/ARTS WEEKLY/MUSIC-PERU: Poetry, Afro-Peruvian Folklore Rediscovered

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Abraham Lama

LIMA, Sep 24 2002 (IPS) - “Lamento negro” (Black Lament), a collection of poems set to music and sung by Peru’s Susana Baca in an all-but-forgotten album, rose to international fame in a matter of months, largely because it won the Latin Grammy award for best folk music album.

Pablo Neruda, César Vallejo, César Calvo, Alejandro Romualdo and composer Chabuca Granda are some of the authors of the poems that Baca set to music in this recording, which received the coveted Grammy at the ceremonies Sep 18 in Los Angeles.

Although Baca has been an artist exclusive to the Luaka Bop record label since 1998, the Grammy was for a non-commercial recording that was made in Cuba 16 years ago. An independent U.S.-based producer rediscovered it and decided to release it a few months ago without first obtaining the singer’s consent.

The Afro-Peruvian rhythms on Baca’s album were rewarded in the Grammy category that included nominees “Maren”, of the Basque Country’s Kepa Jukera; “Bonito que canta”, of Colombian singer Petrona Martínez; “Orisha aye yemaya”, of Cuba’s Lázaro Ríos, and “Hepta”, of Spain’s Galician band Berrogüetto.

A schoolteacher, researcher of the roots of black folklore, author of a book and with a long résumé of recordings, Baca is considered one of Peru’s most important voices.

Her home in Lima houses the “Negro Continuo” institute, which provides classes in music theory for young people who want to carry the traditions of Afro-Peruvian music forward.

The institute also has a public library of the history and literature of the descendants of Africans in Peru, and a specialised music library.

Many credit David Byrne, the lead of the former Talking Heads rock group, for “discovering” Baca and allowing her to build a name on the “world music” scene. Byrne is the force behind the Luaka Bop label, which includes in its catalogue the likes of Cuba’s Silvio Rodríguez and Brazil’s Tom Zé.

But when Byrne met Baca, she had already achieved a cult following among Peru’s intellectual circles, recorded songs with so-called “alternative” companies and performed a hundred concerts around the world.

The story behind the encounter is that Argentine filmmaker Bernardo Palomo showed Byrne a video of Susana singing and dancing “María Landó”, a song based on a poem by César Calvo. Byrne immediately got on a plane to Lima to give her a recording contract.

There might be some people who are surprised by the presence of folklore of African roots in a country where the Andean indigenous traditions tend to predominate.

The African culture is mostly centred along the central coastal area, on the Pacific Ocean, and is manifest in literature, music, dance and fine arts.

Baca was born and spent her childhood in the Lima district of Chorrillos. Her mother danced and her father played guitar while her grandmother sang African songs while rocking her to sleep.

“I was born in a neighbourhood of fisherfolk, where there were many blacks like me. On my street, we made music with a guitar, playing a wooden box, beating spoons. There were no parties with record players. We sang full-throated and without special effects,” she says.

Her talent was evident when she was a schoolgirl, but nobody believed her future would be in music. She studied to be a primary school teacher and worked for a couple of years in a remote indigenous village in Peru’s central sierra.

“Musically, I am strongly based in my roots, Afro-Peruvian music, but I can’t sing the traditional songs like my grandparents did in the past century. I think I should interpret them as I feel them today, as a woman of these times,” she told IPS in an interview.

“The lyrics of songs have always been important to me, and I soon reached the conclusion that I could not continue singing pop music, the lyrics of which had nothing to do with my reality or with what I felt,” she added.

“Of course I have run into many obstacles, not only for my ideas, which were censured by social criticisms. It is difficult to be a woman, black and also a daughter of the cook. It is hard to confront discrimination based on the colour of one’s skin, but it is a useful experience if you turn it into a cause,” Baca said.

Two key interests have marked her artistic career: “the reconstruction of the history of blacks in Peru and the understanding of poetry as one of the essential rhythms of life,” Baca said in an interview with a U.S.-based newspaper when she received the Grammy nomination earlier this year.

“Look at the irony, for many years they shut their doors, telling me ‘poetry doesn’t sell’, and now I win a Grammy for a collection of poems I recorded 16 years ago and which very few have heard,” she stated.

“Of course, I owe a great deal to David Byrne, with the album he recorded he put me in contact with larger audiences,” said the singer. “Luaka doesn’t ask the artists to change, it doesn’t make recommendations, it let’s us be who we are.”

“Byrne was the first to put the Cuban singers in the United States. His contribution to global culture is important,” said Baca.