Polo Montanez Guitarra Mia CD

GUITARRA MIA was nominated for the 2003 Latin Grammy Award for Best Traditional Tropical Album.

For years, there was coal, and there were trucks, and there was manual labor. There were chapped hands and sun-burned cheeks. And there was refuge to be taken in music, beginning with the conga drum, which Polo Montañez remembered playing when he was still so small he had to stand on a chair to reach it. And the Cuban tres, a traditional instrument with three doubled strings tuned to a bright open C major. And the tunes that he composed and taught to others without music, humming. Bachata, bolero, rumba, son. Then suddenly, there was an agent, too, and a recording contract and a first single at the top of the charts. Discovered playing with his band at a tourist resort in his native Pinar del Rio, Cuba, Montañez skyrocketed to stardom almost overnight. By the time that Guitarra Mía, his second album, was released in 2002, life was looking good for Montañez. Though it is impossible to listen to it without a sense of foreboding about what came next -- a car accident that ended his life just days before he'd been scheduled to go out on a promotional tour -- the astonishing joy and artistry that define Guitarra Mía ensure ...