Andrés Soto Mena, born on April 29, 1949 in Lima, Peru. He attended school at the National College of Our Lady of Guadalupe and finished college in 1972 as a BA in Social Sciences, specializing in Sociology at the Pontificia Universidad Catolica del Peru. In 1975 he studied at the National School of Music (Conservatory) with teachers Celso Garrido Lecca, Enrique Iturriaga, Nelly Suarez, among others.
Black ballads, urban issues and juglería trova songs, show creative veins of Andres representing a different way of expressing the feelings of the city and its surroundings. More intense emotions evoked by local customs reasons, romantic and existential testimony, all this is his base and predicament.
In 1968, he founded the vocal quartet “Manos Duras” in conjunction with Paco Guzmán, Daniel (Kiri) Escobar and Hugo Castillo. Years later, in the seventies, his songs run through areas student art work and up to the radio and television programs devoted exclusively to the social and popular song. Granda Chabuca called it one of the most important songwriters in the Spanish-speaking and Mario Vargas Llosa gives the best compliments on their work of rescue and distribution of Peru’s urban feeling deep in his television tuned to “The Tower of Babel.”
His songs have been committed to record: in Switzerland by The Jairas, in Argentina by Julia Elena Davalos, Mexico by Tania Libertad and Richard Villalón, in Italy by Marcela Perez Silva and the United States by Susana Baca. In Peru, Eva Ayllón do the same, Cecilia Barraza, the New Time group and Julie Freund. Currently interpret their creations: Cecilia Bracamonte, Patricia Saravia and as a promise latest Pamela Abanto. In February 1981, ODEON IEMPSA released his first and only length entitled Andrés Soto, dedicated to El Carmen, a town located south of Lima, the Chincha province, formerly inhabited by black slaves.
Andrés Soto has traveled to countries in Latin America, North America and Europe. In 1981 she participated along with Chabuca Granda on the television program “Chile invites you” by the Catholic University of Santiago where he was joined by the First Symphony of Chile and Peru by Alvaro Lagos prominent musicians on guitar and Chaitra Soto de la Colina in the drawer. The next year in Spain, gave two recitals in the auditorium of the Colegio Mayor “Our Lady of Guadalupe” under the sponsorship of ICI Iberoamerican Cooperation Institute and the Embassy of Peru in Madrid. The presentation and was greeting by none other than Nicomedes Santa Cruz. So too, has made known his work as composer in various artistic and cultural circles in Brussels, Belgium, Berlin, Germany, Sofia, Bulgaria, Moscow, Russia and the republic of Georgia today. Also, in the cities of New York-USA, Dorval and Montreal-Canada and the Republic of Argentina. For France has recorded a documentary that illustrates his work as composer with about a hundred songs and another of poetry edition that has been broadcast on all French-speaking countries and Germany.
In 1999, he won the Second National Festival of Popular Song “Chabuca Granda, with the theme” champion “as author and composer. For the event the song also earned first place in vocal performance by Elsa Palao.
In 2001 workers hired by the National School of Folklore “Jose ‘Maria Arguedas” as a consultant in research and mainly prints Advisory and choreographic works, from songs of his own to the Joint National Folk Music and Dance School.
In the News Andrés Soto is an active member of the Peruvian Association of Authors and Composers (APDAYC)
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