Berta Rojas: The Talking Guitar in Guarani (1966–present)

In Paraguay, the country that had produced the greatest guitarist in Latin America was just burning. The War of the Triple Alliance had devastated the country in the 19th century. The dictatorship of Alfredo Stroessner — which lasted from 1954 to 1989 — had produced decades of cultural isolation that made it difficult to form musicians with international projection. The name of Barrios circulated among local conservatories, but without the resonance it deserved.

It was a woman born in Asunción in 1966 who closed that circle: who took over Barrios' legacy, studied it with the depth required, brought it to stages all over the world and returned it to the country that had produced it with the two first Latin Grammy of Paraguayan history in her hands.

Asunción, 1966: the girl who started with the guitar

Berta Rojas was born on September 23, 1966, in Asunción. The city, which at that time still lived under the dictatorship of Stroessner, was, however, a musical city: guarania played on the radios, the paraguayan harp was ubiquitous at popular festivals, and in the conservatories — the main one founded in 1909 — the European classical tradition was taught with a seriousness that the modesty of the country tended to hide.

Berta started with the guitar before the piano. It wasn't due to a pedagogical decision but for the simplest reason: her older brother taught her to play the guitar first, and that instrument captured her in a way that no other has been able to replace since then. "I believe that all those who pass through the world of art feel a sense of belonging that gives us strength," she would say decades later. "For me, the ground is my identity as a Paraguayan, as a Latin American. From there I draw the sap, the strength to grow."

The formal training came later: studies in Asunción, then abroad. In 1998 he obtained his Master's in Music at the Berklee College of Music in Boston — the most influential institution of popular music and jazz in the world — and in 2000 the Graduate Diploma from the same institution. Today he is an associate professor at Berklee, one of the few Latin American classical guitarists to hold such a position at an Anglo-Saxon university of that level. That journey — from the streets of Asunción to the halls of Berklee — defines the trajectory of someone who never saw a contradiction between his Paraguayan roots and the ambition to play on the world's best stages.

Washington D.C.: the ambassador's base of operations

Starting from the 1990s, Berta Rojas built her career from Washington D.C., the city she chose as her base of operations for her international tours. It was a strategically smart choice: Washington concentrates the most important cultural institutions in the United States — the Kennedy Center, the Smithsonian, the Library of Congress — and has the diplomatic density that facilitates the connections an international career needs.

From there she toured through Latin America, Europe, Asia and the Pacific, bringing her performances to the stages of Manila, Milan, Madrid, Tokyo, Buenos Aires and dozens of other cities with a proposal that was clearly Paraguayan as well as universally understandable. The Washington Post described her as "extraordinary guitarist." The Classical Guitar Magazine called her "Ambassador of Classical Guitar" — a title that her own words confirm: in every concert, in every interview, in every masterclass, Berta speaks of Paraguay with the specificity of someone who knows that her country cannot speak for itself if its artists do not do so.

Intimate Barrios: the album that changed the conversation

In 2008 Berta released Intimate Barrios, the album that redefined how Barrios Mangoré's music is interpreted in the 21st century. It wasn't the first to dedicate an entire album to him — John Williams had done so in 1977 with the album that initiated the international rediscovery of Barrios — but it was the closest to the original spirit of his music.

The critic from the magazine Classical Guitar put it precisely: "For a recording closer to the spirit of Barrios's own interpretations, the Intimate Barrios by Berta Rojas would be preferable" — an observation that implies that Williams's album, however technically brilliant it may be, has a Nordic coldness that the Paraguayan replaces with the direct warmth of someone who grew up listening to that music as part of her culture, not as an exotic study object.

Intimate Barrios was recorded in San Juan Bautista — Barrios' hometown in Misiones — as a gesture of geographical and emotional restitution. "As if the music were trapped in adobe walls and found freedom in his hands," wrote a critic who heard him play at the Casona Mangoré, the house where the composer was born and spent his childhood.

After the Footsteps of Mangoré: four years following the path

In 2011, Berta Rojas started her most ambitious project to date: the tour "After the Footsteps of Mangoré", with Cuban saxophonist Paquito D'Rivera as the guest star. For four years, the duo traveled twenty countries in Latin America and the Caribbean following literally the itinerary that Barrios had traveled between 1910 and 1944: Argentina, Uruguay, Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, Colombia, Cuba, Mexico, Central America.

The tour ended where it had to end: at the National Theater of El Salvador, in the capital of the country where Barrios had spent his last years, where his remains rest in the General Cemetery. It was a circular closure that had the exactness of gestures that are only possible when planned with decades of knowledge and with genuine affection for the subject being honored.

The album that resulted from that collaboration Día y Medio / A Day and a Half (2012) — was nominated for a Latin Grammy in the category of Best Instrumental Album: Berta's first nomination in that category.

A career built on diversity

What defines Berta Rojas as an artist — and sets her apart from classical guitarists who specialize in a single repertoire — is the breadth of her musical curiosity. She has recorded tango with the Camerata Bariloche (Historia del Tango, 2015, nominated for a Latin Grammy). She has recorded Brazilian music with Gilberto Gil, Toquinho e Ivan Lins (Felicidade, 2017). She has recorded an album with instruments made from recycled materials as an environmental statement (Salsa Roja, 2014, nominated for a Latin Grammy).

In each of those projects the classical guitar is the center, but the repertoire expands into territories that academic purism does not always allow: Argentine tango, Brazilian choro, Latin American folk music, compositions by contemporary composers who write specifically for her.

That breadth is not eclecticism without roots but rather the opposite: it is the natural consequence of a Paraguayan identity that has always been a synthesis. The Paraguay that produced Barrios is the same that produced guarania and the harp and the Guarani-Spanish bilingualism. Berta Rojas is, in that sense, the most Paraguayan artist of her generation: capable of containing multiple traditions without any canceling the others.

Legacy: Paraguay's First Two Latin Grammy Awards

In November 2022, during the Latin Grammy ceremony held in Las Vegas, Berta Rojas took the stage twice in the same night. Her album Legacy won the Latin Grammy for Best Classical Music Album. The composition "Anido's Portrait: Chacarera" — written by Brazilian composer Sergio Assad especially for her, as a tribute to the Argentine guitarist María Luisa Anido — won the Latin Grammy for Best Classical/Contemporary Composition.

They were the first two Latin Grammy awards in Paraguay's history. In any category.

When thanking the audience, Berta spoke in Guarani: "Aguyje" — thanks. And then she said what was most important at that moment: "If I am here today it is because before there were pioneering women of classical guitar who paved the way, in times when it was not seen as appropriate for a woman to be traveling around the world with a guitar. Today many girls around the world dedicate themselves to this profession. I was one of them."

The trophies, he announced that same day, would remain in Paraguay. "That Grammy I gave to my country. I want that Grammy to stay at home."

The previous year, the Paraguayan government had awarded him the National Order of Merit in the Degree of Grand Cross — the highest distinction the Paraguayan state can confer on a citizen. Berklee College of Music has her as an associate professor. The Conservatorio Giuseppe Verdi of Milan awarded him in 2022 the Golden Guitar: A Life Dedicated to the Guitar prize on its 27th edition.

The Teacher

Berta Rojas is not just a performer. She is also one of the most active pedagogues of classical guitar in the continent. In 2009 she created the Barrios World Wide Web Competition, the first online classical guitar competition in history — an innovation that in 2009 was genuinely pioneering and that today, in the era of digital competitions, seems obvious only because someone thought of it first. She was Artistic Director of the Iberoamerican Guitar Festival at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington D.C. for three editions.

Within Paraguay itself she initiated the School Tour that took her through almost forty cities in the country, one hundred and sixty educational institutions and more than fifty thousand children and teenagers who for the first time heard classical guitar live played by someone from their own country. That project — reaching children before they decide that classical music is not for them — is perhaps the most important work of her career, although it has no name in the record catalogs and does not appear in the Washington Post reviews.

Editor's note: In 2015, during the History of Tango tour, Berta Rojas' guitar was stolen. It was her concert instrument, her decades-long companion, irreplaceable in the most literal sense. They recovered it months later, under circumstances she describes as almost miraculous. The first piece she played when she had it back in her hands was The Cathedral by Barrios. Not because someone asked her to, but because she needed to know that she still could. There are few more eloquent gestures about the relationship between a musician and their instrument, and between a guitarist and the composer who defines their identity.

Essential Discography of Berta Rojas

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Essential Discography of Berta Rojas

#CanciónArtista

01

Legado

2022

Two Latin Grammy Awards: Best Classical Music Album and Best Contemporary Composition. The first Grammy in Paraguayan history. Homage to the pioneers of female classical guitar.

Pendiente

02

Intimate Barrios

2008

The Barrios interpretation closest to the original spirit of the composer. Recorded in San Juan Bautista, the hometown of Mangoré. The most personal document of his relationship with that music.

Pendiente

03

Felicidade

2017

Brazil from the Paraguayan guitar. With Gilberto Gil, Toquinho and Ivan Lins. The richest conversation between two musical traditions of the same continent.

Pendiente

04

Día y Medio / A Day and a Half

2012

With Paquito D'Rivera, at the end of the tour "Tras las Huellas de Mangoré". Nominated for a Latin Grammy. The four-year document following the steps of Barrios.

Pendiente

05

History of the Tango

2015

With Camerata Bariloche. Argentine tango on Paraguayan classical guitar. Nominated for a Latin Grammy. Latin American identity as a common project.

Pendiente

06

Terruño

2009

Paraguayan land as a theme. Her most direct declaration of identity, composed and played from the roots.

Pendiente

07

Salsa Roja

2014

Instruments made with recycled materials. Music and environmental statement. Nominated for a Latin Grammy.

Pendiente

08

Cielo Abierto

2006

Their debut on the On Music Recordings label. The first formal presentation of their proposal to the world.

Pendiente

09

Alma y Corazón

2007

Duo with Brazilian guitarist Carlos Barbosa-Lima. Two guitar traditions from the continent in dialogue.

Pendiente