 In 1967 a young lady named Yolanda Guadalupe wanted to pay tribute to Puerto Vallarta, the town where she was born. At the time, she was far away, attending high school in Mexico City. At just 16 years old, this pensive girl found a unique way of expressing her love for what was then a small town: writing a song. That is the beginning of the story behind the “Hymn to Vallarta.”
“The song had stayed put until my father’s illness made me realize how short and fragile life is,” confesses the composer. To her surprise, her feelings when she wrote the song remained the same, and fate helped her dreams come true. Almost 40 years later, her Hymn to Vallarta was introduced at an event sponsored by the city council.
A Sense of Belonging
Yolanda Guadalupe Garduño belongs to a prominent family in Puerto Vallarta. Her grandfather, Roberto Contreras Quintero, was once the mayor of Vallarta, and her grandmother, Catalina Contreras, is a wellknown writer. “All my family is from here. My father arrived with the tobacco industry, married my mother, and they had three sons and one daughter – I was the only girl,” she recalls. Thanks to these deep family roots, Pita, as she’s also known, is proud of being a patasalada (Puerto Vallarta native). “I moved to San Diego when I got married 29 years ago, but I still feel part of Puerto Vallarta. I spend every vacation here with my kids, who already love this port,” she declares enthusiastically.
Perfecting the Hymn
When she retook the project, this enterprising woman sent it to a record company in the United States, where they made a piano version that was sung in Spanish. The next step was to introduce the song in Puerto Vallarta.The project started taking shape when Professor Jeffrey Fernandez, then dean of the Universidad de Guadalajara Vallarta campus, helped Pita by contacting the head of Vallarta’s Art and Culture Department. During this time, she continued working on the song, creating a second version in Vallarta that included guitars. The final version was created when Pita met Daniela Lopestri, who sang the final version of the song in both Spanish and English.
The Hymn Grows
The hymn’s success has exceeded all of Guadalupe’s expectations: that the song would be played only in Spanish on the local radio. “ There was a point when I thought, if I die tomorrow I’ve already attained all that I wanted!” says Pita. Yet she’s never stopped working at promoting the song, taking advantage of its positive reception and sales at local record stores. Thus, the hymn was born, thanks to a woman from Puerto Vallarta who believed in her dream and fought for it until it was realized, despite having no musical education. “I dedicate this song to my beloved Puerto Vallarta, second to none in my heart; to my mother, Yolanda Contreras, who was my inspiration; to the memory of my father, Carlos Garduño Mejía; and to my brother, Carlos Garduño Contreras; but above all, to my Puerto Vallarta family, who has given me the support I’ve needed and has always made me feel part of the family.”
|
