Years ago, before the Internet had completely overwhelmed us, I would listen to radio broadcasts from far away places on a short wave receiver I had relied upon during years of living in somewhat remote reaches of Mexico. Even after returning to the United States, I loved scanning the short waves in order to hear voices from distant places. One such place was Quito, Ecuador, arguably the highest national capital in the world. I became familiar with an English-language short wave station, and Quito found its way onto my rather lengthy list of places to visit. I have yet to do it, but Laurel Zucker's jazzy "A Night in Quito" reminds me once more that a trip to the Andes might still be in the stars.
Another adventure I have yet to realize is to sail across open waters. That's how Zucker, a musical storyteller, got to the Galapagos Islands for one of her many trips to Latin American destinations.
"You know, I wrote all this music inspired by being on a boat for two weeks, a little, tiny boat, with waves crashing at night," she remembers. "One night I was like sleeping, and got thrown out of the bed because the waves were so high."
Zucker says of her time in the Galapagos, "It was fascinating...to see all the amazing animals and wildlife there, and also people."
The Galapagos Islands, over 500 miles west of the Ecuadorian mainland, might stand as a parallel to the erosion of the indigenous languages across Mexico and Central and South America. Charles Darwin found in the Galapagos a place of last stand for vanishing species, just as linguists—or more specifically, documentary linguists—come to remote corners of the globe to document and preserve indigenous languages. The Guarani duo Los Chiriguanos are multilingual vocalist instrumentalists whose hearts are in the preservation of the Guarani tongue of their long ago ancestors.
Another voice in preservation of traditional musics is the Austrian-born harpist Christina Pluhar. Her repertoire ranges from early European music to the baroque to more recently, music of South America. She plays here a traditional harp song of the Andes called "Pájaro Campania."
The preservation of traditional music and the related languages is not new. Musicologists such as Robert Stevenson and the at times quirky, Nicolas Slonimsky, have been among numerous foot soldiers scouring not only the libraries but also the fields and jungles. The musicologist composers such as Carlos Chávez and Domingo Santa Cruz were important in guarding folk traditions. Another would be Jose Sigueras of Brazil, important for the inclusion in his scores of indigenous percussion, and in the case of his cantata, Congeria. The Tupi language, which at the time of European colonization was the principal language of coastal Brazil, today is near extinction—though carioca, the Tupi word, meaning a person from Rio de Janeiro, has found a secure place in current Brazilian Portuguese.
PLAYLIST:
Laurel Zucker: A Night in Quito
Zucker et al
Cantilena 66047
Laurel Zucker: The Galapagos Wind Quintet: Swimming with Green Sea Turtles
Zucker Quintet
Cantilena
Trad: Virginia
Los Chiriguanos
Nonesuch 79727
Trad: Pajaro Campana
Christina Pluhar
Virgin Classics 5099907095
Jose Sigueiras: Cangere (Cantata in Tupi)
Alice Ribeiro
Corcovado Clube do Disco
