Although it spent years for somebody to play it, this guitar has a story that will go through generations. You see, it was my mother’s first guitar!
It’s like talking with mom.
Just a few months before I was born, my mother wanted to learn to play the guitar. Back in Ecuador in the late 70’s and early 80’s the only guitars you would see would be nylon strings classical guitars. My earliest memories of that guitar are when I was just about two years old or so. The instrument in question is a Yamaha G-225. Which for the time was a fairly expensive instrument – for Ecuador. Still a very nice instrument, even 40+ years after. At the time, I remember thinking that was the most beautiful guitar I’ve ever seen, especially when compared to other guitars around. It had all the cool parts… the wood colors, the finishing of the instrument, even the tuning pegs seemed so much more elegant than other guitars I saw at the time.
Obviously, I did not know that much about guitars either way, but there was something that when I compared to others it would just make me so proud that that was “our home” guitar. Yeah, it might sound shallow, but I remember comparing it with other guitars anywhere. Ours was always the nicest.
My mom was an exceedingly busy person. Her catch phrase was “I’m busy” – and she was. Yet she learned to play one song in her guitar. This was “El Arriero” from the Argentinian group “Los Chalchaleros.” I remember when I was about five years old mom calling my siblings and I to the living room so we can sing this song with her. I can’t remember how many times we did this, but I remember that sometimes she would have us sing when somebody was coming to visit our home.
Time passed by, and my mom got busier and busier. The guitar just remained lonely. There was this ribbon on the headstock and there was this hook in her bedroom where this guitar would just hang – for years. Eventually, the strings popped – usually operator error. And now the guitar just remained hanged in the same spot, but with only three out of six strings. Years went by, I was probably 10 or 11 years old when I showed some actual interest in playing. I was already playing the keyboard and the piano by that age. However, I had no clue about how to play the guitar. Despite this my grandmother took me to one of the malls, where they had a musical instruments kiosk. I think it was named something like “El Palacio Musical” which means “the Musical Palace.” My grandma bought the most expensive set of strings they had at the time, I remember these being black nylon and gold wounded strings. The man told us to return the next day to pick up the guitar with the new strings. We returned, he quickly tuned it, and it sounded amazing on this man’s hands.
I went back home with the guitar I was so excited I tried making some sounds based on an old guitar tutorial book that was at home. I was able to strum my very first chord… and open string “C Major” chord. I did not know how to tune it, so I was just counting how many times the strings were wounded around the tunning rod. Still, I tried tuning it based on the instructions, and unsurprisingly I f****d up, and I popped the “G” string. And yes, that was the same day the guitar was back with the new strings after years of being unused. At that time my mother was working abroad, so I did not even say anything. My grandmother would not even ask… but of course the guitar went back up to the hook. Eventually more strings would pop, and there it remained with three strings again… for several years. My grandmother never did ask me about the strings.
Fast forward when I was a teenager, all my new friends knew how to play the guitar. And this made them very popular. I was a keyboard and piano player, but you can’t drag one those monsters into a bonfire event. So eventually I started learning to play the guitar. It was not easy, but my guitar never fought me and after I learned how to properly tune my guitar, I was able to play – eventually. However, before that my grandmother knowing that I wanted to learn to play the guitar, she bought me the nicest instrument she could find for my birthday. Keep in mind she knew as much about guitars as I did… which was nothing. Yet she got me this beautiful black electric guitar. I’ll have an article dedicated to that guitar. But as I started to learn to play, now I had not one but two guitars. My own guitar – an electric guitar at that, and I had commandeered my mother’s guitar.
My mom’s guitar eventually became officially “my guitar” because I was the only one who know how to play it. And I loved the sound, but mostly I loved the fact that it had a story dear to my heart. Also, I made a lot of memories on that instrument in the years that followed. More on those will be featured in future articles. Eventually as I joined the Navy in 2003, I did not see my guitar for several years. I saw it and played it the last time I ever went to Ecuador back in 2006. But a few years ago in 2014, my brother brought my guitar from Ecuador to USA. The magic was back (the image above is from that day). Even though the guitar has experienced a few modifications from her original glory (by me)– and it does need a bit of work as I’ve been improving it to my liking, that’s still an instrument I cherish.
Playing the guitar once my brother brought it back to me it was like having a conversation with an old friend. So many memories were strummed with that instrument spanning so many years. And most importantly this is a tangible reminder of my mother. When I play it, now it also feels like I am having a conversation with my mom. I have to admit that sometimes I just let the guitar live in her new case in the same room with all my new guitars, because I do get sad and nostalgic with the memories. That’s one of the reasons why I have not really finished some of the work I have pending on it. I’ll write an update once that day arrives. There is always something magical about musical instruments, especially when a very special instrument is your first. HLC