World Music Feature Classic CD Christmas 1999
CHRISTMAS IN THE ANDES
Images of the Andes, their snow-capped heights rearing mightily from arid foothills against crisp blue skies, are as distinctive as they are beautiful. But these images can belie the extreme hardship and oppression suffered by Chile's people. Chilean composer in exile Mauricio Venegas' new CD 'Pilgrimage to the Andes' brings together a mass written in honour of Chilean miners and Andean Christmas music. He explains to Jan Fairly the importance of his people's greatest touchstones, religion and music.
The snow capped volcanic peaks of the Andes Mountains have overlooked the many small communities living there since the way before the Spanish 'discovered' the Americas. The cultures of these people date back to pre-Inca civilisations' while their music played on panpipes, kena bamboo flutes and the small armadillo- backed, String guitar, which accompanies practically all the events of everyday rural life- is some of the most beautiful and compelling the world has to offer. It is this music and this world, which has inspired Mauricio Venegas' 'Pilgrimage to the Andes', which comprises Misa del los mineros-Plegaria del pueblo (A mass for the miners - a peoples prayer) and Navidad Andina (Andean Christmas) a classic suite of songs for Christmas.
Folk masses, as they are often referred to, have been a significant feature of popular religious since a Vatican ruling in the early 1960's that the catholic could be freed from the strictures of Latin and celebrated in indigenous languages. The most beloved and first in the Americas was the 1964 Argentine Misa Criolla, composed by Ariel Ramirez and famously interpreted by classic folk group Los Fronterizos with Jamie Torres and the choir of the Basilica del socoro of Buenos Aires. Individual songs like 'A la huella' (on the pilgrims path') have made their way onto the popular repertory and in my experience' wherever Argentines are gathered together it will be fondly sung.
Pilgrimages are a part of the annual cycle of life in the Andes, as they are in many other parts of South America. La Tirana, a site now located in northern Chile, on land on land which before 1879 war of the Pacific belonged to Bolivia, hosts an annual religious festival the weekend closest to 15th July, when 1000,000 pilgrims from all over the Andes gather to worship the Virgen del Carmen. The huge 'modern' church built out of corrugated iron is placed on top of a sacred site where indigenous people have for centuries worshipped Pachamama, mother Earth, the square it is built upon representing Tiwantinsuyo the four corners of the pre inca empire. Two hundred or more 'Confradias' the Confraternities of the Bailes religiosas, take their turn to greet the virgen on Christmas day.
While for Venegas such pilgrimages are fundamental, his own mass is a more intimate affair, directly focused on the experience of the miners of the Americas. While it is a general tribute to those in the Andes who for centuries worked to find the silver which was to make conquering Spain so wealthy and those who early this century mined nitrates in the desert, his focus falls on coal miners specifically those from the mines of his native home town of Coronel, on the west Pacific coast of Chile near the city of concepeion.
Venegas' early musical work in the UK involved working with first the infectious Pueblo and Epu Amaranto, then with John Williams and later Incantation. With his own group Quimantu he has recorded the he has recorded the sound-tracks for the films The mission, Priest and the Honorary Consul, with their debut album 'Camino al sol' concentrating on specific Latin American music themes. But Venegas' deep love in music making within the community. In the UK he is part of Musiko, Musika, as well as the one world band, a multi - cultural group of musicians whose own ethnic backgrounds embrace India, China, Ghana, Gambia and the Caribbean as well as the UK, who lead creative workshops encouraging children to compose their own music.
Venegas' affinities with mining communities stem from growing up near the famous mines of Lota and coronel and from being a student of mining engineering, a career prematurely cut short by the infamous Pinochet Coup d'etat 1973. "In my family everybody sang, from boleros to serious music. But I am the only one to do it professionally! In that sense coming to the Uk as an exile had a positive effect! I go back home a lot and do community music work there too with the groups Coro pro Arte and Canto Vivo."
So how long was he working on this a project which takes the group to a different musical plane? "Actually it took me about three years to write the mass and the Christmas pieces. I don't really have a clear memory of the actual process of writing the seven movements, as they seem to emerge from my guitar complete. On one level I did have various key pieces of south American music in mind particularly Argentine Atahualpa Yupanqui's 'Preguntitas sobre dios' (questions about God) and Victor Jara's Plegaria a un Labrador (Prayer to the Labourer), but on another level my driving motivation was the tremendously broad sense of human spirituality I have found in both my two homes, in Chile and here in Britain amongst people of all sorts of background. It's a spirituality rooted in the deepest sense of humanity. And it's a spirituality that's questions its not one that accepts the order of things as they are given. For me song writing is part of that tradition which sees music as integral to everyday life here as it is in an Andean village. You can hear this in the way the mass opens with 'Surtierra' (Southern Earth) which was first heard in my family's kitchen in Chile, just as Victor Jara sang his songs first to his family at home. The spirituality I am talking about is not that necessarily found in a church but as much as the simple quietness with which say a baker prepares his loaves of bread for baking. Those are my images."
One of the great things about such pieces is for the musicians the composer had in mind to perform for the people it was written for. With the group based in the UK I wondered if Mauricio had been able to get them all to Chile to perform? "Yes that was great fro Quimantu was that we were able to go all of us to Chile for our premier in September 1998. The local people loved it and were very appreciative of the commitment of the British musicians to the project. It was beautiful and held in a special place. Honestly, the small chapel in Lota is similar to the ones you find in small welsh and Scottish mining villages. I had researched all my ideas with those people and they felt it to be their own. I believe that music is something that brings people together, unites them and that did happen here. It can bring them close to their own emotional experiences and that's important to me."
It's traditional to conclude or follow up a folk mass with Christmas songs. Venegas's compositions use traditional forms but are very much his own. " The Christmas pieces are very close to my heart, bound up with my memories of growing up. I listened to the old carols called ' villancicos which were originally Spanish but are now completely Latin American in tone. And the bailecitos (Little dances) which I love, particularly those from the indigenous communities of Northern Argentina, which were very popular in the 1960's they have special resonance for me, and my daughter sings the classic South American version of 'silent night' which children all learn by heart. Sacred songs for the most traditional time of year."
Jan Fairley