This memoir by the Basque choral composer and music professor Julen Ezkurra does pretty much what the title suggests, plus a little bit more.

He describes how, as a young Augustinian in 1954, he volunteered to go as a "missionary" to the Americas, and was assigned to teach in a secondary school in the Peruvian town of Iquitos, in the Amazon rainforest. Looking back, he feels that his main motivation was to get out of the depressing atmosphere of postwar Spain, but notes with a little bit of chagrin that his posting was almost certainly subsidised by the CIA, who saw Spanish Catholics as a bastion against communism in Latin America. Of course, the actual effect was the opposite: Peru exposed him to a breadth of opinions he would never have encountered back home, including the opportunity to make friends with Republican exiles.

During his ten-year stay in Iquitos, Ezkurra took the opportunity to travel up-river (with his accordion) to meet indigenous people and learn about their situation: he describes in detail the first such trip he took, and includes many photographs from that and other trips.

He also had a kind of conversion experience, when he came to the conclusion that, given his skills, the most effective way for him to open up people's lives to new opportunities was to devote himself to teaching music, something that had only been a very minor part of his training up to that point. He studied Peruvian musical history, especially the Inca tradition, ran various choirs, and was instrumental in getting a music school set up in Iquitos, primarily to train young teachers to use music in their lessons. When the school opened, he was appointed as its first head. (He mentions — in passing — that he was also head of the secondary school.)

After ten years in Peru he had the opportunity of a sabbatical, and went to study composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, and Gregorian chant in Rome. The intention was to return to Peru after these advanced studies, but some kind of dispute with his religious superiors in Madrid intervened. He doesn't go into this in detail, but from a few hints in the text it sounds as though he might have been the victim of cutbacks in the musical establishment of the church after Vatican II. In any case, he spent the rest of his career in secular posts in the universities of Valladolid and Bilbao.

The book comes with Ezkurra's potted guide to Peruvian music and its main influences (Inca, Spanish/Creole and African), and a CD with (amateur) recordings of several of his Peruvian-inspired choral compositions.

This is a very lively, modest and charming book: it really makes Ezkurra seem like someone it would be a pleasure to get to know. Assuming he's not exaggerating in his anecdotes, he seems to have the gift of getting on with all sorts of people, from indigenous healers and story-tellers to Peruvian admirals, communist exiles, and the famous chanteuse Chabuca Granda. Not to mention Nadia Boulanger and Maurice Duruflé! He also describes having dinner with a group of German "tourists" at an estancia in the forest, who were later identified to him as Martin Bormann and friends. But on that occasion he takes cover behind his ignorance of the German language...

It's also very interesting to learn something about Peruvian music and see his (pessimistic) view of the many things that are threatening the survival of the rainforest and its people today. ( )