Annotations for Communities: Peruvians

The musical style known as La Nueva Canción, the new song movement, was beginning in the mid sixties and for 20 years, the signature sound of Latin American music. Founded by singers Violeta Parra and Víctor Jara of Chile and Atahualpa Yupanqui in Argentina. La Nueva Canción sought to create an awareness of Latin America's Indigenous musical heritage while addressing the region's political situation. Today, as younger generations identify more with the Rock in español, or Rock in Spanish movement, La Nueva Canción has lost some of its popularity. But a group of Latin American musicians living in Madison Wisconsin, believes strongly that La Nueva Canción is still alive and well. Even as they strive for a new sound fusing musical styles. Betto Arcos prepared this profile of the musical group called Sotavento.

[Transition Music]

Founded in 1981 by a group of Latin Americans living in Madison, Wisconsin. Sotavento's early recordings focused on the legacy of the Nueva canción movement. Traditional music primarily from South American regions played on over 30 instruments, but as the group grew musically and new members replaced the old ones, their approach to music making also changed.

[Un Siete--Sotavento]

For percussionist. Orlando Cabrera, a native of Puerto Rico, the band search for a new sound helps each member bring his or her own musical background.

We get together and someone starts playing a rhythm based on some traditional music, let's say from Mexico, from Peru. This person might ask, why do you play something there? Some percussion, for example, and at least in my case, my first approach will be to play what I grew up with. The things I feel more comfortable with. So if it fits and it sounds good, then we'll just go ahead and do something.

We are a hybrid. I mean we're all kind of different flowers that are being sort of sewn together and planted together, and what comes out is a very, very different kind of flower.

[Flute music] The hybrid group always searching for its own sound is how founding member Anne Fraioli defines the music of Sotavento and in their last recording, mostly original compositions. Sotavento takes Latin American music one step ahead by blending instruments and styles to form a new one.

[Amacord--Sotavento]

Sotavento's approach to composing and playing music is the group's artistic response to a top 40 music industry that overlooks creativity and experimentation. For Francisco López, a native of Mexico, this commercial environment and the group's principles of Nueva Canción have a lot to do with Sotavento's search for a new sound.

Nueva Canción has always been alive and always been alive because there's always somebody out there that is trying to produce new stuff, and that's what Nueva Canción is all about. Somebody that is uncomfortable with situations. Say for example, the commercialization of music.

According to lead vocalist, Laura Fuentes. The fact that the group's music may be heard on a light jazz or new age radio station proves that Sotavento's music is what is happening right now and that it is not completely folkloric or passe.

[Esto Es Sencillo--Sotavento]

However, Laura Fuentes believes that Sotavento's music is not specifically designed to sell. Sharing what they feel as artists is hard.

But it's worth it. I can't see us putting on shiny clothes and high heels trying to sell somebody something that we are not, something that people seem to be more willing to buy. I'd rather challenge people to hear the beauty in something different, something new.

[El Destajo--Sotavento]

For Fuentes, a native of Chile, Sotavento is also a way of establishing a connection between an artistic musical expression and its historical background.

[El Destajo--Sotavento]

An example of this connection is a Afro Peruvian style, known as Festejo, a musical style created by a small black community in Peru as a result of the living conditions they experienced during slavery.

[El Destajo--Sotavento]

In keeping with the tradition of the new song movement, Sotavento arranged music for a poem by Cuba's Poet Laureate, Nicolás Guillén. The poem called, Guitarra is for Sotavento's and Farioli a symbol of the voice of the people.

[Guitarra--Sotavento]

Wherever people are, there's going to be a voice, and I think my guitarra represents that voice, that's music, and I think it's also saying that people have to hold on to their roots. They have to hold on to their musical traditions, because it's those traditions that are really going to allow them to express who they really are, where they really come from.

[Guitarra--Sotavento]

This summer Sotavento will perform in Milwaukee and Madison, and in the fall there will begin a tour of Spain. The recording called El Siete was released on Redwood records. For Latino USA, this is Betto Arcos, Colorado.

They live there in that mountain, in that magical mountain, and they believe that it was the abode of the gods, the good God [inaudible 00:24:38] and the bad God [inaudible 00:24:41], tonight we have been talking about family and we said back there, families understand one another. They work together, they fight together, and at times we have fought. But tonight we're together. And I wanted to comment on the fact that as I was looking around, I said, the Puerto Ricans that are being honored today are bringing the Black into the group, which is a very good thing for us to do. Sometimes we forget that that race is also part of us. I wanted to say that because sometimes you look around and you say, "well, you're the only one."

We must teach the Anglo world the meaning of cultural fusion. We must teach the Anglo world the meaning of cultural unity because we have it in our bloods and in our families. Uno saleprieto otro saleguero.

Playwright Luis Valdez is the founder of El Teatro Campesino and recognized as the father of Modern Chicano Theatre.

I stand before you as an Indio, as un Indito, to celebrate the literature of our people. I don't look cultured, I look illiterate. I have been asked as a grown man whether I can read, but that's my advantage because I'm always underestimated. People never know what I'm going to come up with. [Laughter] Así es que cuidado.

We built the pyramids because we were mathematicians and we were brain surgeons and we were poets, and my people have been in Sonora and Arizona and in Aztlan for 40,000 years. So I embrace America and I know that we've all been taught in our schools that the name came from Americo Vespucci, cartographer of the new World. That wasn't the only place that America came from. The Peruvian, Las Peruanos, Peru had a name for this place. They had a leader called Tupac Amaru, which means the feathered serpent. What did Tupac Amaru called this place? Amaruca. Amaruca.

The Mayas had a name for this place too. They called it Americua, the land of the four winds because they had a myth that here in the Americas, in Americua, the four winds came together, the four great roads, the white road, the black road, the yellow road, and the red road, and they all met at the naval of the universe, the spot that joins heaven and Earth. That is the Mayan vision, and that is my vision of our raza, of our American raza, of our Hispanity, of our American Hispanity. Asi es que, Thank you. Que viva la raza, que viva America.

Playwright and film director Luis Valdez.

So people always ask, "Yo, when is Hispanic Heritage Month anyway?" And then you have to tell them that it's not really just one month but a four-week period of time that starts in the middle of September when El Salvador, Peru, Nicaragua, Mexico, and several other Latin American countries celebrate their independence from Spain. The month then runs through mid-October through Columbus Day or el día de la raza, as it's known in Latin America. For many Latinos, this is a time to look back at history and to look forward to see where we as a group fit into this country's future. Commentator Barbara Renaud Gonzalez says that in particular, the 16th of September, the equivalent of the 4th of July for Mexicans makes her realize she really is part of a community.

I'm not afraid to look in their eyes, me, the zippy Latina with the import car and the University of Michigan sticker. They, my Mexican hermanos breathless in the Texas sunrise, clinging to the back of a Ford Ranger, almost ashamed that they are the only ones riding like this on the open road of the LBJ carretera. Or maybe it's too obvious that they're on their way to make another garden out of Plano Prairie for a minimum wage. I smile. I am almost ashamed to not go with them. I love my Mexican people. On September 16th, my construction heroes, Plano gardeners, North Dallas maids, my café con leche waiters and I will come together to celebrate the 16th of September, el dies y seis de septiembre, which is the anniversary of Mexico's independence from almost 300 years of Spanish conquest. On the morning of September 16th in 1810, Father Miguel Hidalgo Y Costilla delivered his grito de dolores, his cry for independence in the city of Dolores, Mexico, the city of pain, to claim independence from Spanish rule.

Our celebrated Mexican independence is not like American democracy. The Puritans were free the day they left England on the Mayflower. The Spaniards, however, transformed the America they discovered with every touch and every torment. They came to evangelize their Catholic tradition and so redeemed the Spanish crown with pure Indian gold. While the Puritans established independent colonies from the beginning, the Spaniard established dependent missions.

So, when Mexican independence rang in 1810 and Father Hidalgo exhorted his campesinos to rebellion with “Mexicanos, ¡Viva México!” He must have cried for Mestizo courage and independence from Spain and for all the battles yet to come. As Mexicans and Mexican Americans, Hispanics, Chicanos, Latinos, Pochos, and the descendants of Tejanos like me, every battle, every cry makes us braver in our marches, the people we are and will become. While Mexico's battles may be more anguished than those of the United States, this quest for the Mexican soul is still in transition and hardly defeated. Thus, every September 16th, every dies y seis de septiembre, we celebrate this realization of the Mexican self. I love my Mexican people. Original beauty on Spanish bones. Look at the hands in the ecstasy of expression, rainbows of skin on the Indian profile. We are a jeweled people. I know that the Indian gods and goddesses live among us transformed into the Mexicans I see every day, especially on September 16th, el dies y seis de septiembre. I know. I look in their eyes.

Commentator Barbara Renaud Gonzalez writes and teaches in Dallas, Texas.

[festive mariachi music]

In Mexico and Mexican American communities from Los Angeles to Chicago, the night of September 15th is the night of el grito, (singing) literally the yell or the scream, which commemorates the occasion in 1810 when a parish priest named Father Miguel Hidalgo called his countrymen to rise up against the tyranny of Spain with the cry Mexicans que viva méxico.

Viva los [unintelligible] que nos dieron patria y metal .

¡Viva!

Viva Hidalgo.

¡Viva!.

Viva Morelos.

¡Viva!

Viva Guerrero.

¡Viva!

Viva México.

¡Viva!

Viva México.

¡Viva!

Viva México.

¡Viva!

In Austin, Texas, this event was celebrated with a nighttime block party outside the Mexican consulate.

[mariachi music]

I think it shows that we still care about our culture, that it hasn't died, and I hope it never does because that means part of us dies.

It's a really very nice...Event.

And we hope that the American people can come little bit more towards our costumes and our music and our hearts also.

We came here with intention to work and lent our force, labor force, I should say. And we want to be able to also participate in the intellectual development of the Mexico and the United States. So I believe that anybody that wants to disregard our ability to group together and do things like this is kind of not paying attention what the reality of our country formed with immigrants anyway is happening.