Hesapa ki Lakhota ki Thawapi
Kyle Gann [1984/89] Octeto Malandro
Arturo Marquez [1996] HRT
Michael Nyman [1995] Paramell VI
Stephen Montague [1984] |back|
Hesapa ki Lakhota ki Thawapi (The Black Hills Belong to the Sioux) was written
during yet another attempt by the American government to take away the Sioux's uranium-rich sacred land in defiance of earlier treaties. The piece is a structural metaphor: a rolling 12/8 pattern from which bits are progressively subtracted,
rendering the rhythm nervous and fragmented. The melodies are developed from a Sioux Flag Song, quoted once in its entirety. I made up the drum's syncopations in imitation of Zuni patterns, and later found identical rhythms in San Juan Pueblo music. (KG)
Composed in collaboration with the Relâche Ensemble in Phoenix, AZ at Arizona
State University West as part of the program Music In Motion, Octeto Malandro
consists of a series of variations derived from song forms comprising the Son and Danzon.
These forms, originally from Cuba, inform much of the dance music from states throughout Mexico.
Arturo often utilizes dance forms from Latin and Caribbean countries as the impetus for his current musical works. (JF)
HRT stands for High Rise Terminal, a term from linguistics which refers to the way
that some English speakers (especially Australians, sometimes Americans) end their sentences with a rising inflection, sometimes giving the statement the feel of a question. Self-evidently, a recurring melodic motif of HRT is a schematized
reflection of this inflection. (MN)
Paramell VI is a chamber version of the two piano work, Paramell written at the
MacDowell Artists Colony in 1981. In this version, a solo piano is accompanied by three instruments whose function is to only 'color'
the piano's sound rather than interact in the traditional way. 'Paramell' is a portmanteau word
that combines 'parallel' and 'melody'. Stylistically the work stems from the American "minimalist" tradition (of Riley, Reich and Glass) but goes its separate way. The extensive use of repetitive phrases and patterns exhibits a clear overall shape of growth, climax and denouement which has something of a 19th century quality about it. (SM)