Jorge Sarmientos: His music, Nationalism and Realismo Magico

Chapter 6 His music, Nationalism and Realismo Magico: El Pajaro Blanco In every step, I had found the “real maravilloso”.1 However, I thought besides, that that presence and validity of the “real maravilloso”, it was not only a privilege of Haiti but also a heritage of entire America. -Alejo Carpentier.2 The idea to introduce the relationship of the music of Jorge Sarmientos with the literary movement of realismo magico came to me suddenly when I was working on this thesis and started to realize similar elements exists in Jorge’s music and in this literary current. At first, I believed it was a wild and misbegotten idea. However, after consulting with Mario Roberto Morales about my ideas and proposal, he agreed that this connection was possible.3 Indeed, in his nationalistic compositions, there are clear relationships between the titles and the programmatic content of his works and the mystical world deeply rooted in ancient indigenous traditions that realismo magico conveys. In these works, these traditions intertwine with the modern socialpolitical context. Syncretism is a pivotal factor in the definition of mestizo culture. Historically Latin American culture, due to its economic, cultural, religious, ethnic, and ecological circumstances, was influenced by the interruption caused by two peninsular Empires: Spain and Portugal. The different characteristics of the ethnic and cultural groups resulted from that tragic encounter. 1 Some authors make difference between realismo magico and real maravilloso. It leads to a literary a philosophical difference where is not here of our competence. Both terms depart and develop the same ideas. 2 Barrios Peña, 185. Carpentier refers also to America the continent, not the nickname of the United States of America. 3 Mario Roberto Morales and Igor Sarmientos, conversation cited. 1 However, Latin American culture is the product of a complex ethnic and social fusion. Today many societies understand themselves by constructing a nostalgic past, a pessimistic present, and an ethereal vision of the future. There is an attempt to connect modern identity with that past. If this is impossible in reality, it can be done only in an imaginary way. Barrios Peña states: The indigenous and the mestizos, were the big masses during the colony . . . however, in the historical sense, the mix of races [mestizaje] meant much more. It was about a constant confrontation where the indigenous people struggled to survive and dedicate themselves to search for their coordinates between two antagonists. That process resulted in a cultural configuration and mentality.4 Today the multicultural Latin American societies are reflected in the literature of many prominent writers such as Alejo Carpentier, Miguel Angel Asturias, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, and Pablo Neruda. In different ways, these writers use elements drawn from the indigenous, African, and mestizo cultures of their respective nations to construct their individual indentities. In Central and South America ancient indigenous texts are a constant source for reimagined stories. In the Caribbean, African influence and mestizo culture have shaped social identities as reflected in the writing of these authors. These authors and artists repeatedly turn to cultural elements, images, and narratives drawn from the ancient past for inspiration in their works.5 In the same way, the artistic expressions are reproductions and reinstatements of the ancient traditions in the modern artistic field, especially during the first part of the twentieth century.6 4 Barrios Peña, 61. Ann Fass Emery, “Anthropological Imagination in Latin American Literature” (1996): 1; quoted in Mercedes Lopez-Baralt. Para decir al otro: literatura y antropologia en nuestra America. (Madrid: Iberoamericana, 2005), 31. 6 Examples in music: Jesus Castillo and Ricardo Castillo in Guatemala, Amadeo Roldan in Cuba, Carlos Chavez and Silvestre Revueltas in Mexico. 5 2 Jorge Sarmientos inherited the indigenous oral and mystic traditions of his region. He was also part of the urban mestizo collective, as he lived in a small cosmopolitan city. He reimagined Guatemalan nationalism through the European musical tradition that he learned from his teachers, especially Ricardo Castillo. Based on these considertions there is a strong connection between Jorge’s compositions and the literary current of realismo magico and the concept of real maravilloso. In her book, Lopez-Baralt states that Alejo Carpentier defines the Latin American environment, origins, and collective experience in terms of the real maravilloso. He describes this concept as encopassing the discovery of America, an exotic and virginal baroque landscape (sic), the “mestizaje” between indigenous people, blacks and whites, which began precisely with the first encounter in the Caribbean. Carpentier states that it was also in this moment thar the European idea of the “pensee sauvage” based on the impressions of the mythologies of the African and native Indian oral traditions, took root.7 The core principles of real maravilloso and realismo magico, are found in the prehispanic writings, the oral, music and dance traditions of the “witness peoples” a term applied to the countries of Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia where the majority of the population are descendants from ancient civilizations.8 Alejo Carpentier, “De lo Real Maravillosos Americano”, essay for “El reino de este mundo”, (1949), quoted by Lopez-Baralt, 35. 8 Term applied by Darcy Ribeiro in “Las Americas y la civilizacion: Proceso de formacion y causas del desarrollo desigual de los pueblos Americanos”. (Caracas: Biblioteca Ayacucho, 1992), 117. It is given to societies where the majority of percentage of its population is indigenous which are the original pre-hispanic people that conserved their ancient traditions and have survived the conquest, colonization by foreign nations, and have changed slower than other countries due to injustice, submission, and military and civil regimes that have maintain the same old economic structures in the past centuries. 7 3 From 29 March to 15 April 2012 Jorge visited my family in Falls Church, Virginia, where Diran, Taila and I were living in our home at 3402 Kimberly Drive. He came together with Maty, my mother, for vacations but especially to attend a concert on April 4, named Latin Fire presented by George Mason University. On that occasion, Dr. Dennis Layendecker conducted George Bizet’s Carmen suites and Ravel’s Bolero. Jorge heard his Preludio y Danza Orgiastica Wp 34, performed by the George Mason Symphony Orchestra making it the US premiere, with me as conductor. In the same program, I also performed works by Alberto Ginastera’s Estancia and Huapango by Pablo Moncayo at the Hylton Performing Arts Center in Manassas. On April 10, he gave a lecture at George Mason University, hosted by Dr.Thomas Owens. He enjoyed the activities and the time with us. Because I had been writing about him, I took the opportunity to expand my knowledge about his life, now not only as a son, but in a deeper and more academic way. During this time, we had the opportunity to have long and very interesting conversations about music. I was asking him especially about his musical life, personal motivations, his political life, and so on. At that time, I noticed that his health was deteriorating. From his childhood and until his death, Jorge was always exposed to the mystical world of legends and stories of the magical popular tradition. Guatemala is rich in legends originating from its syncretic past. However, these legends were always passed down only by oral tradition. In 1933, Miguel Angel Asturias collected Guatemalan legends from the oral tradition and published them in the form of a book. This work marked a reference point in modern Guatemalan and Latin American literature and history in two ways: it was the first work to preserve these living oral traditions in writing and one of the first literary works to embrace and 4 unify the real and the “Guatemalan imaginary” worlds through narrative.9 The work receives the same appreciation from Gerald Martin who analyzes it as “quasi-ethnological Legends of Guatemala.”10 Asturias’s work gives me the perspective to see the relationship between the ballet El Pájaro Blanco (1957) and the anthropological and literary current of realismo magico. Jorge’s work marked a fresh and new approach to the social phenomenon of the indigenous people and the reality they experienced. The work has many characteristics of realismo magico as we will see. By 1957 Jorge Sarmientos was now an active and popular composer. Jorge was commissioned to write El Pajaro Blanco by the Ballet Guatemala (National Ballet of Guatemala). The work belongs to his nationalist period, which includes, among others, the Ballet Drama Popol Vuh, La Conquista, and Rabinal Achi. What makes El Pájaro Blanco interesting is that it is one of the first musical works in Guatemalan musical history to incorporate Mesoamerican oral tradition. The essence of the El Pájaro Blanco is the magical ambience, and its social, anthropological, and economic content. Jorge composed the score and libretto based upon his original ideas. Dennis Carey, a Canadian visiting dancer and choreographer who lived in Guatemala from 1955 to 1965, worked deeply to create the movements that were in harmony with the music. The ballet was choreographed after the music with contemporary dance technique. The plot portrays an ordinary Guatemalan Mayan-Indian lifestyle where exclusion, poverty, and racism are prevalent. The central idea is the tragedy of an indigenous family whose 9 Miguel Angel Asturias. Leyendas de Guatemala, 9a ed. (Guatemala: Editorial Piedra Santa, 2006). 10 Gerald Martin, 128. 5 baby has died of malnutrition, due to their poverty. After the funeral, the story suddenly crosses a threshold to a world where traditions and legends are fused with reality. The opening of El Pajaro Blanco is an orchestral prelude that describes a dawn and the mystical ambiance of the scene. It is followed by the first tableaux representing a burial that is taking place. The people of the entire village gather and walk to the cemetery. They follow the little coffin of the baby, which is carried by the family’s friends.11 The inconsolable parents follow the wooden coffin and the pain destroys the mother. The next scene happens after the burial: the mother is left alone when a feeling of despair overwhelms her. Immediately “bad spirits” visit her. First, a spirit in the form of a bat flies around her, giving her torment. A changing 7/4 - 3/4 - 4/4 meter and strong rhythmic accents represent the violent movements of the flying animal. The passage is written with a combination of tuba, trombones, and solo trumpet, supported by the strings and percussion.12 The following tableaux represents the appereance of an owl. This nocturnal bird is important in the ancient cultures and in popular oral tradition because it is believed to be related to the underworld. Jorge included this figure based on the refrain from oral tradition, “When the owl sings the indian dies.” It is mainly a signal of bad luck and death. This scene is followed by the apparition of Death itself, portrayed as a skeleton, representing an indelible and unavoidable destiny that all 11 As explained by Jorge. I remember seeing this role danced by Antonio Crespo, a wonderful Guatemalan dancer and choreographer who worked as soloist in the Ballet Guatemala for decades. His movements were amazing. He was an intellectual and revolutionary artist too. My father conducted the orchestra at the famous Teatro Capitol during the Ballet Guatemala seasons of 1970-1974, when I was still a boy. I was astonished by the magical scene and by the bat costume. 12 6 people will face. The tradition says that we will be carried by “her” to the “other side” at any time. The next scene is a musical interlude where the mother find herself alone restlessly tormented by the spirits. However, this moment fades out when suddenly a beautiful white bird appears in front of her and comforts her: it is the White Bird who brings consolation and hope. The ballet ends with a village fair where everything returns to normal life. Sarmientos depicts it with flutes and oboes in 3/4 meter, in an imitation of a masquerade, where a man plays a little barrel organ. Before the conclusion, two marimba players play a short passage in the traditional style of “son barreño.” 13 Jorge used to show off by playing the principal part on the marimba himself while also conducting the orchestra. It is a melancholic and tender melody in 6/8 with a typical asymmetrical pattern belonging to the son barreño. At the coda, the 5/4 meter is recognizable followed by a 3/4 evoking the finale of Maurice Ravel’s Suite No.2 from the ballet “Daphnis et Chloe.” 14 The premiere of El Pajaro Blanco took placed on 29 March 1957. Jorge conducted the National Symphony Orchestra of Guatemala and it was danced by the Ballet Guatemala in the city of Antigua Guatemala at Las Ruinas de La Santa Cruz, an open atrium of an old church from the seventeenth century transformed into an amphitheater; that date was also his debut as conductor.15 13 A traditional marimba style played by the Mam-Jacalteco Indians from the highlands of the Cuchumatanes region in North West Guatemala. 14 See his French influence. 15 Diario El Imparcial. Guatemala, 30 March 1957, n.p. Document found in his personal album. 7 El Pajaro Blanco was an immediate success and was quickly adopted into the repertoire of the TAU (Teatro de Arte Universitario). The TAU included it in its international tour in 1957. The late dramaturge and actor Carlos Mencos Deka directed it.16 Jorge joined the group as the official orchestral conductor. The tour also included in its repertoire the “Estampas del Popol Vuh” also composed by Jorge. The group visited Israel, Turkey, The Hague, and Rome. On that occasion, he conducted the Tel-Aviv Philharmonic with a program comprised exclusively of Guatemalan repertoire. In the same season, he also conducted orchestras specially gathered for the occasions.17 He borrowed the tune “Berceuse” 18 or “Cancion de Cuna” from the “Seis Cantos,” for the Danza del Pajaro Blanco (Dance of the White Bird). It is written in 6/8 meter and is a lullaby representing the hope and the consolation that the White Bird brings to the mother of the dead child. This is another moment in which Jorge brings together imaginary and real worlds; it is a way to imitate the indigenous life by taking real aspects of its culture. This process helps to keep the oral tradition alive by including it within the European musical tradition. Even if the music is written in the European tradition, the indigenous traditional cosmovision is preserved through the story. I think it is another way to preserve the oral traditions, as Martin Lienhard mentions.19 What is most interesting about Sarmientos’s Pajaro Blanco, are the syncretic characteristics with which it was conceived and represented. 16 Carlos Menkos was an actor and theater director, play writer, poet and intellectual whose work left an imprint in Guatemalan theater history. 17 El Imparcial. Noticias del tour La Haya TAU, Istanbul, Rome, The Hague. The Guatemalan Ambassador in Rome, Colonel Guillermo Flores Avendaño, reported these events, Mayo 11-19 1957, n.p. 18 He was predominantly influenced by French music and titles. 19 Martin Lienhard. La Voz y su Huella: Escritura y conflicto etnico-social en America Latina (1492-1988). (New Hampshire: Ediciones del Norte 1991), 46. 8 Theodor Adorno states that “music is not just an ideology in the sense of being a clear tool of domination”20 and “the sociological interpretation of music is the better grounded, the higher the quality of the music.” 21 Figure 8. Jorge is conducting the premiere of El Pajaro Blanco on 29 of March 1957 in Antigua Guatemala at Ruinas de la Santa Cruz with the Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional de Guatemala. Seated on his left is the Music Director of the OSN and great violinist Andres Archila. Archila served as concertmaster of the National Symphony Orchestra of Washington DC. He retired in 1987. (Photo from Sarmientos’ family archive). 20 21 Theodor Adorno. Sound Figures. (California: Stanford University Press, 1999), 3. Ibid., 13. 9 I agree with Adorno’s conceptualization; it provides a guideline here: the social content of El Pajaro Blanco shows an imaginary drama based on reality. Adorno states that the more solid a musical work’s sociological foundation and justification, the higher the probability that work will be valid not only philosophically but also aesthetically. 22 Thus with Adorno’s statement of “solid foundation and justification” makes possible to set the reasons to validate Jorge’s work also through his social and political content. I justify this philosophical approach by recognizing its social essence, and also, it is a circumstance connected to his early social and political consciousness. An important and “surrealist” factor is that melancholy and death are part of a mestizo culture inherited from the mystical and religious past. I recognize that the relationship between the magical and the real is present as part of the cultural inheritance of mestizo art. Barrios Peña explains, “the mestizo in his visual art and narrative, laughs and delights in a psychic pantheism that never comes to accept death as such, but only interprets it in a phantasmagoric way” 23 The mestizo, as a hybrid entity, is the product of a cultural background that is clouded by historical circumstances, but it is these circumstances that have shaped his identity. As an example, the Mexican muralist art has indigenous and European roots. It transmits the ceremonial, political, and religious elements only found in the pre-Hispanic paintings representing the original population of the region. It is also a product of the cultural syncretism 22 23 Ibid. Jaime Barrios Peña. Quinientos años despues, Arte Mestizo. (Guatemala: Editorial Universitaria, Universidad de San Carlos de Guatemala, 2007), 103, my translation. The mestizo constructs a fantastic-spiritual and psychological representation of death between himself and the reality of death in order to confront and accept death itself. The day of the dead in Mexico and Guatemala are examples of this pantheism and magical vision. 10 from the mix of races.24 During the decade bewteen 1940 and 1950, Mesoamerican artists and writers intermingled indigenous and mestizo influences within a structure that defined national identiy. This identity is still ambiguous because there is a paradox and denial of mestizo origins. This combination of mestizo and indigenous perspectives is central to realism magico. 25 These works are defined by tragedy and sorrow. The joy becomes sorrow, and the sorrow becomes joy. This is exactly the case for El Pajaro Blanco. Jorge found his voice, unaware that he was making ties with the realismo magico. When he was composing he was unconsciously working in the same way as Miguel Angel Asturias, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Pablo Neruda, Alejo Carpentier, Jorge Amado, Juan Rulfo. Jorge Sarmientos used the same motives and vision as those Latin American writers, starting from the tradition of indigenous, mestizo and cosmopolitan elements to represent the essence of Latin America. Like many writers and artist in the early twentieth century, Jorge came to recognize his Guatemalan identity and his need to express it only after he was in Paris. As Gerald Martin suggests, the writer draws on his roots in order to understand himself.26 The same happens in Jorge’s music, which departs from the village to the city, to the nation, and then transforms it into a cosmopolitan, and international work that finally returns to the country which appropriates it.27 His music is full of the picturesque past and the contemporary, convulsive life of the region, drawn directly from the experience of the people. 24 Ibid. Realismo Magico a Latin American literary genre, originated on the first half of Twentieth century. Its characteristics are define as a stylistic concern and interest to show the unreal the strange as an everyday and commonplace. It is not magical in itself but is by showing the common daily and sometimes-absurd things in life can become a fantastic representation of a moment. http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/356736/magic-realism. Accessed on 9 December 2014, 11:39 am. 26 Gerald Martin, 124-126. 27 Ibid., 126. 25 11 He constructs an imaginary world with which a Guatemalan audience can identify. His melodies are sweet and melancholic but also dramatic. After his return from Argentina, he uses a new musical language, but his psychological discourse and the ethno-fiction do not change. On 11 August 2014, I interviewed some former members of the National Symphony Orchestra of Guatemala, among them, Alfonso Alvarado former cellist with the NSO. He expressed that when Sarmientos came back from Argentina he changed his way of writing music, meaning his style and musical language. I asked what his opinion was about Jorge’s compositions after 1966; he said: “Jorge should get back to the way he used to compose.” Of course he was referring to his tonal and nationalist period.28 Here is a transcription of some parts of the interview. The people interviewed were Alfonso Alvarado, Jose Santos Paniagua, Nestor Arevalo, Jose Alfredo Mazariegos, Julio Garcia Pelaez, and Robelio Mendez, all former members of the NSO. IS: In those days, how did you regard Jorge’s music? AA (cello): Jorge was a very intelligent man. When he went to Argentina, he left Guatemala and the folkloric way he composed music. When he returned from Argentina, he totally changed his style. He came with a new system that we were not used to hearing and in which we had to play many different effects, like playing on the body of the instrument. However, these were not his original ideas. IS: Did his music cause any form of rejection from the orchestra musicians? 28 This is not a surprising answer from a person born in a conservative, traditional, and culturally and artistically closed-minded country, where any signals of avant-garde movements have little attention from the society. Jorge struggle against this all his life. Other avant-garde artists are found in the painting and literature fields but they survived more easily, being autonomous. There are no policies for the development of art. 12 AA (cello): The music was new, and we took it as a novelty. We were accustomed to playing only Classical and Romantic music. JSP (violin): I remember Jorge used to program new music for the Orchestra (Bartok, Schoenberg, Berg, Webern, Berio). We told him, “Please do not make us play that music.” Jorge asked me, “Don’t you like it?” We said “no, we do no,” then he replied, “but why not? It is good and interesting music.” However, little by little because of him we all began to like the new music that we were playing, because he conducted it in an excellent and interesting way. He also explained to us the meaning and the theory of the works. We owe to Jorge the introduction of new music and the change in the [orchestral] musical repertoire in Guatemala. By his initiative, he introduced me to the Concerto for Violin and Orchestra by Igor Stravinsky. He proposed to me to perform the Stravinsky concerto, which we did with enormous success. RM (percussion): I remember I did not like to play certain new music but because of him I learned the music of Stravinsky, Bartok, and others. Also, I learned to recognize with Jorge’s music to be aware of the political events of the last decades in Guatemala, which he represented during an epoch of struggle that is now significant for Guatemala. It reminded me how many people died. JGP (flute): Since the sixties I always asked him to write a flute concerto for me. He always said “I will.” When he returned from Argentina, he came to me and said: “this is one of the works I submitted to Torcuatto di Tella. It was the Sextet, which had many strange (sic) things,29 but I said, “No, no. I want it in the style of El Pajaro Blanco, the Marimba Concerto, Popol Vuh and that beautiful music you used to write.” 29 Here he refers to the Sextet for Winds and Piano No.2 op.35, (1965) where Jorge made use of the 12-tone technique. 13 JAM (cello): When I came back from Mexico, the orchestra had already been playing that music. The problem was not only about playing the music, but there were some verbal confrontations with him when he was rehearsing the works. The other thing is that he used to program this music [contemporary music], about two or three times in a single month. It was uncomfortable for us. I think it was more due to his personality than rejection to the works. IS: Is there any work you may recall that has stayed with you? JAM (cello): Yes, when we played the Obertura Popular again, we had a distinct vision of the past. We understood what the work was about. Now in Bolivar [Bolivar for Mixed Choir, Op.52, 1982], I would not say that I like it, but he included words because he knew that there were certain things that music cannot express.30 Also El Destello de Hiroshima, where he achieved the infrasound (sic), but I can say that Bolivar made me think about many different aspects of music. He renewed his technique, conception, and his interpretation.31 NA (violin): If I can say that I was impressed by one of his works I can mention the Violin Concerto, [also known as Musica para Violin y Orquesta (1971)]…which I respect a lot, but which I cannot approach right now because I have other works to play.32 He always told me, “You are an excellent lawyer, but you are a better violin player.” Therefore, the Concerto for Violin is the work that has impressed me most.33 30 He is trivializing the fact that the intention of Jorge was to fuse the ideogramatic connection between literature and music. Jorge wrote it after the poem by Miguel Angel Asturias. This reinforced the relationship between music and literature that he visualized and again he shows his close ties with Miguel Angel Asturias. 31 Bolivar was premiered in Guatemala in April of 1982, with the Xalapa Choir (100 members) and the Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional de Guatemala in the National Theater, with Jorge conducting. 32 The truth is that the violin concerto is a monumental work for violin and large orchestra. It is written in serial form. It is a challenge for any violinist. 33 The whole interview was recorded in the morning of Monday, 11 August 2014 at the Conservatorio Nacional de Musica, room No. 2, from 11:00 am 12:30 pm. 14 Through the conversation with them, it was evident that there is still a significant conservative mentality, which is deeply rooted in Guatemalan society. Of course, we cannot generalize. Despite significant changes in his tonal language, Jorge never abandoned his ideals and socialist values. Instead, now that he had learned the modern techniques of composition, he expanded the possibilities to express his thoughts and ideas. I can say therefore without any doubt that the elements that characterize “realismo Magico” are found in his music through the “Guatemalan imaginary.” His art is in solidarity with the people so that the musical language becomes a narrative through an imaginary transfiguration. He is tied to the “realismo magico” current because he defines in his music the relation between the people of Guatemala and the natural and social world they inhabit.34 The same case can be related in a way to brothers Jesus and Ricardo Castillo and to a lesser extent to Benigno Mejia (1911-2004) and Jose Porfirio Gonzalez Alcantara (1926-1992). According to Lehnhoff, these last two Guatemalan composers shared an autochthonous and nationalist musical style. Porfirio Gonzalez was also within the folklorist and national style, but with a more tonal symphonic language. Gonzalez wrote various ballet and symphonic works, among them El Nahual.35 Although the style of these composers was nationalist, they lack the political engagement in their works, with the exception of Benigno Mejia.36 Benigno Mejia composed one of the first musical works related to Guatemalan political events in the twentieth century. Besides his authoctonous and nationalist style works, he wrote sacred marches, and composed other symphonic works. His Symphonic Poem “20 de Octubre” 34 Gerald Martin, 123. Ibid. 36 Lehnhoff. Creacion Musical, 253. 35 15 written in 1947, is a work that utilizes descriptive sounds to depict the events of the Revolution of 1944. It was wide performed.37 The music of Gonzalez and Mejia was more inspired by the folkloric-ladino landscape than an intellectual modernism and much less related to the contemporary period. Jorge shared a contemporary musical language with nationalist composers such as Silvestre Revueltas, Carlos Chavez in Mexico, and Alberto Ginastera. What these composers have in common is the same vision through which they describe their own cultural and sociological environment. In the case of Jorge Sarmientos, the ethnofiction found in his works always brings together magic, death, ordinary people, poetry, traditions, legends, and costumes. Through this process, Jorge exalts human beings hand in hand with the concrete phenomena.38 Such works result from his consciousness of and identification with the experiences of his people: the pain, suffering, the tragedy behind the picturesque scene and the feeling of sorrow. A clear suggestion of an early connection and relationship between his music and the literature was pointed out in 1976 in a writing of the Guatemalan poet Manuel Jose Arce. Arce paid homage to Jorge in his column Diario de un Escribiente when Jorge received the Palmes Academiques of France on 3 December 1976 in the residence of the French ambassador. He wrote: “Jorge, lord of the noise, (lord) of the thunder and the cries of his people. Jorge Sarmientos is in music what Miguel Angel Asturias is in literature.”39 37 Ibid., 267. My grandfather, Vicente, Jorge’s father was a “shaman” or “curandero” in the village. From this family experience Jorge took the extraordinary experience of being close to the mystical realm. I also had the opportunity to experience this world when I was a child. 39 Manuel Jose Arce. Diario El Grafico. Diario de un Escribiente. Carta para el patojo marimbista de San Antonio Suchitepequez que recibio las Palmas Acdemicas de Francia. (Guatemala, February 13, 1977), 14. 38 16 According to Mario Roberto Morales, Jorge’s long time friend, Jorge mentioned to him in conversations, that he had read Cuentos de Joyabaj by Francisco Morales, La Mansion del Pajaro Serpiente by Virgilio Rodriguez Macal and Al filo del Agua by the Mexican writer Agustin Yañez.40 Jorge also used to read the books of Alejo Carpentier,41 such as “La consagracion de la Primavera” (after Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring), 42 which I witnessed him read. Agustin Yañez’s Al filo del Agua 43 is a novel that contains a narrative about the daily life of a poor peasant village. It is a series of scenes of hopelessness where the priest, the mayor and the politician make their arrangements without any benefit to the villagers; it is an old town where time stopped. These narratives have a connection and share the same elements of reality and fiction represented in Jorge’s music. These works construct imagined accounts as a form of denunciation of reality. In Al filo del Agua, Yañez brings to life a small peasant community that was abandoned and whose people were forgotten. Jorge, in his musical narrative, comes to claim that the continue disregard of the indigenous population is due to social injustice. Mario Roberto stated in our phone conversation that these fictitious discourses and denouncements of real events are part of realismo magico.44 It is not strange then to find ties between Socialist ideals and this literary current. 40 Mario Roberto Morales, interviewed by me on 24 December 2014. Carpentier was an important Cuban writer and an icon of the Latin American literature, 1904-1980. Many scholars give him the place to be one of the originators of the Magical Realism. 42 I saw him many times reading this book. Now it is in my personal library. 43 Agustin Yañez. Al filo del Agua. (Mexico: Editorial Porrua, 1967). Published in 1947 for the first time. 44 Mario Roberto Morales, interviewed by me on December 24 2014, at 1:40 pm via Skype. 41 17 Therefore, knowing that Jorge had read these books, I perceive many aspects of their content in the story of El Pajaro Blanco and of later works. These regional narratives attempt to represent and denounce to the outside world the inhuman and unfair circumstances of their people. The art would depict the daily life of a village, a city, the country, which later becomes accesible to the entire world.45 The ethnofiction is an important element since it represents the essence of a social collective. It provides the means to construct what is real, what is not and what could have been. In Guatemala, the ladino-mestizo searches in history to fullfill the need for an identity; it is a need to be part of an accepted ethnic group. While the ancient cultural groups struggle for their existence and their rights, the mestizo tries to constructs his socio-cultural presence. One of the main characteristics of Jorge Sarmientos’s music is the need to tell a story in narrative form, always resorting to the past. His musical narrative always originates from an imagined indigenous past to mark his identity. In his art, there is a need to give voice to the pain of the repression, discrimination, and poverty that his people suffer. He uses his roots, his people, his family, his world to stay connected to his social sentiment and his identity. Jorge always had the need to express his inner feelings. He could not go so far away out of his psychological boundaries. His personality was imbued with it. If his music contains such existentialist elements within these phenomenological layers, then it can be considered part of magical realist thought.46 45 Martin explains that cosmopolitanism is inevitable. Gerald Martin. Journeys through the Labyrinth: Latin American Fiction in the Twentieth Century. (New York: Verso, 1989), 124. 46 Mario Roberto Morales, interviewed by the author on 24 December 2014, 1:14 pm, via Skype. For this thesis I had a wonderful conversation with the writer Dr. Mario Roberto Morales a very well-known and respected scholar, renowned for his writings about literature, politics and social fields in Guatemala. He has won literature prizes and written several novels and political opinions in newspapers. He agreed with my thesis about the elements of realismo magico found in Jorge’s music. 18 Ricardo Castillo, Jorge’s teacher, used many national and “folk” titles for his compositions. Ricardo was born in Quetzaltenango and was the younger brother of Jesus Castillo, an icon in Guatemalan music. Jesus was an active composer at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century in Guatemala. He is considered the first Guatemalan musician to explore Guatemalan Maya-Quiches’ music.47 Jesus is now recognize as the first musician who initiated ethnomusicology in Guatemala and Central America. He was in search of the “nation.” Jesus Castillo wrote the first Guatemalan opera titled “Quiche–Vinak” (1925-1927), which was orchestrated by Fabian Rodriguez.48 The Castillo brothers would be a significant influence in Jorge’s music. Jorge Sarmientos’s nationalistic period began at an early stage, but it was with the “Cinco Estampas Cackchiqueles”, for choir, timpani, and harp in 1953 that he became more involved with it. It is an imagined representation of the descendants of the Maya, the Cackchiquel people, who are still the inhabitants of the west, central, and southwest regions of Guatemala. The imagination of a musical past is the only source he had. Jorge always stated that he never composed “folklore” but he tried to “imagine indigenous melodies.”49 Here, we have to stop and point out that reliable information about the ancient Mayan music has never been found.50 Even though some scholars make genuine efforts to reveal the structures and 47 Enrique Anleu Diaz. Historia critica de la música de Guatemala. (Guatemala: Artemis Edinter, 1991), 144. 48 Ibid. 49 He expressed this statement with insistence when he was asked how he defined his“indian” melodies from his nationalist period. 50 There are many studies about the “Mayan” music, based on instruments found though excavations at different archaeological sites. Yet there is not any trace about the musical practices of the Mayan civilization. No written source has been found. Instruments such as ocarinas, flutes, rattles, drums, and trumpets give us an idea of the kinds of sounds they made. However, the musical combination of their sounds is unknown. 19 organology, the sound of this music remains unknown.51 Anthropological and archeological studies have demonstrated the use of the Mayan instruments in religious ceremonies and have mentioned the blue color found in the musical instruments (aerophones, idiophones) in ceremonial use. Conjectures about the use of music come from depictions portrayed in different murals and vases found in archeological sites. Many ethnomusicologists have also made efforts to classify instruments and have proposed theories about how they were played.52 Nevertheless, as I mentioned before, the musical notation, sound combination and techniques that were used are still unknown. Sometimes researchers’ conjectures have caused more distortion than clarification. Jorge intended to recreate an imagined vision of the music of the past, knowing that it was not the original material. The town of San Antonio Suchitepéquez, where Jorge was born, was an ancient area of trade between the western highlands and the lowlands of Guatemala. Like any other child, he experienced the traditions of that small town, which fused indigenous customs with Catholic festivities. The sugar cane, the fruit, the culinary tradition, the heat and humidity, the rivers, and the idiosyncrasy of its people, make the region singular. The Cinco Estampas Cackchiqueles op.5 (1953), makes use of instruments that imitate the indigenous ones such as drums, flutes, and rattles. For this purpose, he uses timpani, transverse flute, and a turtle shell (an original prehispanic instrument), in addition to Tun (Maya name) or Teponaxtli (Nahuatl name) to create an “indigenous imaginary.”53 51 Matias Stockli. Iconografia Musical. FAMSI. Foundation for Mesoamerican studies. http://www.famsi.org/reports/03101es/55stockli/55stockli.pdf. Accessed on 9 December 2014, 12:03 pm. 52 Alfonso Arrivillaga. Instrumentos Musicales Mayas. (Chiapas, Mexico: Universidad Intercultural de Chiapas, 2006). 53 Jorge had special access to the ancient Tun instrument in his home town since he was very close to the “Cofradia” (circle of elders and religious leaders). They allowed him to use the 20 In 1946 the Mayan site of Bonampak in the tropical jungle of Chiapas, Mexico was discovered. It is especially important to mention this here since it gives a significant idea of the greatness of the Maya civilization and an inspiring element for the Latin American culture. Bonampak is a Maya temple where a mural in an interior room depicts ancient orchestras playing in ceremonial scenes. The procession of Bonampak gives us an idea of the kind of instruments the Maya used to play. The murals have survived all these centuries by chance and are a reliable source on the musical past.54 However, those instruments are not found in modern days. These and other ancient instruments have been reconstructed by amateur ethno-musicians for pedagogic purposes and to encourage renewed interest in Mayan music. What is played today in the towns of Guatemala obviously is not the same music played in the ancient ceremonial occasions. It is just a glimpse of a distant memory.55 The decline of these old customs is due to the penetration of foreign cultural and religious influences; the original traditions are harder to recognize in recent years. In general, what has survived today is only a reminiscence of a glorious epoch when the dances and indigenous music were performed traditionally by the “elders.” 56 Being acquainted with this, Jorge had the tools to construct an imaginary society using an “imagined folklore.”57 As I mentioned before, “imaginary folklore” is precisely the term that Jorge used to refer to his “indian melodies” when original instrument to be played in some of his works. The instrument was considered to be several centuries old according to oral tradition. 54 Mary Ellen Miller et al. The spectacle of the late Maya court: reflections on the murals of Bonampak. (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2013). 55 San Antonio’s fests are hold every June 13 under the catholic calendar. 56 A decline in the festivities have occurred due to the acculturation and western religious influences. 57 A concept of Bruno Nettl about “Imagine societies” that he applied in his ethnomusical studies. Certainly I can relate it to the realismo magico current. 21 he imagined the world of the ancient Maya people. Such elements in Jorge’s music come to be significant to his creation and are crucial to the thesis I am developing here. The relationship between El Pajaro Blanco and realismo magico is established in the work’s mystical ambience and the supernatural world that intervenes and combines with the social, ethnic, and popular reality; Jorge absorbed all of these sources from the oral tradition of the people in his pictorial mind. His works represent the daily life of the indigenous people of Guatemala where traditions and legends are fused with reality. The period of Guatemalan nationalism occurred simultaneously with similar movements in other countries, especially Mexico. Around 1940, the Mexican cinema was starting to reach what is known as its “Golden Age”, in which the figure of the charro portrayed an image of national identity. Films also worked to expose the problem of the absence of social justice and the poverty of the slums in the city. In the fifties films like “Los Olvidados (The forgotten) by Luis Buñuel 58 were well accepted and popular in the cinema halls of Guatemala. Los Olvidados tells a tragic story of the life of children in a slum of Mexico City. In the film, many direct moral and social-political messages are delivered to the audience. These messages pervade the dialog and the visual scenes where compassion for the poor is emphasized. The cultural, social and economic conditions shown still exist in all countries in Latin America, making it not only a Mexican film but also a Latin American one. The tragic story in the urban scenes shows injustice, poverty and the dangerous environment of this low-class mestizo neighborhood, as well as the gap between the rich and the poor. 58 Buñuel was a Spanish-Mexican film director who emphasized the social element in his films. 22 The “Golden Age” of the Mexican cinema was permeated with strong social messages and representations of the idiosyncrasy of rural and urban life. With its intense nationalism in vogue at that time, Mexico also exported its musical baggage through famous singers and actors. Artists such as Pedro Infante, Jorge Negrete, Luis Aguilar and Libertad Lamarque, and many others sang rancheras and romantic popular songs that were top hits not only in Mexico but also in other countries. The films also included and introduced Caribbean music genres such as mambo and cha-cha-cha, which experienced a vogue in Guatemala as performed in many films by the orchestra of Dámaso Pérez Prado.59 These influences permeated music and other arts in Guatemala. The representation of social life was an essential element in the arts of the 1950s, corresponding with the real and the magical thought of the artists. The Spanish-Mexican Rodolfo Halffter who was a respected symphonic composer wrote the music for Los Olvidados.60 In the same period, “Seis Cantos Campesinos de Esperanza” Wp. Op.12 (1955) by Sarmientos was one of the earliest compositions in Guatemala denouncing the same year’s Coup d’état. It has no lyrics included but the tittle is suggestive. Sarmientos’s works gradually became more political. La Muerte de un Personaje, depicts Ernesto “Che” Guevara; Ofrenda y Gratitud ( Terremoto 76),besides describing the earthquake of that year, denounces the military’s illegal killings. His work Responso, Hommage II, Homenaje a Mario Lopez Larrave Wp.Op. 46 (1977), includes a powerful discourse dennouncing the assassination of Mario Lopez Larrave. Lopez Larrave was a Guatemalan union lawyer and Jorge’s friend; he was assassinated by the anti-communist groups under supervision 59 Jorge Sierra. La musica en Guatemala desde la Contrarrevolucion, in Virgilio Alvarez, Mario Roberto Morales, et al., 246. 60 Rodolfo Halffter 1900-1987. Spanish-Mexican composer. Although the music for the film is tonal, he composed works in serial manner. 23 of the army and the extreme right wing within the government. In the year of 1980, the Government censored this work, and it could not be played in Guatemala. The opening depicts the sound of a machine gun, played by the percussion, followed by the sound of an ambulance and police sirens arriving at the tragic site. His political thought returned to the events of 2 August 1954 when he wrote a work for large orchestra. In the year 2004, he was given a commission to write a work to commemorate these events. He entitle it “Los Heroes tienen 15 años” (The heroes are 15 years old). The work was named after the book with the same tittle “Los Heroes tienen 15 años”, written by the former cadet and journalist Carlos Enrique Wer. 61 It was premiered by the Orquesta Sinfonica Jesus Castillo under my conducting on 4 August 2004. It was composed for the 50th Anniversary of the invasion of Guatemala by the army of the counter-revolution backed by the United States. The piece commemorated the fact that youth army cadets tried to defend their country, and the National Army did not. The story is about a small troop of young soldiers of the military academy who decided to defend Guatemala’s honor from the foreign aggression. On that August morning, they had a skirmish with the invading army. They resisted for forty-eight hours. They were defeated by the counterrevolutionary army or the so called “liberation” army. The cadets were called the soldiers of dignity because of the courage they showed. Their ages were between fifteen and seventeenth years old. The work is dedicated to these cadets. The mood is depressive throughout the whole work. The hopeless ambiance and dark passages show Jorge’s feelings about this event: his sadness and loss. It uses low registers and in the end, a cyclical theme that is heard until it completely disappears and fades out in ppp dynamics. 61 Carlos Enrique Wer. En Guatemala, Los Heroes tienen 15 años. (Guatemala: Armar Editores, 2003). 24 In this scenario, I find again reality and imagination interwoven. This fact, the day when the forces of the counter-revolution defeated the cadets inspired a feeling of pessimism and hopeless sentiments in the mind of the composer. The end, which I have described as lugubrious and dark, becomes part of an imagined situation; the reality that does not exist anymore remains in the memory of a past now gone. It recreates a world that connects the events with the musical discourse. The transformation of the facts into music connects the political context to the magical one.62 Maggie Ann Bowers states: Magical realism is most commonly associated with the geographic area of Latin America. It is a common misconception that all magical realism is Latin American and that it originated particularly in tropical regions of Central America. All the same, it must be acknowledged that Latin America is an important location for magical realist literary production. 63 In an interview during his first visit to Japan in 1988, Jorge expressed that: During 1965, my style changed a lot when I did study dodecaphony under Maestro Alberto Ginastera. It was also then when I learned that I should not serve any musical system in particular, but the system should serve my purpose . . . later I studied with Maestro Pierre Boulez, which was very useful to me also. Therefore since 1980 I made it my goal to unify all systems, tonal, atonal and quasi-folkloric; they can be heard particularly in my work Bolivar of 1982 based on the poem Bolivar by Miguel Angel Asturias.64 62 Maggie Ann Bowers. Magic(al) Realism, the new critical idiom. (New York: Routledge, Taylor and Francis group, 2004), 32. 63 Ibid. Bowers points out that this tendency has more representation in Latin America but personally I think that Central America is its source due to the strong cultural syncretism in the region. Realismo magico exists due to the paradoxes and contradictions of the idiosyncratic daily life in this region. 64 Music Today Quarterly. Volverse arido por servir a un Sistema. Vol.1 n.3. Japan: December 15, 1988, trans. into Spanish by Yukitaka Hirao. 25 Again, he used literature by Miguel Angel Asturias, who according to Mario Roberto Morales and Gerald Martin, is one of the initiators of the realismo magico and the Social Realist movement in Latin America.65 I have found many sources connecting Jorge’s work to realismo magico. Many of his works are based on oral tradition. He explained this content in program notes and interviews. As he points out, he uses a variety of musical systems to create and write what he feels without being dependent on any one. He spoke about this in an interview given to Musical Quarterly in Japan: MQ: What opinion do you have about electronic music and music that uses electronic means? JS: I think that all instrumental sounds and ambiances too, represent music. I would like very much to compose [tape] music. Nevertheless, in Guatemala we do not have a music laboratory for electroacoustic music. Now my friend Joaquin Orellana is making it possible that this music becomes reality. I would like very much to have an electronic music studio. I would like to compose music for tape and orchestra. 66 MQ: So, it is in that way that you intend to include the folkloric in your music? JS: That which is national is very important for my identity. I would like to keep introducing Guatemalan elements into my music in the future, although this is something that springs naturally without any intention.” MQ: What is your interest in the present European music? 65 Interview in radio broadcast. Conversan acerca de la obra y vida de Miguel Angel Asturias. Guatemala: Emisoras Unidas. http://noticias.emisorasunidas.com/noticias/primerahora/conversan-acerca-obra-vida-miguel-angel-asturias, 9 June 2014. Accessed on 15 January 2015. 4:03 pm; Gerald Martin, 94. 66 Ibid. 26 JS: I think that they have the tendency to elaborate their music too much which results in musical dryness. Among composers of contemporary music, there are some that have become very dry, not only in Europe but the United States and Japan and other places. I believe that music is communication and spiritual message, and it is precisely this sensitivity that exist in it that I want to preserve.”67 Jean Paul Sartre points out that “imagining, like emotion, promises more than it delivers.”68 I imagine, then that, as Husserl discussed in some detail, imagining is a particular way of making objects present.69 Therefore, the imagination that comes from the awareness of the object originates from the construction of the self. Since Jorge uses a variety of musical techniques, the national ideology is transformed into a cosmopolitan language and shows how thoroughly his music is permeated with the real and the magical substance. Jorge constructs a reality from human relationships and from the morals and ethics of collective processes of pursuing a common welfare, showing his constant concern for social and political phenomena. For him, the crude reality did not match his human perspective. Sarmientos wished to transform this reality by constructing a different human relationship through the aesthetic process. Jean Paul Sartre states that, “it [the imaginary] is a form of consciousness, which is ‘quasi-observational,’” 70 which means that it projects beyond what is actually perceived, since outer awareness gives only a partial, one-sided glance at the object, while the object should be 67 Ibid. Dermot Moran. Introduction to Phenomenology. (New York: Rutledge, 2007), 380. 69 Ibid., 381. 70 Ibid. 68 27 given a series of profiles.71 Then how is it that the imaginary and the reality convey together? Barrios Peña points out that “Alejo Carpentier combines time and space within an involving movement. It demonstrates that the whole and the parts, reencounter themselves in the total of the existence.”72 Following the philosophical line of Sartre’s studies in L’imaginaire, it suggests both, the function of imagining and the kind of world which this imagining generates.73 Sarmientos’s last scores were more inclined to pay homage to Guatemalan figures such as writer Luis Cardoza y Aragon and his teacher Ricardo Castillo. He also wrote a work dedicated to the relationships between Japan and Guatemala,“Guatemala-Japon”, and in 1996, completed a composition titled La Paz, (The Peace), based on the Guatemalan poet Julio Fausto Aguilera’s poem La Paz. This last work was commissioned by the office of FONAPAZ (Fondo Nacional para la Paz), whose director was the former Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom, in order to be premiered the day of the peace agreements (acuerdos de paz) celebrated on 30 December 1997. However, it was never played in Guatemala due to President Alvaro Arzu’s dislike of Jorge’s past. 74 Nevertheless, the following year it was performed in Venezuela by the Simon Bolivar Symphony Orchestra, with Jorge conducting. His compositions are an invaluable contribution, revealing the rich cultural, ideological, and anthropological baggage of his country. The place of Jorge Sarmientos is significant in the Guatemalan music history and analysis of his works revels him to be a programmatic composer deeply related to the literary current of Realismo Magico. 71 Ibid. Barrios Peña, 185. 73 Moran, 379. 74 Arzu is an extreme right-wing leader. Although this cannot be proven, the last minute cancel of the concert is enough to accept this as a fact. 72 28 29