“Today August 21, Luis Rafael Montaño, one of the great pioneers of Venezuelan traditional music, physically leaves us, far from our country,” wrote the critic Juan José Moreno when announcing the news of the death of one of the most renowned interpreters of our national music, the singer, broadcaster and folklorist Luis Rafael Montaño, happened yesterday in Ecuador, at the age of 94 years.
Born in Macarapana, Sucre state, on August 14, 1926, Montaño was the first interpreter of the classic Anxiety, by Chelique Sarabia, and her voice had a historic moment on June 15, 1955, when it was heard nationwide from Radio Continente, singing to Susana Duijm, our first Miss World, the song Susana First.
The last of four siblings, the song attracted his attention since his childhood, although in his youth he dedicated himself to tailoring with his brother. Already in Caracas, a few months later Juan Vicente Torrealba took an interest in him and proposed him to join Los Torrealberos, and then he went on television in El Show de Victor Saume and later that of Renny Otolina.
With one of his songs Margaritean galley, a Creole Festival begins, giving Venezuelan music a support that it did not have in the 1950s. In 1956, he received a contract for the Orinoco Mininng Company to make programs related to the Ferrominera.
Rafael Montaño acted as a soloist doing the voice of Florentino in the Creole cantata Florentino and the Devil, together with the teacher Antonio Lauro and in 1962 he toured 20 states of the United States with the Orfeón Universitario directed by Vinicio Adames.
He was the founder of the Venezuelan folklorists’ guild, whose presidency he served from 1963 to 1967, and director of the Union of Radio, Television, Cinema, Theater and Related of the Federal District and Miranda state. In those years when Venezuelan music was almost displaced on the radio stations, he presented a singing audition every day on Radio Continente.
In his long career as a singer and composer, he collaborated as a jury and advisor in various festivals and radio and television programs and was the cultural coordinator of the Rector’s Office of the Universidad de Oriente.
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