Indigenous: relating to or being a people who are the original, earliest known inhabitants of a region, or are their descendants, for example, the indigenous languages of the Americas.
This is the world we have traversed over the past four weeks, during this season of Mementos Musicales, and I will miss the Bolivian flutes, and the folkloric stories told by musics from throughout Latin America. The foci have been varied from languages to music to cultures. The series has taken us throughout the Americas, but especially those parts who have adopted Spanish, or in the case of Brazil, Portuguese, as their national language. Gabriela Ortiz wrote music for Ana Cervantes' "Cantos de la Monarca" project, which depicted a character, Jesusa Palancares, whose roots were Oaxacan and whose language was Nahuatl; she spoke no Spanish.
"She was born at the beginning of 20th century. She was in the Mexican Revolution. She fought for the Mexican Revolution, but then in total poverty, she was trying to survive by doing domestic works, or working in everything... [she's] a single mother, you know... stories that we know. I mean [there are] millions of stories like Jesusa Palancares," Ortiz said.
I asked pianist Ana Cervantes what she thought when she first saw the score to Gabriela Ortiz's "Preludio, Estudio."
"It's a really challenging piece, and it's a wonderful piece," Cervantes told me. "Its challenges are such that you need to be able to play it, have it be like a walk in the park. I mean, it can't sound difficult."
The Estudio is something of a perpetual motion, which one might liken to the constant motion of Mexico City, where Jesusa joined countless other refugees from the remote reaches of Mexico who search for a better life.
Cervantes is the driver of projects such as "Cantos de la Monarca: Women in Mexico," and previously "Rumor de Páramo," which, like "Monarca," is based on original music submitted by composers from a variety of countries, who were asked to reflect upon the Mexican writer and photographer Juan Rulfo and his one and only novel, "Pedro Páramo." It begins:
"I came to Comala because I had been told that my father, a man named Pedro Páramo lived there. It was my mother who told me, and I had promised her that after she died, I would go see him. I squeezed her hands as a sign I would do it. She was near death, and I would have promised her anything."
"Juan Rulfo wrote a collection of short stories, 'El llano en llamas,' usually translated as 'The Burning Plain,' and a another book called 'Pedro Páramo,' which is arguably both a short novel and a long narrative poem, and which is a foundational book for Hispanic letters in the rest of the 20th century," Cervantes said.
"Gabriel García Márquez, by his own account, could recite most of 'Pedro Páramo' from memory at a certain point, and has said many, many times that 'One Hundred Years of Solitude' would never have been possible had it not been for Juan Rulfo."
I had to ask Ana Cervantes, does she believe in ghosts?
"Absolutely," Cervantes said. "The little currents that flow from that are so numerous and so multifaceted. And it's particularly apropos right now. I mean, we're like just barely two and a half weeks from the Dia de Muertos, from the Day of the Dead in Mexico, and these are moments that they make us remember. They make us reminisce. They make us angry, or loving, or frightened."
And as we wind down another season of Momentos Musicales, how appropriate to hear music by Eugenio Toussaint called "Palabras sin Sonido," words without sounds... ghostly, yes. Thanks for listening.
PLAYLIST:
Trad: Quiaquenita
Inti-Illimani
Lejania
Xenophile - Green Linnet
Gabriela Ortiz: Preludio
Ana Cervantes
Canto de la Monarca: Mujeres en Mexico
Quindecim QP238
Gabriela Ortiz: Preludio y Estudio No. 3
Ana Cervantes
Canto de la Monarca: Mujeres en Mexico
Quindecim QP238
Eugenio Toussaint: Palabras sin Sonido
Ana Cervantes
Rumor de Paramo
Quindecim QP 164
