|
|
 |
Exploring the other Americana
|
| Click Here to go back. |
Santa Barbara News-Press, Exploring the other Americana >>
'WOMEN OF LATIN AMERICA' INVASION IS COMING
LATINAS: Women of Latin America
When: 8 p.m. Wednesday
Where: UCSB Campbell Hall
Cost: $30 general, $16 for UCSB students
Information: 893-3535
By Josef Woodard
NEWS-PRESS CORRESPONDENT
It has been an unusually good season so far for world music made by strong and charismatic women, including the young Portuguese fado phenom Mariza and Afro-pop heroine Angelique Kidjo. The trend continues Wednesday at UCSB Campbell Hall, with a triple-header rife with educational compare-and-contrast power.
The touring show dubbed "Latinas: Women of Latin America" is a logical extension of the agenda of the successful world music label Putumayo, which tends to create theme-driven compilations, on record and on the road.
What these compilations lack in specific focus, they make up for in smorgasbord appeal and expansion of global music awareness. On the recent Putumayo album "Women of Latin America" itself, 11 different artists from all corners of Latin America are represented, including such renowned vocalists as Susana Baca, Tania Libertad, Lila Downs and Lhasa.
At Campbell Hall, the three-woman roster will move beyond the better-known commodities and promises to stretch listeners' palettes, with Colombian singer Toto La Momposina, the Brazilian Belo Velloso (a niece of two Brazilian legends, Caetano Veloso and Maria Beth‰nia), and the expatriated Chilean Mariana Montalvo.
Although Montalvo was exiled to Paris in the 1970s during the repressive and deadly Pinochet regime, she still passionately delves into her traditional heritage, as heard on her latest album, "Piel de Aceituna," on the World Village label. In fact, she champions Chilean culture from her Parisian melting pot outpost, which has been responsible for disseminating much of the "world music" energies of the last several years.
On the phone recently from a tour stop in Albuquerque, N.M., Montalvo spoke about a core mission of the tour, designed to fill a void. Montalvo, on her first U.S. tour, explains that "people here are used to listening to a special kind of Latin American music, being dance music. That's cha cha and meringue, and styles that are popular to dance to. They don't really know Latin American folklore and other types of music. The mission for us is to open the way for this different kind of music from Latin America. It's important."
On the tour so far, Montalvo reports, "We have had a very good reception. People really like it. They tell us they are very happy to hear this music they didn't know before. We have also done some workshops with children in the schools, and it's the same. They are excited to know our music."
Each of the tour's three artists on the bill represents different musical perspectives, relative to the different social and cultural landscapes of their native traditions. Montalvo points out Velloso belongs to the thoroughly integrated Brazilian musical vocabulary, the internationally-known blend of urban and rural traditions. She grew up in Bahia and moved to Rio de Janeiro to pursue music, falling into a profound family lineage.
By contrast, Toto La Momposina's music springs up from the Colombian countryside.
Raised on the island of Mompos, in the vast Magdalena River in the Andes, her music is a blend of Amerindian and African influences. In musical terms, she traces the region's history of Spanish conquest and the influx of African slaves, blending in with indigenous Amerindian music.
As a Chilean in Paris, proudly cognizant of her heritage but also global in outlook, Montalvo is unique from the others. She both taps into the folkloric traditions of her birthplace - especially the poetic "nuevo cancion" movement - and a more cosmopolitan idea of mixing musical styles, to suit her creative urges.
"It's funny," she says, "in the show, I'm in the middle. I'm the middle, because I'm from the city but I take traditional instruments to make music that is not traditional. You can call it New Traditional, if you want."
Although the multilingual Montalvo has lived in Paris for 30 years and is legally a French citizen, she points out, "if you ask me where I come from, I come from Chile, not from France." She draws a poetic analogy in describing her cultural self-definition.
"In the first part of your life is like the raw clay (in pottery making), and my clay was made in Chile. In my first years, until I left, this clay was not dry. After I built my adult life in France, this clay was cooked and dried. That's the soul of what I do - it's completely Chilean.
"All the music I heard and what I make now is the product of all my influences since I was 8 years old. That was the first time my parents brought me to a guitar class with a Chilean folklorist. I began to sing and to play guitar at 8 years old, in Chile. After that, I heard music and began to compose in France, at about 23 years old, with all those influences. I have a completely Chilean soul, even when I make French music."
The mixing process she's referring to is the foundation of last year's "Piel de Aceituna," which translates to "olive skinned." Montalvo wrote many of the songs, setting poems of well-known Latin American poets music, including Gabriel Mistral from Chile, Alfonsina Storni from Argentina and Nicholas Guillen from Cuba.
But the album also includes a Jacques Brel song, translated from French into Spanish. She says that the album's "mix, in fact, is exactly the mix of my life. It's Chile for the instruments and the soul, and France for a lot of feelings. The Jacques Brel song is a universal song, a love song that's very deep and wonderful. It's a love story that is beautiful, between two persons living together for 20 years. I translated it into Spanish and I play it as an Argentinean Milonga, not at all with an accordion or as a French song.
"On my first album, 'Cantos del Alma,' it's the same thing. It's a mixture between my life, a mixture of culture, exile, Chile, Latin America, France. It's my history, in fact, that I sing."
While Montalvo has played in her native country, including concerts in Santiago three years ago, the audience there for folkloric music is modest compared to the mass market for blander, dance-minded popular music. The situation is much the same anywhere in the world, including the United States, where roots music plays to a marginal, specialized audience.
As she points out, "The real blues of Louisiana, you don't hear much. That's exactly the same. In Chile, you turn on the radio and you have some stations where you can hear folkloric music, but mostly you hear popular music that I don't like much at all. It's commercial music, that's the word. Our music is not commercial."
That makes the "Latinas" tour all the more valuable. As both entertainment and cultural enlightenment, it promises to be a tuneful, short journey into the "other" Americana.
11/05/04
|
| Click Here to go back. |
|
 |
|
|
|
