SOBRE LAS OLAS (Pierrot ensemble + percussion)

Sobre las olas (2023)

for flute, clarinet, violin, cello, percussion, and prepared piano (17’)

program note:

I. Una Noche Serena y Oscura

II. Popurrí

III. Despedida

Sobre las Olas (Over the Waves) is inspired by the songs my grandfather Mencho and his brothers sang in their youth as Tejano child migrant farm workers. He rarely spoke about his childhood and Mexican-ness was generally discouraged in the children, but I vividly remember hiding in the hallway outside my grandmother’s sewing room and listening to the Badillo brothers play and sing their hearts out — high and defiant. Their music was equal parts folk music from the lower border (corridos), Tex-Mex standards, Ranchera classics from early Mexican cinema, American classic country, and early rock n roll — somehow weaving these disparate strands into something that could, for a moment, hold the complexity of Tejano identity.

Using the Pierrot ensemble to evoke the growl of the bajo sexto, the reedy breath of the button accordion, and the grit of an overdriven tweed amp, I explore the liminal space between Texan and Mexican identity and its lingering effect on subsequent generations of working-class Texas-Mexicans adrift between two cultures.

This was composed for Victory Players and the Massachusetts International Festival of the Arts (MIFA) Sí se puede (Yes we can) project, celebrating the Mexican-American experience.