Side by What?
Side by What?
What does music from Latin America have in common with Jewish music? Why put them “side by side” on the same concert? At first, the answers to these questions might seem to be “Nothing!” and “I have no idea!” And yet….
Taking a step back to see the larger picture, music is always a reflection of the people (i.e., the culture) from which it arose – and Latino and Jewish cultures actually share plenty. Although their traditional instruments, singing styles, and repertoire may be different, the people of these two cultures share a deep respect for hard work, family, and tradition. Both cultures have experienced loss, hardship, and oppression; yet both remain optimistic. And the music from both traditions has an almost magical way of expressing joy and sadness in the same piece. Maybe if we put them together on the same concert, ….
Full disclosure – the theme of any particular RIWE concert is never really decided BEFORE the repertoire. It’s more like a process of symbiosis and happy accident, to be fair. “Side by Side,” for instance, didn’t start with a flash of insight into the similarity of these two cultures; its point of origin was actually our performance calendar, and two very special community partners.
We Couldn’t Do It Without Them
For several years, RIWE has enjoyed the support of Temple Sinai and its congregation, performing there annually on a Sunday afternoon in the fall when the Patriots had a bye week. (At least that’s the way we started, when the Pats were Super Bowl contenders; this year our November 5th concert is on a game day, but considering the disappointing season they’re having, perhaps people would rather attend a concert?)
We’ve also enjoyed a growing relationship with the music program at Mount Pleasant High School in Providence. For several years, RIWE has shared the stage at MPHS with their students in an annual “side-by-side” concert (see our previous blog about the CTE Music Pathways here). According to the LaGrange (GA) Symphony Orchestra, a side-by-side concert is where the students “literally sit beside our musicians during one piece [on the] concert. Both the students and the [adult] musicians play the same music, follow the same cues from the conductor, blend with the other instruments, and witness the same audience reaction.” It’s really a great experience, and we’re grateful for the opportunity.
RIWE also hosts interns from the Mount PLeasant CTE program: high school musicians who are recommended by their music teacher and who pass an audition with the RIWE conductor become regular members of RIWE for the entire concert season, attending weekly rehearsals and performing at all of our concerts across the Ocean State through June.
So with these basic pieces of the puzzle in place already, it really wasn’t a big leap to extend the musical cross-fertilization into the area of repertoire this year. After all, connecting with the predominantly Latino community at Mount Pleasant High School is easier through the Danzon of Arturo Márquez than through the marches of John Philip Sousa; the largely Jewish audience at Temple Sinai will respond to My Yiddishe Momme with the same ease of familiarity. So here’s what you can expect, and what we’re so excited about:
Jesùs Andujar
A native of the Dominican Republic, special guest soloist Jesús Andujar is a master percussionist in the Latin jazz tradition. “My inspiration comes from the culture of where I grew up,” Andujar said. He is a master of all styles of Latin jazz percussion, including rumba, son, mambo, salsa, bachata, cha cha and merengue. He studied at the New York Collective Drumming School and has played with various well-known Puerto Rican groups like Grupo Wao, Bonny Cepeda, and many others. He has made Providence his home since 1982, sharing his native musical culture with New England audiences. Take a look at this great feature on Jesùs from Rhode Island PBS. We’re thrilled to be performing with him!
From Atlanta to the Sea
Composed in 2015, From Atlanta to the Sea is a march very much in the style of the great Portuguese-American musician John Philip Sousa. It borrows and transforms three well-known American tunes (Marching Through Georgia, Yellow Rose of Texas, and The Caissons Go Rolling Along), sometimes setting them in counterpoint against each other, sometimes changing the tune from major to minor. Duarte has written over twenty pieces of varying length and difficulty, for a variety of musical forces. Check out his website and listen to more of his music here.
Parasol
Composer and conductor Efraín Amaya was born in Venezuela, where he began his musical training. Continuing his studies in the United States, he earned degrees from the University of Indiana and Rice University. He writes:
Parasol (literally "stop-sun" in Spanish) is based on the "clave" rhythmic pattern that is used so much in Latin American folk music. When I wrote this piece in the winter of 2002, I had been yearning for the times when I was young and lived in Caracas. Back then, I used to go to the beach every weekend. The beaches in Venezuela are fantastic, and the one thing that will amaze you right away is the sun and its light. The sun at these beaches is both a blessing in its clear light and a deadly weapon to your skin. To survive in these beaches you needed either a palm tree or a parasol. Once you were in the shade, there was nothing to stop you from happiness!
Percussion soloist Jesùs Andujar will take Amaya’s Parasol as the starting place for a collaborative celebration of the clave rhythm, alternating episodes of solo percussion with the full ensemble.
Danzon No. 2
Arturo Márquez’s Danzon No. 2 gained worldwide attention when it was featured by Gustavo Dudamel and the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra in their 2007 tour of the United States and Europe. Watch the spellbinding performance here. The composer writes:
The idea of writing the Danzón No. 2 originated in 1993 during a trip to Malinalco with the painter Andrés Fonseca and the dancer Irene Martínez. It endeavors to get as close as possible to the dance, to its nostalgic melodies, to its wild rhythms, and it is a very personal way of paying my respects and expressing my emotions towards truly popular music. Danzón No. 2 was written on a commission by the Department of Musical Activities at Mexico’s National Autonomous University and is dedicated to my daughter Lily.
Little Threepenny Music
Kurt Weill (1900-1950) was born into a musical and deeply religious Jewish family in the town of Dessau, a small city eighty miles southwest of Berlin, Germany. His satirical style was well-suited to music for the theater, and by 1925 a series of performances in Berlin and at international music festivals established Weill as one of the leading composers of his generation.
First performed in 1928, Kurt Weill's Threepenny Opera proved to be the biggest theatrical success of the Weimar Republic, running for more than 350 performances over the next two years, until it was eventually banned by the Nazi government for its satiristic and unflattering portrait of German society. Weill fled Hitler in 1936 and came to New York, where his interest in American music and literature became a vital part of the music he composed for Broadway and Hollywood.
Innovation Tango
The tango is a partner dance that originated in the 1880’s in Argentina and Uruguay. In the early years of the Twentieth Century, dancers and orchestras from Buenos Aires traveled to Europe and a feverish “tango craze” took place in high-society Paris, London, and Berlin, eventually making its way to the Gilded Age society in New York and Newport, RI in 1912-1913.
Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish, one of Newport’s most influential society matrons, was offended by the close body contact between tango partners – so she did what any other uptight Victorian matron of means would do: she commissioned the world’s most famous dance couple, Vernon and Irene Castle, to create a tango where the partners never touched each other at all! (Observe the incredibly cool-looking, no-touch tango pose modeled by the Castles on the cover of the published sheet music here.) The music was written by Arthur N. Green, pianist to the Castles. A review of the tango from the Ft. Wayne (IN) Sentinel’s society page stated:
Because she didn't like the tango, Mrs. Stuyvesant Fish hired its most noted exponents, the Castles, to invent a denaturized form of this dance. She calls it the "Innovation." The dancers take position twelve inches away from each other, look into each other's eyes, but never touch each other during the dance. Her guests on whom it was sprung were NOT madly crazy about it.
The Promise of Living
Often referred to as the "Dean of American Music," composer Aaron Copland (1900-1990) was born in Brooklyn, New York, the youngest of five children to Harris and Sarah Copland, Jewish immigrants from Russia who adopted an Anglicized version of their original surname, Kaplan. His career as a composer was secured by such instrumental masterpieces as the Fanfare for the Common Man and the ballets Rodeo and Appalachian Spring.
Copland's only full-length opera, The Tender Land tells the story of a young girl, Laurie Moss, who grows up on a Midwestern farm and is about to leave home. Two numbers from this opera have become choral favorites. In The Promise of Living, at the close of the first act, three generations of the Moss family and their hired hands sing a hymn of gratitude for life, the land, and the spring harvest.
Tico-Tico no Fubá
Composed by Brazilian Zequinha de Abreu in 1917, the amusing title of this work translates literally to "sparrow in the cornmeal.” It was recorded and made popular internationally by Carmen Miranda, who performed it on screen in Copacabana (1947). It was also heard in the 1942 Disney animated film Saludos Amigos, among several other films. It is an excellent example of chorinho ("little lament"), considered the first characteristically Brazilian genre of urban popular music. Despite its name, this style of music often has a fast and happy rhythm. It is characterized by virtuosity, improvisation, and subtle modulations; it is full of syncopation and counterpoint.
Haida
Haida is a nigun, a form of Jewish religious song sung in large groups, often with repetitive sounds instead of with formal lyrics. They are especially central to worship in Hasidic Judaism, in which they evolved to be structured, yet ecstatic forms intended to reflect the mystical joy of intense prayer. The true beauty of the Hasidic nigun was the drive to equalize prayer. The highest, most spiritual levels of prayer had always been reserved for the upper echelons of Jewish life — the rabbis and the wealthier in the community. Poor Jews had no time to study Torah and did not know the words to prayers, and were thus excluded from the spiritual mountain top. The Hasidic movement innovated singable tunes and dispensed with the words in order to include everyone.
De Colores
De Colores is the oldest song on today’s program, commonly sung throughout the Americas since perhaps the 16th century, with a melody that probably originated in Spain. In the Twentieth Century it was a favorite song of the United Farm Workers for rallies and meetings. The song depicts the coming of spring to the countryside and the beautiful colors of the plants and birds. It celebrates the beauty of diversity and the bonds of affection between generations, as in the second verse we hear in turn from the roosters, the hens, and the little chicks.
Guantanamera
Originally written in 1929 as a patriotic song about Cuba, Guantanamera eventually became famous as a song of protest and has been used in struggles for peace and justice across Latin America and the U.S. It has been recorded by a remarkably long and diverse list of artists, including Joan Baez, the Fugees, Jimmy Buffett, Jose Feliciano, Julio Iglesias, Pete Seeger, and numerous others.
In Conclusion
There’s so much MUSIC to hear in this concert’s music: rhythm, melody, harmony, absolutely – but there’s also lots of HUMANITY to hear as well: tradition, struggle, grief, freedom, and truth. I hope you will join us either on Wednesday 11/1/23 at 6:00 pm at Mount Pleasant High School, 434 Mount Pleasant Avenue in Providence, OR on Sunday 11/5/23 at 2:00 pm at Temple Sinai, 30 Hagen Avenue in Cranston. The same program will be presented at both concerts. Admission is free, but all donations will go directly to support Rhode Island Latino Arts. Thank you!
