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‘Wonderment’ in indigenous Mexican concert

Pianist Irma Enriquez and tenor Diego Torre at the NGA last night. Photo: Helen Musa. 

Music / “Mexico 22 in Asia Pacific”, James O Fairfax Theatre, NGA, September 8 only. Reviewed by HELEN MUSA.

IN its ongoing quest for effective cultural diplomacy, the Mexican embassy has hit upon the coincidence that both our countries have significant First Nations populations.

Certainly, Australia’s is very small compared to the 20 per cent of Mexicans who claim indigeneity, but as ambassador Eduardo Peña Haller pointed out in his prefatory speech last night, Australia is to the fore in formally acknowledging its First Nations people.

During May, I attended another Mexican embassy initiative, the opening of “Portraits of Indigenous Mexico”, an exhibition of 20 photographs from Fototeca Nacho López of the National Institute of Indigenous Peoples, preceded by a double-barrelled smoking ceremony performed by Ngunnawal and Mexican elders. The show is still running in the foyer of ANU Kambri until September 18.

Continuing the First Nations motif last night was a quite extraordinary concert of new Mexican music for piano and songs in indigenous language, jointly hosted by the embassy and Music from Ibero-America in Australia.

Largely the initiative of Mexican-Australian pianist, Irma Enriquez, the concert was an interleaving of original piano works with folk songs, lullabies and traditional melodies in the five major language groups of Mexico – Nahuatl, Huichol, Zapotec, Tohono, Mayan and Spanish.

Dedicated “to the revitalisation of indigenous languages everywhere”, the evening featured no fewer than four female composers, three world premieres and five Asia-Pacific premieres, with Enriquez at the keyboard and famed Mexican-Australian Opera Australia tenor Diego Torre singing.

The first work of the evening was a multi-media presentation of composer Arturo Valenzuela’s ode to the god of mind-enhancing flowers and music, Xochipilli, with “prepared” piano by Enriquez, poetry in the central Mexican Nahuatl language and video imagery showing people celebrating in colourful costumes.

Next up, Torre took the stage performing “J’o” in Mayan, by composer German Romero from his Spanish-Mayan opera, “Your Fragmented Body”, followed by Enriquez playing an esoteric piano solo, “From The Five Suns”, by Mexican Canadian composer Alejandra Odgers.

A change of mood followed, with Rosa Guraieb’s tuneful “Otono” (Autumn) sung by Torre in Spanish and Mexican folk song, “La Llorona”, sung in Zapotec.

Lucia Alvarez’s aptly title piano solo “Enigma” followed, delicately performed by Enriquez, before Torre returned with the showstopper of the evening, an extraordinary lullaby by Leticia Armijo mostly performed in the Tohono-O’odham language of northern Mexico and Arizona. Here Torre was given full vocal range as he improvised around the sonorous words of the lullaby, projected on the screen up stage so we could follow it.

The finale of the program, sung in in Spanish, was a hot, libidinous love song by Eduardo Gamboa, titled “Ojos Ilenos de pajaros” (Eyes Full of Birds) inspired by a poem of Alberto Ruy-Sanchez. Torre ended this unique evening with a single, whispered word in Spanish – “wonderment”.

 

 

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Helen Musa

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