Sones De Mexico Ensemble Chosen To Represent U.S. At The 2008 World Folk Song Festival In Beijing

sounni — Fri, 26 Sep 2008 11:18:47 +0000

Beijing has been the world’s focus of attention for international events in 2008: the Olympic Games in August, and the Paralympic Games in September. From October 3rd to 8th, Beijing will host the 2008 World Folk Song Festival, featuring performers from 25 different countries and 13 Chinese provinces.

The six-day extravaganza will be held at Beijing’s colossal National Centre for the Performing Arts (NCPA), a 600,000 sq. ft. facility nicknamed “The Egg”. A reflective pool in front of the majestic dome gives the illusion of a gigantic egg suspended in mid air. For one week, the NCPA will echo with songs from around the world and will introduce Chinese audiences to some of the finest folk music and traditions from around the world. Sones de Mexico Ensemble will perform live in concert in the National Centre for the Performing Arts Theatre on Monday, October 6th at 2:00pm. The group will give a performance presentation in the NCPA Conference Hall on Tuesday, October 7th, at 3:00pm.

Sones de Mexico Ensemble, a Mexican independent folk group and arts organization from Chicago, whose 2007 album “Esta Tierra es Tuya (This Land Is Your Land)” garnered both GRAMMY and Latin GRAMMY nominations last year, received an unsolicited invitation from the Festival selection committee in late May.

Juan Dies, a co-founder of the group, said “I was just as surprised as anyone else that we would have been selected, especially when we discovered that we were the only group attending from the United States.”

Besides their “norteno” homage to Woody Guthrie’s “This Land Is Your Land”, the group is mainly known for preserving a tradition of folk songs collectively known as “son”, from Mexico’s diverse cultural regions, performing them with a preservationist’s care on a collection of over 70 acoustic instruments.

In an interview for China Radio International, Chen Ziming, an expert on folk music and also a professor in the Central Conservatory of Music, said that the festival is a good chance to broaden people’s understanding of world folk music and to change the long-time focus solely on European music.

When asked about his selection criteria, Ma Wenjie, the organizing committee’s liaison to the American continent, spoke of “Yuan Fen”, a “predestined affinity”. He explained, “We use this word to describe two people who never know each other, and once for a very coincident opportunity they meet each other, then they become very good friends and do great things together.” Mr. Ma Wenjie found Sones de Mexico Ensemble on the Internet, and he felt a connection.

In response, Juan Dies said “I think we may write a new song when we meet and call it ‘Yuan Fen’.”

ABOUT SONES DE MEXICO ENSEMBLE CHICAGO: Sones de Mexico Ensemble Chicago is a premier folk music ensemble specializing in Mexican “son”, including the regional styles of “huapango”, “gustos”, “chilenas”,”son jarocho”, and more. The group formed in 1994 to keep the tradition of Mexican “son” alive in its many regional forms. As a performer and recording artist, the ensemble has developed and popularized many original arrangements of Mexican traditional songs. Some of its original work has experimented cross-culturally with symphonic, Irish, folk, C&W, jazz, and rock music, though never abandoning its roots in Mexican “son”. The ensemble is also committed to teaching and has a 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to music education. All band members reach out to young and old with award-winning educational programs nationwide.
http://www.sonesdemexico.com

narcocorrido

rhythmparticiple — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 14:45:41 +0000

I live in a mostly Mexican neighborhood here in Denver (or at least it used to be mostly Mexican–with all of us whites moving in and the housing prices going up, it may not always be this way). I’ve only been here a year or so, and in this time have fallen in love with the sound of Spanish. Walking down the street, you naturally hear this musical speech–and, beyond that, you hear the music coming from windows and backyard barbeques. Knowing nothing of Mexican music beyond the Tex-Mex of Calexico or Doug Sahm or The Blasters, I thought I’d try to find out more. After all, fusion is always about twenty steps from the original folk, no matter how many inflections it tries to hold onto. And I already knew that most of the Latin pop stars are not from Mexico at all, so there’s no point in even thinking in terms of J Lo. And that difference is everything. So I’ve been doing a lot of reading and listening–way too much to really get into in a short blog post. So I’ll talk about a book that I liked: Narcocorrido by Elijah Wald. If you like music, new journalism, or are simply want to know a little more about Mexican traditions, you should check this one out. It’s the kind of thing that I tend to read for fun: intrepid reporter type with a sense of adventure and some actual knowledge of the subject goes out and meets people. In this case, Elijah Wald travels through Mexico and Southern Texas on buses and in unreliable cars, meeting musicians. Most of them aren’t even popular musicians in Mexico, although some are; they’re all of them experts in the corrido. And here’s where it gets really interesting. The corrido is basically a tribute form, a documentary song that notes places, events, rebellions, and the exploits of drug runners, political activists, and the like. Sometimes the writers are paid to write the tributes; other times, they approach the songs as social documentary and political actions. They basically work the way that poets used to work, before they could get university jobs: they wrote epics, stories, for pay. Others simply work as buskers, minstrels, going from place to place, singing for cash. Most can compose on the spot. In a country where some towns and villages have no electricity, they get out the news. They try to be factually accurate, since if they’re not, someone will surely correct them. They then usually try to get the songs performed by a more popular singer or group, although occasionally they go solo with the Mexican version of the singer-songwriter folkie approach. Wald interviews 15, 20 of these people in depth, going where they are, imbibing what they imbibe, meeting others along the way. Wald not only has the ability to get people to talk, but he also seems to know his shit about music & is honest, too, about his limitations. He tells good stories and avoids denigrating or overly admiring his subjects. Of the books I’ve read thus far about Mexico, I’ve learned the most from this one. The detailed depictions of place alone helped me to understand my neighbors while learning to designate between kinds of music. (No, not everything Mexican with a horn is mariachi.) The book accidently has taken on a newsworthy subject, since a number of corrido writers and singers have been turning up murdered in Mexico. Apparently, telling the story wrong can be fatal.

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Sones De Mexico Ensemble Chosen To Represent U.S. At The 2008 World Folk Song Festival In Beijing

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