When I was twenty, at the start of a long period of travel, I stayed with a friend in Paris. It was there I first heard a recording by the loved Argentinean folksinger Atahualpa Yupanqui. As much as I was in love with music, I already knew that I would never be a classically trained musician. I was a hippie/lumberjack on a spiritual quest with a guitar! But in Atahualpa's recordings I heard the same level of refinement, sophistication and mastery that I could hear in Mozart and Beethoven. I told myself ' I might be able to reach that.'

30 years later I met Francois Demange, apprentice to Guillermo Arevelo, a master Shipibo healer from the Peruvian Amazon. Something corresponded between their work and the creative process, breaking my thirteen year drought. As this suite was emerging, I knew I had at last reached the level I heard in Atahualpa's playing so long ago, and named the suite after him. Strangely enough, Atahualpa spent a lot of time working with the indigenous musicians in the Amazonian part of Argentina. Coincidence?