Luis “Totoyo” Millares

Luis “Totoyo” Millares Sall devoted his career to performing, teaching, researching and disseminating the Canarian timple. The Boletín Oficial de Canarias records the award of the 2015 Canary Islands Prize for Popular Culture for his teaching, compositional, research and outreach work with the instrument.

The Canary Islands Government notes that he founded his Timple Academy in 1954, training generations of performers, including José Antonio Ramos. The same source documents his work recovering the islands' musical heritage during the 1960s and his dissemination of the timple through media such as TVE and the BBC.

His activity continued with the creation of the First Popular Orchestra of Timples of the Canary Archipelago in 1983 and with timple classes for emigrant associations in Latin America commissioned by the Canary Islands Government in 1992. His legacy occupies a central place in the contemporary transmission of the timple and in the popular musical memory of the archipelago.