15 May 2009. Peaceful gray morning, touches of blue just under far edges of the clouds...
Early swimmers, butterfly and crawl, Emery on the high stand, as ever. Ripples of light on pool-green water. Vigorous figures just below.
Highland peoples. La Puna--in the range of 14,000 feet... Valleys of the Calchaquí...
"Entonces, ahí está el asunto: ¿como devolver el canto a la selva? ¿cómo hacer para que vuelva el ¡ay! de la paloma?, el zorzal que huyó, el pechito colorado que no volverá nunca aterrorizado por el ¡Tac! de cada hachazo. Buena preocupación para nosotros músicos que se dicen compositores y tocan lindo el piano, el violín, el charango y la quena. No trabajando en la ciudad para llegar al disco; cantando al campesino, haciendo música con sabor del lugar; quién sabe si esa no es una manera simbólica de pedir perdón a la selva y devolverle un pedazo de su canto..." (Atahualpa Yupanqui)
* * *
"Then here we have the matter: how to return song to the open country? how to regain the "ay" of the dove, the thrush that has fled, the red breast that will never come back, terrorized by the "chok" of the axe blow. A worthwhile preoccupation for our musicians, who are spoken of as composers and who play beautifully the piano, the violin, the charango the quena flute. Not by working in the city to arrive at a recording, but by singing to the country people, making music with the flavor of place; who knows if this might not be a symbolic way of asking pardon of the open land, of giving back to it a fragment of its own song..." (Atahualpa Yupanqui)
2 comments:
The singer is Valentín Chocobar. He presents a baguala from the Valley of the Calchaquíes (Valle del Tafí) northwest of Tucumán in Argentina. "Se cantan coplas." (They sing these verses):
Las coplas cantan y lloran
al compas de la chirlera
Las penas crecen pa'adentro
las alegrías por afuera
(The coplas sing and weep
to the beat of the chirlera
It's on the inside that our pains increase
On the outside our joys)
chirlera: a chord stretched across the face of the drum (caja)
copla: a stanza, generally four lines
Valentín Chocobar performs this baguala in la Peña del Colorado, a folklore center in Buenos Aires, and not to people in the countryside. However, by doing so, and by bringing this music in its traditional form to his listeners in city, he also brings them a taste of what it might have been like to have heard the song in a more traditional setting...
Horacio Guarani habra pensado lo mismo. No se
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTQpaFfxjs8?
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