El Condor Pasa (If I Could)

El Condor Pasa (If I Could) — Simon & Garfunkel (1970)

Among the most unusual entries in the Simon & Garfunkel catalogue, "El Condor Pasa (If I Could)" combined a centuries-old Andean melody with English lyrics by Paul Simon and a backing track recorded thousands of miles away from the vocal performance. The result was one of the most distinctive tracks on Bridge Over Troubled Water, the duo's fifth and final studio album, released on January 26, 1970, on Columbia Records. The album would become one of the best-selling records in the history of popular music, and "El Condor Pasa" served as evidence of the breadth of Simon's musical curiosity even as his partnership with Art Garfunkel was reaching its breaking point.

The melody at the heart of the track was not a contemporary composition. "El Condor Pasa" was originally a Peruvian folk song and zarzuela, composed by Daniel Alomía Robles in 1913, drawing on traditional Andean musical material that was considerably older still. The song had been performed and recorded across the Spanish-speaking world for decades before Simon encountered it through a performance by the Peruvian group Los Incas. Simon licensed the arrangement and wrote new English lyrics to be sung over it, crediting the composition to Robles and Los Incas on the album sleeve, a decision that was both artistically honest and legally prudent.

The recording process reflected this multinational origin. Los Incas had already recorded the instrumental backing track in Paris, using traditional Andean instruments including the quena (a notched end-blown flute), the charango (a small fretted instrument), and various percussion instruments native to the region. Simon overdubbed his vocals onto that existing recording, a technique that was relatively unconventional for the time and that gave the track its distinctive quality of seeming to exist in multiple sonic worlds at once. Roy Halee, the duo's longtime engineer and co-producer, handled the technical integration of the two recording sessions.

As a single, the track reached number 18 on the Billboard Hot 100 in the spring of 1970. Its chart performance was modest by comparison with some of its companions on the Bridge Over Troubled Water album, but the album itself was a commercial phenomenon of the first order, spending ten weeks at number one on the Billboard 200 and ultimately selling more than 25 million copies worldwide. The track also found success internationally, performing particularly well in markets with existing connections to Latin American music.

Critical reception was positive, with reviewers frequently noting the track's atmospheric quality and the way Simon's reflective lyrics sat naturally within the Andean musical landscape. Some critics pointed to the track as early evidence of what would later be called "world music" sensibility in mainstream pop, an interest in global musical traditions that would define Simon's most significant later work, particularly the Graceland album of 1986.

The broader context of Bridge Over Troubled Water shapes how "El Condor Pasa" is heard. The album was released at a moment of significant tension between Simon and Garfunkel, and the recording sessions had been difficult. Garfunkel's increasing interest in pursuing an acting career and Simon's desire for greater artistic independence created an atmosphere of imminent dissolution. Within months of the album's release, the duo had officially separated. "El Condor Pasa" thus became part of a final document of a partnership that had produced some of the most beloved music of the 1960s.

The song has had an exceptionally durable life beyond its original chart performance. It is one of the most widely performed and recognized Andean melodies in the world, and Simon & Garfunkel's version introduced it to a massive English-speaking audience that might otherwise never have encountered the tradition from which it came. It is regularly included in retrospective assessments of the duo's work as one of their most adventurous recordings, a track that looked forward toward the global music explorations of subsequent decades rather than backward toward the folk-pop sound with which they had made their name.