Canciones Latinas - Eliot Fisk & Paula Robison

CANCIONES LATINAS Liner notes MHS

Paula Robison and I have long wanted to issue a sequel to our CD entitled “Mountain Songs” featuring the music of Robert Beaser and other composers of North America. Now on the eve of the new millenium we have, turned our attention to music from Latin America, that region dominated by cultures of Iberian extraction, which, mixed freely with indigenous elements and, of course, the ever powerful African motherland, produced the exotic colors, catchy rhythms and haunting melodies that so captivate our imagination. Much of this music was originally sung- sung to words of heartbreak (La cancion del arbol del olvido, "The Song at the Tree of Forgetfulness") or incipient heartbreak (Ya saben ustedes, senores, "You already know, Gentlemen"), to words of longing (Estrellita, "Little Star") (Azulao, "Bluebird"), or of passion (Tus ojos son mi encanto, "Your Eyes are my Delight"). Many of the works heard here are inspired by the glories of Mother Nature as in the justly famous and haunting Bachianas brasileiras no. 5, or the darkly metaphorical Canto do cisne negro, the song of the black swan) that according to legend sings only once just before its own death. Of course, no recording devoted to the music of Latin America can escape /f the infectious rhythms of its dance music, represented here by the indio influenced Rumba of Mexican composer Manuel Ponce and, traveling down the coastline to Argentina, by the pungent Tangos of the famous bandoneon master Astor Piazzolla. In between there is unbridled joy as in the pithy cross rhythms of the Quirpa guatirefia and a kind of veiled mystery as in the indio inflected Nagzdaganu, which seems to emanate from a procession through the Nicaraguan rain forest.