Papá Roncón: Marimba, Kununu, Bombo, Bongo & Voice
Catalina Mina Quintero: Bombo, Kununu & Voice
Rosa Huila Valencia: Guasa & Voice

Papá Roncón's Magic and Marimba
Papá Roncón is a living legend. He plays the marimba and the guitar; he is a singer and a dancer. He makes Kununus, Bombos and Marimbas, all of them musical instruments. He lives in Borbon, a muggy village in the province of Esmeraldas in the north of Ecuador. The port of Borbon is the most important place for transshipment in the timber trade. Daily, trucks carrying felled rain forest giants from the "selva", the tropical rain forest, arrive in the towns of the "sierra" or at the neighbouring port of the provincial capital of Esmeraldas where the wood is to be processed. Borbon feels like an African place, and there is a reason for this. In 1533 African slaves, who were being transported to Panama, were shipwrecked and fled to the coast of Ecuador where they founded the first free Republic of Esmeraldas.
Guillermo Ayovi Erazo, a.k.a. "Papá Roncón", is a great story-teller and passes on the history of his people. He is proud of the culture, tradition and folklore of the black people and impresses visitors, who come to his modest house, with his dynamic and friendly personality and his deep, resounding "satchmo-laugh". With his shirt over his trousers, his bare feet and an African cap on his head he hardly looks the seventy-year-old father of ten and grandfather of eight that he is. But Papá Roncón is worried. "Our history, our music and our dances are being lost, and nobody cares", he says. Quite spontaneously, without getting out of his hammock, he takes his guitar and starts singing, of the "duende", a wandering old man with a wide-rimmed hat - some kind of Rumpelstiltskin - that taught him to play the guitar one night. Then he tells us how he started playing the marimba. "It was at night, there was a full moon - suddenly I could hear a 'tugun-tugun' and pling - I leap up and get onto my two feet, and there is the sound of the heavenly marimba. It was like a call, a celestial power. I start running - as if bewitched - downhill towards the beaches of the Rio Santiago. When I arrive, I see - or did I imagine it? - my grandfather sitting between two angels playing the marimba. And behind him there was the moon - beautiful, luminous - kissing the palm tree! And I could hear the heavenly marimba!!!"
This story, revealing to us the world of magic, that is the home of these black people to this very day, is told by Papá Roncón in memory of the day when the moon came down to the beaches of the Rio Santiago to listen to the strains of the marimba.

Astrid Pape, January 2001, Quito, Ecuador

Tourmanagement & contact: Astrid Pape - Quito/Ecuador - Casilla 17-07-9830
e-mail: astridpape@yahoo.com - phone: 00593-2-375339 - fax: 00593-2-953462