From words to music….

It would be impossible to tell the entire story of Cien Años de Soledad  in the scope of one recording and due it justice.  Instead I opted to highlight certain themes and events that I feel capture the essence of the novel.  The seed for this project was planted back in 2014 when I first wrote Macondo.  With the except of an interlude and the ending changing, it's been played the same and it served as the spring board for the rest of the compositions.  Un Mundo en Soledad followed shortly and was played in the same manner for many years, but I changed it slightly right before the recording.  The other tunes that had been in development along the same time were Después de la Guerra and El Duelo which the band started playing roughly around the same time.    

Melquíades, Los Gitanos, y La Profecía was originally known as Melquíades y Los Gitanos, but I opted for the longer version to keep to the story line and how much of a central figure to the story Melquíades is.  There was quite a bit of research into this as I had to first discover the origin of Merlquíades, which I found to be a Bedouin character, and then from there researching what the music of the time and area might have sounded like according to ethnomusicologists as there is no way to recreate that music.  I had to meld the influences I found from that research it and combine it with my current musical experience  and the music that ensued was the result.  A little fun note, in the beginning there is some hushed narration that can't be made out: this represents the pieces of parchment where Melquíades wrote the fate of Macondo.  It shows up one more place in the recording….

Some musical contempories of Márquez's were Rafale Escalona and Guillermo Buitrago, who were both great singers of the Colombian style of music known as Vallenato.  I KNEW I had to incorporate this into the story and it made it's way into the project on El Pueblo.  The music for this track truly encapsulates the essence of Colombia and it's fitting for the setting for this oasis that Márquez described.

One often overlooked aspect of Cien Años de Soledad is that there is quite a bit of comedy in there….tragic comedy, but comedy nonetheless.  So I wanted to capture that in two of the songs: Los Matrimonios Malditos and Los Gemelos Traviesos.  The formers meaning is cursed marriages, which speaks to the theme of incense that pervades the characters in Macondo.  While the melody and harmonies on the surface seem fitting for a celebration of marriage, the bass note underneath provides a very shaky foundation to start things off and the comedy (which is really a musical inside joke) is that the bridge modulates an interval of a tritone away from the original key and the tritone was an interval associated with the devil in the renaissance era of music.   Los Gemelos Traviesos is a tango blues that talks about twins, Aureliano Segundo and José Arcadio Segundo and how they would swap personalities, wives, lives, and would live such rambunctious lives.  When they died no one was sure who was who!  On top of this is the spoken word warning of the prophecy of the last Buendía in Macondo being born with the tail of a pig, which is imposed over this provocative tango melody, hence the irony and the element of comedy that I spoke of earlier.

Desaparacieron speaks of the Banana Massacre of 1928, which made it's way into the novel, and while it has structure there is a moment where there is free, uninhibited improvisation to represent the chaos of the protestors running from being massacred, and the aftermath that ensues with one of the survivors recounting the experience.  

I remember the first time I read Cien Años de Soledad one of the characters that stuck out to me the most was Remedios.  The idea of a person that had corporeal beauty and a soul with such an angelic innocence that she was too pure to live on earth always fascinated me from the first time I read it.  I knew I had to put this scene in the music!  I wrote the music and at the end I felt was something was missing.  I finally figured out it was the voice of Remedios and I needed to find the voice.  After thinking about the essence of what Remedios represented I decided that the best voice for her would be none other than my own daughter.  While the age difference is of great significance I believe the representation of my daughter's childlike voice truly captures the innocence of Remedios and as a father I was so happy to have her on this recording!!!

The overall theme of history repeating itself is encapsulated in Maldiciones Concéntricos.  The form of this tune is written in a loose Rondo form which in musical terms means it always goes back to a returning theme….for example ABACADACABA where we can see no matter what happens in the other developing sections everything comes back to A, thus making it cyclical.  I purposely chose this form for this reason.  The other aspect I love about this tune was it allowed me to experiment with the musical style known as Lando, which Luques turned me onto a few years back.  There is also an under current hint of this foreboding armageddon represented in the time signature which is ¾ representing the trinity which also ties into the essence of the novel as it often refers to biblical references throughout as well.  So this penultimate selection has many layers to it despite it's simplistic appearance.  

La Profecía Revelada is the culmination of all the track coming together where the prophecy is finally is revealed and Macondo's fate comes to fruition (I don't wanna give the ending away just in case anyone reading hasn't read the book yet!).  The finally resurgence of the Montuno from Macondo makes more sense after going through all the tracks and understanding the story.

Extras!

  • I play bass flute on Después de la Guerra and Desaparecieron
  • The Aztec Death Whistle was only supposed to be on Desaparecieron but if found it's way in at the final track representing the wind of a hurricane.
  • Little Johnny Rivero orchestrated many of the latin percussion parts himself!
  • I met Alfonso Cayón while recording Johnny and after hearing him speak I decided he should be the voice of Melquíades.
  • All the children screams were kids of members of the project, including my daughter
  • All the voice effects were done in editing and created on the spot!
  • The Theme from the opening track, for the most part, serves as the basis for the melodic themes of the other tracks much like my last album, Pictures at an African Exhibition!