page_title: Leda Valladares
section_title: Poetry and later education (1940–1950)
hierarchical_section_title: Leda Valladares / Career / Poetry and later education (1940–1950)
caption_attribution_description: Español: Leda Valladares y María Elena Walsh de visita artística en Tucumán, con el dúo Leda y María (archivo del diario tucumano La Gaceta, 1956) English: (r)Leda Valladares and (l)María Elena Walsh on an artistic visit to Tucumán, as the duo "Leda y María". Photograph from La Gaceta (Tucumán), 1956.
context_page_description: Leda Valladares was an Argentine singer, songwriter, musicologist and folklorist, as well as a poet. Born in San Miguel de Tucumán, she grew up surrounded by both classical European music and the folk music of indigenous people living in the area. From a young age she studied piano and in her teens began a band with her brother that explored folk music, jazz, and blues. She published various works of poetry throughout her life. Though she began her university studies at the National University of Tucumán as an English major, after one year she changed course and began to study philosophy and education, eventually graduating in 1948. Her schooling was interrupted by a foray into the study of music both at the Academy of Fine Art and in independent research among those who performed traditional folk music.
  Upon graduation, Valladares taught briefly before moving to Paris and forming a music duo with María Elena Walsh in the early 1950s. They sang traditional Argentine folk music for four years in cafés and cabarets. The two then returned to Argentina after the 1956 Liberating Revolution had removed Juan Perón from office.
context_section_description: Valladares began publishing poems in regional magazines like El mar (The Sea) in 1940 and the following year in La pirámide (The Pyramid). She presented seven poems in the inaugural issue of Cántico (1940), continuing to publish books of poetry throughout her life. She became friends with Olga Orozco and met Alejandra Pizarnik through that association. In 1941, while attending Carnival festivities in Cafayate, she first encountered Baguala, the folkloric style of music from the Province of Salta. She decided to leave her philosophy studies and in 1943 attended classes at the Academia de Bellas Artes de la Provincia (Academy of Fine Arts of the Province). She learned to play the clarinet and also sang in a women's quartet specializing in Renaissance music. After a year, she quit, because she did not feel able to express herself in the curriculum's classical styles. She embarked on a journey and paid her own way to study the traditional music of La Rioja Province, San Fernando del Valle de Catamarca, and San Salvador de Jujuy.
  On successfully completing her studies in philosophy and education in 1948, Valladares traveled to Europe with her mother and a friend, Nelly García Alvarez. On their return journey, when their ship docked at Bahia, she watched a Macumba ceremony and saw a commonality in the drumming rhythms with the purity of the music of baguala. She interrupted her trip home and instead went to Caracas to study Afro-Venezuelan music. Upon her return to Tucumán, Valladares read the book of poems, Otoño Imperdonable (Unforgivable Autumn) and began a correspondence with the author, María Elena Walsh. Valladares accepted a position and began teaching in Costa Rica in 1950. Deciding to move together to Paris, she traveled to Panama in 1952, where Walsh met her to complete their journey. During the two months they spent aboard the ship, Valladares taught Walsh, who did not have a musical background, the folk songs and rhythms she knew.
caption: l-r: Walsh and Valladares, 1956
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