With his eleventh release as a leader and fourth for Miel
Music, saxophonist and composer Miguel Zenón has produced a work of startling
clarity, synthesizing and building upon Puerto Rican folkloric forms through
his unmistakable, multilayered compositional approach.
Yo Soy la Tradición, commissioned by the David and Reva
Logan Center for the Arts and the Hyde Park Jazz Festival, is a collection of
eight works for alto saxophone and string quartet which feature Zenón and the
Chicago-based, internationally renowned Spektral Quartet. These chamber works
reach far beyond the formula of a horn backed by strings, with the Spektral
Quartet taking a central role in both driving and navigating the intricate
compositional forms that are a trademark of the saxophonist's music.
Zenón set out to compose a series of chamber pieces taking
both creative inspiration and formal patterning from his native Puerto Rico's
cultural, religious, and musical traditions. The results are thrilling, and
defy neat categorization with their emergent contemporary sensibility:
structural beauty paired with emotional urgency.
The traditions Zenón takes as his points of departure
include some he has explored in depth before such as Jíbaro, a major musical
genre of rural Puerto Rico and the namesake of a groundbreaking album by Zenón
in 2005. Other inspirations include traditions, both musical and not explicitly
musical, that he had not studied in depth previously.
"My goal is to identify the elements that make each
tradition unique," says Zenón. "If these elements are musical in
nature, I'll extract them and use them as the main seed for a new piece of
music-not trying to emulate the original, but using the original source as
inspiration."
Another musical tradition informing Yo Soy la Tradición
occurred as a result of Zenón's extensive preparation in string quartet
writing. Although he has previously written music for string quartet on Awake,
his fourth album released a decade ago, this new hour-long work led him to
revisit works by the masters of the Western canon.
"I studied many chamber works from various
periods," Zenón says, noting the collaborative aspect of working with
Spektral as part of his compositional process. "As I was writing and
revising, I was also able to integrate feedback from the members of the
quartet, whom I would send sections and passages to."
In one sense, Yo Soy la Tradición is a culmination of
Zenón's study of the cultural traditions of Puerto Rico. For over a decade, his
regular trips to the country and his ongoing field research has granted him
uncommon insight into the artistic resources afforded by the culture of the
Island-in his words, a "seemingly endless well of information and
inspiration," which is continually replenished by the families and
communities who carry it forward as it evolves over generations.
The album begins with "Rosario," whose title
references El Rosario Cantado, a tradition related to the Holy Rosary of the
Catholic Church. The ceremonial quality to this opening of the suite-variations
on a theme framed in variously contrapuntal and contrasting episodes which move
between the lyrical and the animated-echoes the format of traditional rosarios,
settings of the Rosary to music typically reserved for funerals and religious
occasions. This accompaniment is passed down by musicians and has developed
striking formal qualities due to the functional nature and specific context of
the music.
"It's one of those things that's very folkloric, but
can be very complex," says Zenón. "Some of those songs might have a
bar of five beats followed by a bar of seven and a bar of three, because the
composers and songwriters were trying to accommodate a lyric or a phrase within
a specific harmonic sequence."
"Cadenas," a lively work that features the
Spektral Quartet in expansive rhythmic layering, evokes the work of recent
Minimalist composers while harkening to the origins of las cadenas, traditional
Puerto Rican music that takes its name from a chain-like dance formation
(cadenas means "chains"). With alternating passages of expressive
verse statements and propulsive string interludes, "Cadenas"
exemplifies Zenón's uncanny ability to juxtapose rhythmic complexity and
melodic directness in honor of this tradition with deep roots in Spanish and
African music.
In "Yumac," Zenón takes the listener on a
suspenseful ride as the strings produce interwoven bursts of pizzicato while
the composer improvises a delicate, virtuosic solo statement. Named after the
town of Camuy (with the letters spelled backwards), where singer Germán Rosario
originated this style in the mid-twentieth century, "Yumac" comes out
of the Jíbaro tradition in its structural organization, but its jagged
harmonies and breathtaking unison passages for violin and saxophone are
unmistakably Zenón's.
"Milagrosa" begins with an unabashedly futuristic
introduction, where nimble melodic shapes played by the strings filter through
modern harmonies, before settling into a flowing feature for Zenón's elegant,
melodic playing. The inspiration for the work comes from the religious practice
of La Promesa-making a promise to a Catholic deity in return for a favor;
specifically, the title refers to a promise made to La Virgen de La Milagrosa
("The Miraculous Virgin"), a traditional song upon whose foundations
Zenón crafted an entirely new and vital work. The ending is perhaps worth the
price of admission for the breathless, extended soli passage with saxophone and
the entire Spektral Quartet in lockstep-a tour de force of melodic invention
that sets the stage for an unadorned statement of a folkloric melody that is
frequently related to "La Virgen de La Milagrosa."
Moving into an elegiac register, "Viejo"
highlights Zenón's mastery of traditional musical expression, conveying
emotional impact through the tonal shifts between major and minor. In this
pensive movement, the saxophone is incorporated more as an ensemble voice as
the string quartet moves into the spotlight. The majestic and dignified
melodies in "Viejo" are fitting as an allusion to Aguinaldo Viejo, a
genre of Jíbaro believed to be the tradition's oldest example, with a harmonic
cadence traced by some historians to medieval times.
Harmony also provides the organizing principle for
"Cadenza," a brooding exploration of two fundamental cadences found
in Puerto Rican traditional music, La Cadenza Jíbara (from the same Aguinaldo
Viejo in the preceding movement), and La Cadenza Andaluza, which suggests
tinges of Flamenco, with Andaluza referring directly to Andalucía, Spain. The
latter presents an opportunity that Zenón embraces with a clever, surprising
coda of accented handclaps, which through aural sleight of hand slowly morphs
back into a chorus of plucked strings before concluding.
The longest piece in the hour-long suite is
"Promesa," which presents an imaginative rendering written from the
same inspiration as "Milagrosa." In this case, it alludes to the most
famous promesa of all: La Promesa de Reyes, in reference to the celebration of
the Three Kings. Beginning with a
haunting, accompanied statement in the cello, the work cycles through
repetitions of varied melodic elements whose even, steady elaboration reveals
the patience underlying Zenón's approach-a cinematic sense of pacing that
rewards the attentive listener.
Yo Soy la Tradición concludes with "Villalbeño,"
named after a variant of El Aguinaldo Jíbaro from the town of Villalba. With a
self-assured sense of forward motion, the Spektral Quartet lays down a
restrained but infectious groove over which Zenón holds forth; this builds
until a sudden breakdown section, where a repeated figure gains momentum over
shifting rhythmic subdivisions leading to the climactic ending.
In this momentous work, Zenón succeeds in finding common
ground between various traditions-jazz, classical, and folk musics-while
continuing to elevate, honor, and extend the cultural heritage of Puerto Rico
as he has done over the course of his career. "Puerto Rican music is an
integral part of who I am," Zenón writes, "and my ultimate goal as an
artist would be to synthesize and express everything it means to me."
With Yo Soy la Tradición, Zenón has attained another
milestone in his musical development, music that stands at both the
intersection and forefront of the musical traditions that he has studied and
now made his own.
