![[Alvaro Carrillo]](images/carrillo.jpeg "Alvaro Carrillo")
Oaxaca's best known composer of popular music, Alvaro Carrillo, was
both the Lennon and McCartney of his generation. A brilliant poet and
melody writer, his 300 or so songs include some of the classics of
Méxican music.
His best known composition was the international hit Sabor a Mi, "A Taste of Me". He also wrote numerous chilenas, the upbeat music that reflects the cultural soul of the coast, his native Costa Chica. But it is his romantic boleros, ballads and songs of love that capture the depth of human emotion: Each sweet encounter, every bitter farewell, the tears and sorrows of lost love and and abandonment.
Alvaro Carrillo Alarcón was born in Cacahuatepec, Oaxaca, on Dec. 2, 1921 and died tragically young in 1963 in a car wreck, just as his star was on the rise.
Every year on the anniversary of his untimely death, Pinotepa Nacional, a city he did so much to immortalize with his "Pinotepa", perhaps the best-known chilena of them all, pays tribute to this native son and his musical heritage.
A host of musicians, trios and bands will interpret his music in this
annual festival which normally begins at 6 p.m., Municipal Square,
Pinotepa Nacional.