San Salvador

Serenades near La Praviana

On San Salvador’s Third Street East, people looking for a serenade could find musicians gathered near La Praviana. Trios, quartets and larger groups waited to be hired and taken to sing for someone elsewhere in the city.

As a young guitarist, Álvaro Torres gave serenades around the intersection of Third Street East and Second Avenue South. He also entered student music festivals in San Salvador. He later remembered those performances as his first opportunities to face an audience, even though he never won first prize.

Torres recorded his first album in Guatemala. Years later, he wrote “Buenos amigos”, a duet eventually recorded with Selena. Its two singers negotiate the painful distance between friendship and romantic love. Torres said he had originally begun the song for another potential duet before completing it for Selena; their recording appeared on his 1991 album Nada se compara contigo.