Pino Iorio's Arc

Chapter 2 of 2

Pino sat at the rehearsal room table and opened the cuatro instruction book to the first lesson. His student would arrive in ten minutes, maybe less. He'd taught Ricardo's father this same instrument thirty years ago, back when Ricardo was just learning to walk. Now it was time to start again with someone new. The chord diagrams looked simple on the page, but playing them right took months of practice. He traced his finger over the illustration showing proper hand position. This was where it always began—with the basics, with patience, with showing up week after week until the fingers remembered what the mind forgot. He pushed back from the table and walked to the corner where broken guitars lay scattered on a wooden surface. Three had cracked bodies. Two were missing strings. One had a split neck that would take hours to fix properly. His students would need instruments, and the university couldn't provide them all. He'd have to teach them how to repair what they could find. A cuatro with a fixed crack still played the same notes as a new one. The fishermen he'd learned from as a boy had instruments held together with wire and glue, and they'd made music that stuck in his memory for fifty years. Pino picked up a metal music stand leaning against the wall and carried it to the table. The students would need to read their music somewhere, even if they ended up practicing outside when the rehearsal room was full. He adjusted the height and tested the grip. Solid enough. He set an old amplifier next to it—a 1970 model that still worked when you gave it time to warm up. No electricity required for rehearsal, but when they were ready to play for people, they'd need something to carry the sound. He sat back down and looked at the instruction book, at the broken guitars waiting for repair, at the stand and amplifier ready for use. This was how it started. Not with money or promises or grand plans that would fall apart. Just a room, some instruments, and someone willing to show up and teach. The orchestras he'd built had collapsed, but this would be different. Smaller. One student learning one song at a time until enough of them knew enough songs to keep the tradition alive. He heard footsteps in the hallway and closed the book. Time to begin.