Having been following this ensemble’s work for many years, I made it my top priority to hear its concert on June 12th at Boston’s Church of the Covenant in the Boston Early Music Festival’s fringe series. Rumbarroco’s umbrella organization La Donna Musicale is known for promoting women composers, especially of the Renaissance and Baroque. Rumbarroco itself takes advantage of the knowledge and experience of La Donna Musicale and the Latin American roots of its director Laury Gutiérrez and many of its performers to create an unprecedented synthesis of European Renaissance and Baroque music with contemporary Latin American popular and folk music in a free and creative manner. In doing so, it demonstrates more clearly and cogently than any lecture could how Latin American music itself has excitingly united African, Arabic, and European traditions.
The four-part program drew from Portuguese and Spanish music of the Renaissance and Baroque periods, beginning with selections from Spanish Cancioneros or song books. The attractive late 15th-century Christmas song ¡Qué Bonito Niño! was accompanied with a modern Dominican merenge rhythm, and Pedro de Escobar’s villancico Virgen bendita sin par from around 1500 used the same technique of adding a supporting rhythm, based on the Venezuelan Valse and Joropo.
The second part included two songs from Portuguese sources. The lyrics of the 17th-century Olá Plimo Bacião, a call to a party celebrating baby Jesus, are in lengua de bozal, a prejudiced parody of Black speech of the day. Again, the song the players and singers infused the material with Latin-American rhythms and featured a section of colorful virtuosic improvisations based on the Folia, in which the bass player Kirsten Lamb made an outstanding impression. Katherine Shao on the harpsichord added color to the rhythmic improvisation of the ensemble. Using three voices in solos, duets, and ensemble brought out the similarity to a little opera. In the 16th-century Senhora del Mundo, all the instruments improvised over the harmonic progression, which is similar to that of a Venezuelan song called Tres Damas, switched to a different Venezuelan song, Mar de la Virgen, in a different rhythm, then kept that rhythm for the last verses of Senhora del Mundo, and so creating a strikingly effective tour through Venezuela. The rising star soprano Lina Sarmiento with her angelic voice and mezzo Daniela Tosic delighted with their matching voices.
The third part paired an arrangement of Santiago de Murcia’s guitar piece Los Ympossibles (1732) for violin, viola da gamba, and basso continuo with the Mexican Son Jarocho called La Lloroncita set for harp and percussion. The ensemble improvised in both Baroque and Son Jarocho styles, then superimposed the two pieces excitingly. Tenor Fausto Miro with Tosic gorgeously intoned a17th-century song from Latin America, Josä Cascante’s Qué Dulcemente Que Canta composed for Santa Fé de Bogotá Cathedral.
The Fandango con Pajarillo, written for the harpsichord by the 18th-century Spanish composer Antonio Soler, brought the house down. It’s a set of variations on the same three chords that form the basis of the Pajarillo, a fast and virtuosic Joropo dance from Venezuela. Here the syncretism of Arabic, African, Indigenous, and European music plainly emerged. The ensemble at its best, at ease with the intricate rhythms, featured the talented Danilo Bonina on violin and the fiery Laury on viola da gamba, and outstanding improvisations by the harpist Eduardo Betancourt and Kirsten on the bass and supported by Peruvian percussionist Miguel Morales.
The last section took two pieces from the 18th-century Codex Martínez Compañón, accompanied by folk Peruvian rhythms and, once more, improvised interludes. Rumbarroco’s approach demonstrates vividly that Early Music has always been “global music,” as we can hear through the connections between the Iberian Peninsula, Africa, and the Americas— important intersections that continue to inform and influence numerous musical genres to this very day. Bravo to Rumbarroco for a well-thought-out and artistically executed program!
It’s worth asking why Rumbarroco and director Laury Gutiérrez have not received all the recognition they deserve [though BMInt has reviewed them more than a dozen times]. After all, they have been telling the complex story of Latin American music at a high artistic level for years. Perhaps their very existence challenges the status quo of Early Music, which often ties itself into knots to put Europe in the center. As an art form oriented to the academy, Early Music research depends mostly on the written record of history’s most recent “winners”—in the case of Latin America, the colonial powers. To present a true picture of the forces at play in Latin American music, we must depart from what is written and listen to the artists of our own times whose families have borne musical traditions for hundreds of years. The academy often pushes back on this uncertified approach, which has the potential to destabilize it. Rumbarroco makes some people nervous.
An honest approach to Latin American Early Music brings us face to face with the unresolved 500-years-old consequences of conquest and slavery that play themselves out every day in the news and politics. Rumbarroco’s musical explorations cannot diffuse these tensions for us, but they can offer a place where we can sit together with our shared history in an environment of beauty. It is a beauty that can lead to understanding, empathy, and finally, reconciliation.