Alfonso Noel Lovo

Alfonso Noel Lovo (born August 12, 1951 in León, Nicaragua) is a Nicaraguan composer and guitarist.

As a child, only 5 years old, Alfonso Noel Lovo, saw a 48 bass red HOHNER accordion in the window of Libreria Lehman, in San Jose, Costa Rica, while on Christmas shopping, and he asked his father, to buy it. They went inside, and the salesman showed him the notes of Silent Night. Another salesman suggested to sell a smaller size accordion for children, but Lovo, wanted the one in the window. A couple of days later, on Christmas Day, it mysteriously appeared under the Christmas tree. He surprised his parents, by playing the notes of Silent Night, that the salesman had showed him, only two days before.

Professor Julio Max Blanco, started trying to teach him music theory, back in his native Nicaragua, in January, 1957. Lovo learned to play songs before he could read the notes. And Professor Blanco said, "He can play by ear alone, I give up." Lovo started playing accordion at the Colegio Calazanz, grammar school, at church functions. He learned to play harmonica with Father Caudelli, with the Cub Scouts, an instrument he still plays, in blues style.

At school he also sang at the Calasanz Choir, later at the Colegio Centroamerica, boarding school in Granada, Nicaragua, with the Jesuits, he self-taught Hammond B2 organ, and Piano, during long punishment hours in solitary confinement at the music room, since Lovo had become rebellious, and hard to manage. There he created his first Piano composition: 'In the Woods of the Moon', that is recorded in his first 'Terremoto' album later in New Orleans, at Knight Recording Studios.

The accordion was left alone when he picked up the guitar, that he learned from his home gardener, and guitar player, Adan 'Bienvenido' Jaime, then called the Nicaraguan Elvis, who showed him how to play Elvis Presley songs, Nicaraguan and Mexican rock ballads, popular in the early 1960s. He got his first guitar from his uncle 'Chalito', in his native town of Leon, and he learned songs from Enrique Guzman, and The Teen Tops, and from Polidecto Correa, and Los Polimusic, one of the first Nicaraguan Rock Bands. This band featured as drummer, Jose 'Chepito' Areas, future founding member of the Santana Band, famous for opening the Woodstock Rock Festival.

Lovo met Chepito Areas playing in the Half Time of a high school basketball game, and it was to be a lifelong musical friendship.

He started playing in a rock band, with Ricardo Palma, and Adan Torres, as co-founders of Los Rockets in 1963 and then co-founded Los Juniors, with Emilio Ortega, in 1965. Both Palma and Ortega, were the top lead guitar players of the Nicaragua rock movement in the 1960s. He also played with Edmundo Guerrero, a local guitar master of the Bossa Nova Brazilian jazz style.

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Wikipedia