On April 18, 2019, fresh off the plane in Iquitos, I jumped into the taxi of an elderly gentleman and explained that I had come to the Peruvian Amazon to find Ranil. I know where he lives, he replied, as if it were the most natural thing in the world. And before I knew it, I was no longer searching for the man I was standing right in front of him. Ranil and I hit it off immediately and ended up spending a month working together on this project.

Born in 1935 as Jorge Ral Llerena Vsquez, Ranils story begins in the Peruvian Amazon, in a corner where the sounds of the forest mix with stray radio waves from Colombia, Brazil, and Ecuador. After winning various local singing contests as a young man, he quickly understood that breaking into Perus music industry especially as an artist from the end of the world would be no easy path. Years later, two albums recorded in the early 1970s with Los Silver’s became cult treasures.