Paraguayan Harp and Sole : World music: Alfredo Rolando Ortiz breaks stereotypes with traditional South American dance compositions and original works.

Forget angels, forget the Marx Brothers. And if you think a concert of music for Paraguayan harp sounds the least bit esoteric, forget that too.

“I played a recital recently, and I opened with a joropo, a very lively Venezuelan style (of music),” recalled Alfredo Rolando Ortiz, who performs tonight at the San Juan Capistrano Regional Library. “Nobody thought they were listening to somebody with wings hanging from a Christmas tree!

“Ethereal, relaxing, meditative--I’ve played all the kinds of music people expect from the harp. But what the harp is in our countries is music for dancing.” Ortiz said that the Mexican tune “La Bamba” was originally written for the harp, specifically the arpa veracruzana.

The program, with seatings at 7 and 9 p.m., will feature traditional South American melodies as well as premieres of several works by Ortiz.

Born in Cuba, a citizen of Venezuela, a medical school graduate in Colombia and a resident of the United States for almost 20 years, Ortiz regularly appears in concert and teaches master classes around the world.

He recently performed and taught classes at the Australian Harp Festival and has been invited back to the Mozart Festival in San Luis Obispo.

Ortiz, who has recorded more than 30 albums on the arpa paraguaya , said that interest in Latin American harps in general is growing.

“It varies from area to area,” Ortiz said in a recent phone interview from his home in Corona. “At the Mozart Festival last summer, the concert not only sold out, but groupies followed us from event to event! I did not, as a matter of fact, play a single piece by Mozart. Mozart composed for harp, but not my kind of harp.

“People ask me (whether I) play classical music--after I’ve just played classical music, my kind of classical music. Everything classical is not written by a known composer, or a European composer.”

All Latin American harps have their roots in Spanish harps as far back as the 16th Century. Early this century, changes in construction of the Paraguayan harp resulted in a perfectly symmetrical, lightweight, very stable instrument.

Ortiz says he may be the first person to write down music for Paraguayan harp, which he did for a self-published book called “Latin American Harps: History, Music and Technique.”

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He’s not worried that he may be straitjacketing an evolving performing style by putting the music to paper.

“This book was never intended for (traditional) players, since we still all play by ear,” Ortiz said. “This is to make our music available to the classical harp world.

“The classical harp world is based only on (written) music. . . . If it is not written, it does not exist. (Before this book,) our music was only mentioned in an anecdotal way. Nobody played it outside of folk players in Latin America.

“I wanted to share our music with the rest of the harp world. Now this music has been recorded by people playing classical pedal harp.”

Should Paraguayan harp music be played on classical pedal harp?

“The idea that you can only play this kind of music on this kind of harp, this idea of ‘authentic performance practice,’ that has never been the case in music; it’s as silly as it sounds,” Ortiz said. “People all through the ages have played the music they wanted to play on the instruments that were available.

“There is always some narrow-minded attitude, but to me an instrument is (just) that, an instrument--to be enjoyed. I don’t teach Paraguayan harp, I use Paraguayan harps, and, using them, I want people to be able to enjoy the music they like, from rock to rap to classics.”

Ortiz has an album due in February including his “Suite for a Birth,” inspired by the birth of his second daughter, now 13, and improvised and taped in the delivery room.

“I wanted to help my wife relax,” he recalled. “I was playing on and off, because I was also coaching her. The doctor’s wife, who had been a harp student . . . walked in with mask and everything and said, ‘You keep playing; I’ll coach Luz Marina.’

“When it came to the actual birth moment, I couldn’t come up with anything better, so the suite ends with the tape from that moment. You can hear the baby cry, and you can hear my wife answer, ‘My baby, my baby.’ ”

* Alfredo Rolando Ortiz performs original and traditional music for Paraguayan harp tonight at the San Juan Capistrano Regional Library, 31495 El Camino Real, San Juan Capistrano. Seatings at 7 and 9 p.m. Donation, $3. (714) 493-1752. * Times Link 808-8463

To hear a sample of the album “The South American Harp of Alfredo Rolando Ortiz, Vol. 2,” call TimesLink and press *5580