Tania Libertad and Eva Ayllón: the origin of a 50-year friendship that reaches its peak in concert

From her home in Mexico City, the interpreter answers our call. She has just returned from a short but well-deserved vacation and she comments with a smile that “as my friend Alfredo Zitarrosa used to say, I have a lot of clothes to wash at home”. It is that at 70 years old, Tania Liberty continues to have a busy concert schedule. That’s why, he assures her, she can’t ask for anything more from life.

“Imagine what it’s like to have more than 60 years of artistic career -singing since the age of five, but at seven he received his first payment- and to continue keeping his voice like at 15, having known the five continents singing, having the family and friends that I have, and also continue to be a valued artist”. While she prepares to continue with the rehearsals for her next presentation, always with the good spirit that characterizes her, the singer-songwriter comments on details of the second edition of “Eva con Libertad”. The duo recital with her dear friend Eva Ayllón, presented for the first time in 2017, returns this May 6 and 7 to the Japanese Peruvian Theater with some changes in her repertoire, but impregnated with the same feeling and quality of two greats of music. Peruvian.

“I would be very happy to make an album for Eva, because I admire her a lot. Ella says that with that we are going to win another Grammy.”

Tania Liberty

half a century of friendship

Tania and Eva met in the early seventies. At that time, the girl from Chiclayo already had a name earned in the Peruvian artistic environment and she was the host of the television program “Dances and Songs of Peru”. As fate would have it, she was the one who presented Eva in her debut as the first voice of Los Kipus. “From there I know her, and although in the year 80 I came to live in Mexico we have met in different parts of the world and in Lima, where we once sang at La Estación and at the Jockey Plaza”. Both were part of the posthumous tribute to Mercedes Sosa at the Lincoln Center in New York, back in 2010, but it took seven years for their voices to come together in the same bunch of songs.

“Eva called me one day and proposed this idea to me, telling me we are going to do whatever you want. I began to select the repertoire and made many of the arrangements for the songs we sang. We assembled voices, choirs and everything we had to do, including the development of the concert”. The songs chosen, such as “Carusso” and “Debut y farewell”, have been sung by both at different times. Compositions by José Escajadillo, Andrés Soto, Polo Campos, Alicia Maguiña, Chabuca Granda, waltzes from the old guard, boleros and rancheras that marked their lives will also be part of the emotional concert.

With the Creole, in addition, he has projected the production of an album. “We have talked about it a lot, about five or more years ago. I would be very happy to make an album for Eva, because I admire Eva a lot and I love how she sings. Hopefully soon we can, because Eva says that with that we are going to win another Grammy”.

The pandemic and more pending

Although Tania Libertad returned to the stage from 2021, she confesses that the months of confinement served to free her from stress. “I, the truth, I was not overwhelmed much, I think I needed this parenthesis. As I have been singing since I was a little girl, this time came wonderfully for me”. However, he had to put aside many pending works such as the tribute album for the 100 years of Chabuca Granda.

“This is something I have to do anyway. Teresa Fuller had asked me for 2020, but in the worst of the pandemic I couldn’t bring a group of musicians to my house to record “, points out. The album in honor of Chabuca had to be recorded with mariachis, just as it was done decades ago with at least five songs. Another postponed project is of an even more personal nature. “I want to record all the waltzes that I have in my memory, with guitar and cajon, but with the correct melodies and lyrics, because over the years they have been distorted and even lost”. The goal of the interpreter of “Concert for a single voice” is to rescue at least 100 songs and give them to Peru. “I’m already making my list”, she points out.