Seven songs from Costa Rica

Abstract

In July of 1973, through the benificence of Professor Juan de Dios Trejos, music teacher from Cartago, Costa Rica, I had the pleasure of meeting doña Leticia de Céspedes. This tiny woman was in her nineties, with neatly cropped snow white hair and blue eyes. She received me in her humble home in Tres Ríos, a town located between San José and Cartago. Sra. de Céspedes had learned to read and transcribe music. She taught piano and guitar. She too, was interested in music which was orally transmitted, and most graciously bequeathed to me musical transcriptions which she had made from songs she had heard her grandparents sing when she was a child. She assured me that she learned them orally, and to my knowledge, they have never been recorded before now.