Throughout Hispanic Heritage Month we have been considering the role music plays in describing migrations of all varieties from one part of the Americas to another. What part does music play in that transition? Does it come simply as a memory? Does it come on someone's guitar? Or, perhaps it travels (as composer Carlos Franzetti has previously said), on CDs which have very long legs.
On a previous episode we saw Latin American music, real or in spirit, slipping through the stage door at Broadway theaters. Today, the music comes from the movies.
The Treasure of the Sierra Madre boasts direct and indirect connections between Mexico and Hollywood. Max Steiner's score, and the screenplay of Walter Huston, take their cues from the rugged Sierra Madre landscape. The film was shot largely on location, utilizing numerous extras from the region.
To add to the authenticity of the film, dialogue in the film in Spanish is left to the ear—there are no subtitles, by direction of John Huston.
The film came out in 1948 and soon opened in theaters not only in the U.S. but also in Mexico. Today, The Treasure of the Sierra Madre is considered a classic in both countries.
Walter Salles directed The Motorcycle Diaries, released in 2004, with support from Robert Redford, who served as producer of the film.
The Motorcycle Diaries is set in 1952 as a young medical student, Ernesto Guevara de la Serna (known later as Che Guevara), and his friend Alberto Granado, travel across South America on an old motorcycle named La Poderosa.
Their journey — through Argentina, Chile, Peru, Colombia, and Venezuela — opens Guevara’s eyes to the poverty and injustice of the continent, planting the seeds of the revolutionary he would later become.
The film's musical score was by the acclaimed musician Gustavo Santaolalla. It brought the sounds of charango, guitar, quena, a variety of percussion, and bandoneón into theaters across the entirety of the Americas, South, Central and North. The beautiful song, “Al Otro Lado del Río” by Jorge Drexler, won the Oscar for Best Original Song.
And now, for your mid-flight entertainment, we have the one, the only Oscar Peterson Trio playing Vincent Youmans' “Carioca” from Flying Down to Rio.
Our final stop is for Astor Piazzolla's tango score to the film El Exilio de Gardel.
The film was made during Argentina’s transition from military dictatorship (1976–1983) to democracy. It centers on Argentine exiles living in Paris, artists and intellectuals who fled the regime. They attempt to stage a tango-ballet-opera called “Tangos: El exilio de Gardel.”
The film was created by Fernando “Pino” Solanas, who himself had been exiled in Paris during the dictatorship.
Critics praised it as both a “poetic meditation on exile” and a “political musical,” messaging still a part of today's dialogue.
We've not heard Carlos Gardel in these four weeks of Momentos Musicales. This seems a good time to make amends as he sings “La Cumparsita” and enjoys induction into our Great Americas Songbook.
