I arrive at the Teatro Nacional, that iconic, monumental building which is so Guatemalan and was designed by maestro Efraín Recinos. It’s somewhat deteriorated. The white and blue tiles are falling off its facade, there are leaks from the roof, dark stains from the rain on its walls and worn out orange carpets. But it’s incredibly beautiful.

In front of the Chamber Theater, one of the two rooms/halls in the Centro Cultural Miguel Ángel Asturias, official name of the theater, we wait for Maestro Joaquín Orellana. After a few minutes we see him coming from afar, walking from the main entrance. He’s wearing his classic hat, and comes towards us slowly. The Maestro is short, but his shadow is extremely long and covers us and the whole huge building behind us. We wait in silence, smiling, anxious. I see he’s carrying one of the big Gallo beer cans in one hand.

He says hello to us quite happily. He jests, as he usually does, and we all laugh. I’m nervous. I’m always like this when I see him or talk to him. I can’t help it. I guess it’s the effect of being in the presence of a wizard, a giant.




We are five friends visiting to film him in his studio, to capture an inkling of his genius and share it with those who don’t know him or know very little of him. We follow the Maestro through corridors and stairs and around corners of the Theater. I imagine we are descending into the underworld, the Xibalbá of contemporary music of Guatemala. Under that great structure that is the Teatro Nacional, in a basement painted yellow and orange, with white neon lamps, with moths around the lintels, there lies Maestro Orellana’s studio.

He opens the door, turns on the light, and we see the magical objects filling up the room. They are very peculiar sculptures of different shapes. They are instruments. They are the sonorous utensils invented and built by the Maestro. He asks us to sit down and we make a circle of plastic chairs. He’s wearing a short-sleeved shirt and under that a T-shirt with a worn out neck, a leader belt, well-polished shoes. He has a black moustache, small glasses, and a brilliant look/glare [mirada]. We speak for a while and then the Maestro gets up and walks towards one of the sonorous utensils. He explains how it’s played, it’s sound and its name. We follow him to the next instrument, and the next, and the next. He plays each of them, filling up the room with music and noise. We’re all in a kind of trance.




We leave his studio and head to the bar Granada to drink beers and talk. The Maestro recites Cervantes, Neruda, tells jokes, listens to our questions and comments attentively. I drink too much. I get drunk. I speak very little. I try to remember the Maestro’s poetry. The sounds of pain and beauty of a people. Ramajes de una Marimba Imaginaria, Humanofonía, Imposible a la X.

I understand that his music is not listened to everywhere in Guatemala, since his work takes us to a place most people would want to forget, or ignore, or perhaps because we live in a puddle of indifference. But I don’t understand how in the realm of world music his work is only know in very small and specific circles. For me, the work of Maestro Joaquín Orellana is indispensable. It flows from poetry to narrative to theater to coral, symphonic, chamber, and electroacoustic music. The hidden Maestro, from his basement, reminds us with sonorous experiences, with inexplicable feelings, of the place in which we live.







In my land, the land which is most mine, light rains and pours. Water made of sunlight, fecund, nurturing sprouts which rise from my earth. The eart of my land, fertilized by the light. I don’t know why the shadow and its violent incursion. I don’t know why its fateful moments in which my birds grow quiet and my chrysalis die. If in my land, so mine, there’s so much sunrise, so much dew, aromas, announcements of splendor, musics, clarity. Intense clarity. Incursion of the shadow, I think you are of death but an impotent mockery.

-Humanofonía