parque Colon.
But in the mid-1940s, with no interested hands left to turn their cranks, the street organs fell silent.
Ligia Lima is a musician who works for the Museo de los Musicos Invisibles in Guatemala City and is dedicated to rescuing the tradition of street organ music in Guatemala.
“What we are doing now is rescuing the organ by playing in the streets and through our work in the museum El Museo de los Musicos Invisibles,” she said. “German Rodriguez constructs and restores the organs and I play the organ full of heart.”
The museum also helps restore and fabricate organs for other countries that are dedicated to reviving and revitalizing their own street organ music culture.
The street or “barrel” organ is a small pipe organ operated by turning a manual crank that rotates wooden cylinders, containing the notes of the song inside of the organ. Lima said there is a great deal of dedication involved in creating these melodies because the cylinders containing each song take weeks and sometimes months to produce by hand.
“The organ is an instrument completely made by artisans; there are absolutely no electrical parts and [it] only runs by physically turning the handle,” she said.
Lima took advantage of a recent restoration to a major pedestrian causeway in Guatemala, which created more open public and art spaces and gave her the opportunity to play the street organ for crowds of pedestrians, and people enjoyed listening to music that had disappeared from public life in Guatemala for many years.
But her performances aren’t strictly for entertainment; Lima is also trying to educate people about the unique history of the street organ, which ended up providing part of the soundtrack for public life in Guatemala but began as an amusement for young, European royalty in 1502.
“Germany was the first country to fabricate them, and Italy followed much later in 1717. However, only the children of the kings of Europe listened to the mechanical organ; it began as a toy for them,” Lima said. “It finally made it out to the public in 1880. In 1885, it came to Guatemala, Mexico and all of the Americas.”
But despite her goal of educating people about the street organ, it still gives her great joy and satisfaction to just watch people enjoy organ music.
“I love music, and I love working with people and making people smile. People who are sad or preoccupied, at hearing the organ forget everything, and many people love feeling the nostalgia caused by the music that transports them directly to the past,” Lima said. “Kids applaud, babies begin to clap and dance and do not want to leave. However, the older people delight in the music; they remember memories of their grandmothers, their father, or certain people of their past, understand? This is what keeps me working.”
People request organ songs for all sorts of reasons, not just celebration.
“We have gone to the cemetery and on hearing the melodies people begin to cry, but very loudly because they feel the presence of that person,” she said. “For the Day of the Dead a family asked me to play for their deceased relative. While playing, a woman began to say, ‘yes dad, keep dancing, keep dancing because you look very wonderful with that song.’ This is how people are transported instantly to the past.”
Lima said the melodies have this ability because the museum’s organs contain songs familiar to and loved by generations of people in Guatemala.
“It has a variety of music; we have a lot of music from the past, boleros, traditional, and if invited to play in the United States we will gladly take music from Guatemala,” She said. “We have “El Ferrocarril de los Altos,” “Chuchitos Calientes,” “Luna de Xelajú,” “Chichicastenango,” “La Chalana,” “Cobán,” “Imperial,” “La Sanjuanerita,” and “Mañanitas Quetzaltecas”…This is some of what we play here in Guatemala’s street organs.”
Lima invites music lovers to visit Guatemala and listen to the music that flows through Guatemala’s streets, carrying with it part of Guatemala’s heritage.
“I would like to send a special greeting to everybody in San Francisco and especially to all of the Guatemalans living there,” she said. “We are waiting for your visit here to the Paseo de la Sexta Avenida so you can enjoy the organ’s music.”