Soy Tico (con Editus)

Carlos Guzmán grew up in a house full of music in Desamparados, outside San José. He learned guitar at five, got his own guitar from an uncle at six, and that same year recorded his first disc at Radio Columbia. In 1977 he and his brothers founded the group Gaviota, where he became musical director, keyboard player and chief songwriter. In 1995, as part of a repertoire of Costa Rican popular music, he introduced "Soy Tico", I am Tico, using the nickname Costa Ricans give themselves. Local critics called it the song that describes what it means to be Costa Rican. It works almost like an inventory of things a Tico can recognise as home, especially Costa Ricans living abroad. Guzmán weaves in nods to folk songs every schoolchild still has to learn, such as "Luna Liberiana", "Caballito Nicoyano", "La Patriótica" and "Pasión", along with the guitar and marimba. A later verse turns to the land itself, its fertile soil and abundant rain, before moving on to the warmth and character of its people. The song has since entered Costa Rica's national songbook and has been recorded in different versions by other artists. When US president Barack Obama visited Costa Rica in 2013, a children's choir welcomed him with a choral arrangement of it, to the delight of Obama and President Laura Chinchilla. In 2008 Guzmán received the Aquileo J. Echeverría National Music Prize, the most important of his many awards. For many Costa Ricans far from home, this is the song that sounds most like the place they left.