Guaray Llama

There was something enchanting about the looping guitar and how it transformed in juxtaposition with the many faces at the crowded Park Street T stop. The music seemed to tell a story, but the subject was ambiguous. It somehow applied to everyone: the young mother with her son in her arms, the young couple kissing, the old couple holding hands, the sad faces and the happy ones. The tune was cheerful, twangy, and warm, yet melancholy. After quieting from an intricate climax, the music stopped. All those at the stop applauded.

I was afraid to interrupt the musician responsible for the music, a young man wearing a long-sleeve plaid shirt and glasses, and ask for an interview. When I finally mustered up the courage to do so he was hesitant to speak with me. Not because he was nervous about being interviewed—rather, he was afraid I would take too much of his attention away from his guitar. After some persuading he agreed to give me five minutes.

His name is Guaray Llama, and he first picked up a guitar as a child in Nepal, where he moved from only two and a half years ago. “Destiny,” he says, brought him to the U.S. He would not expand on what he meant, but he knows that he is not destined to work at a conventional job.

“I used to work before at other places—like Staples here and there—but I thought about doing this, because this is my passion,” Llama says. And the heads he humbly admits to turning each day are what fuel him. “It’s good when your music is heard every day by a lot of people and they feel good. That’s what makes you do it day after day.”

Llama showed me how he creates his pieces. He plays a line, steps on a pedal to record it and then loops that line back while he picks a new melody. When he first started he had a difficult time multitasking, “but now, it’s just as easy as strumming,” he says. After 17 years of playing guitar, it’s second nature.

Despite bonding over missing the mountains of our respective homelands—perhaps all Washington has in common with Nepal—when my five minutes were up Llama turned his attention back to his guitar and in no time, the T stop was once again filled with the sound of his music. As the Alewife train back home approached, my only regret was that it wasn’t running late.