Artists and bandsJulio Jaramillo
Guayaquil singer associated with pasillos and boleros, remembered in the city’s music museum.
A promise sung in the port
The lovers in “Nuestro juramento” make an unusual promise: whoever survives the other will mourn and remember. The song was written by Puerto Rican composer Benito de Jesús, but the voice that made it famous belonged to Julio Jaramillo, a singer from Guayaquil. His recording turned the song into a bolero hit in the 1950s.
Jaramillo also recorded Ecuadorian pasillos. One of the best-known songs in that tradition had reached a recording studio decades earlier, thanks to two other musicians associated with the port.
At the Museo de la Música Popular Guayaquileña Julio Jaramillo, the singer’s story sits alongside older recordings and musicians. One museum account recalls that Nicasio Safadi and Enrique Ibáñez travelled to New York in 1930 as Dúo Ecuador and recorded “Guayaquil de mis amores”. Nicasio Safadi composed the music; Lauro Dávila wrote the words. The recording was among the Ecuadorian discs made in New York on that journey.
Decades later, a museum homage to Jaramillo included “Nuestro juramento” among the songs performed.
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