All aboard for season 2025, of Momentos Musicales, our annual celebration of Hispanic Heritage Month.
This season's offering will be the idea of growing the Great American Songbook into the Great Americas Songbook. After all, as our country has grown and prospered through immigrants from far and wide, many from throughout Latin America, our culture has also flourished through the influx of writers, muralists, and musicians, growing out our American Songbook into a songbook of the Americas. How did they get here? Heitor Villa-Lobos suggests the "Little Train of Caipira" with its motto of, “I think I can. I think I can.”
When the first Europeans arrived onto what we now call the Americas, they found cultural riches, if not the gold so many sought for. One of those treasures was a dance called chacona. This lively (some thought racy!) dance crossed from the new world to the old, where it mutated into what Bach and others called the chaconne. Follow closely now in this musical shell game, as we leap several centuries forward, the celebrated Polish violinist Henryk Szeryng made Bach's famous "Chaconne" his he carried it back to the New World, along with numerous refugees fleeing the Nazis. The Mexican government accepted these people in need of refuge, and for his efforts, Szeryng was declared by Mexico its cultural ambassador.
Now one more leap, this time from Mexico City where Maestro Szeryng kept a home, to San Antonio, a city loved by Szeryng. He was a frequent guest with the San Antonio Symphony. He brought with him Bach's famous Chaconne, but also something new from Szeryng’s good friend, Manuel Ponce. Over time, “Estrellita” has become as beloved in New York, Chicago and elsewhere throughout the USA, as in Mexico. Let's add it now to our Great Americas Songbook.
By the way, there's a charming mythology about Ponce’s creation of “Estrellita.” It is said that the idea came to him as he was dining in a Mexico City restaurant. Fearing the memory would elude him before he got back home, Ponce jotted down the melody on whatever was handy, in this case, the back of his restaurant check. Though not as well-known as Pablo Moncayo’s “Huapango,” Ponce’s “Ferial” is a stirring reflection of brightly dressed dancers, mariachis, and the scent of fireworks in the air.
Thanks to visiting Latin American conductors and soloists, unknown music might otherwise remain unknown on the U.S. side of the border. The Orquesta Sinfonica del Estado de Mexico, under their longtime director, Enrique Bátiz, recorded an eight CD set of Musica Mexicana.
We will continue to expand on our Great Americas Songbook in the days and weeks ahead. Meanwhile, for Momentos Musicales, I'm James Baker, thanks for listening. Listen for more Hispanic Heritage moments every weekday afternoon at 2 p.m. here on KPAC 88.3 FM.
