Quito Ecuador: Man finds trove of master tape recordings of musicians from the 1950’s

nytimes.com reported: QUITO, Ecuador — When Daniel Lofredo Rota began clearing out the apartment of his dead grandfather here in April 2014, he found several tons of newspaper, stacks of letters, broken typewriters and about 300 magnetic reel-to-reel tapes, almost perfectly preserved after 45 years in a cool, dry place.

His grandfather, Carlos Rota, started the Caife record company in the 1950s, and what Mr. Lofredo Rota, 29, had stumbled on was a complete archive of that label’s master tapes. It was a cultural time capsule carrying a vital chapter of Ecuador’s musical history.

“This music had a parenthesis of time when it wasn’t in anybody’s ears,” Mr. Lofredo Rota said in an interview at his family home in Quito. “I feel it’s my mission to digitize the tapes, and I’ll do whatever it takes to get them heard.” Read Full Article

ADVANCED SPANISH VOCABULARY – READ THE BOOK