Gabriela Ortiz: Yanga

Ecological protest takes many forms, some more effective than others. Mexican composer Gabriela Ortiz has developed a method of musical dissent that holds the power to win converts to the cause of conservation, perhaps even to turn the rising tide of environmental degradation in her homeland and beyond. Ortiz’s Dzonot, a cello concerto in four pulse-quickening movements, draws its narrative arc from pre-modern Mayan culture, its title from the Mayan’s word for “abyss”. Alisa Weilerstein’s world premiere recording of the piece, caught live in performance with the Los Angeles Philharmonic and Gustavo Dudamel, captures the extraordinary vitality and dazzling invention of Ortiz’s score. “Gabriela truly has her own unique voice,” Weilerstein tells Apple Music Classical. “I think she's a genius.” Dzonot, she adds, is among the hardest concertos she has ever played, comparable in difficulty only to Unsuk Chin’s Cello Concerto. “I believe both these works will become 21st-century classics. There’s a lot of complexity to internalise with Dzonot, and it’s also very technically demanding.” Dzonot is paired with two equally compelling works: Yanga, a surging hymn to freedom and equality, and Seis Piezas a Violeta, inspired by the life and work of the Chilean musician, folklorist, visual artist and political activist Violeta Parra. Three of the six pieces, “Preludio Andino” (“Andean Prelude”), “Cano del Angelito” (”Song of the Little Angel”) and “Amen”, are directly related to Violeta, while “Geometria Austral” (“Austral Geometry”), “Ritmo Genésico” (“Generative Rhythm”) and “Danza Esdrújula” (Esdrújula Dance”) revel in the complexities of polyrhythm. Weilerstein, talking of Gabriela Ortiz’s work in general, gives a personal perspective: “I had admired her music from afar, but everything that I’d heard of hers I really liked. Her music is so evocative and colourful and very engaging. And Dzonot is certainly no different. It's so vivid, with these vibrant colours. If you listen to her speak about music and art, you discover she’s obsessed with water. She feels a deep connection with environmental elements, and especially those that are endangered. You can hear the water rippling in this piece. You can almost see the colours, the reflections of light.” Dzonot mines aspects of Mayan myth and Mexican folklore. It opens with a shimmering representation of “vertical light” (“Luz vertical") penetrating the mysterious Holltún cave (“dzonot” or “cenote” in Spanish) in the Yucatán Peninsula, before the cello embodies feline characteristics in “El ojo del Jaguar” (“The Eye of the Jaguar”). “Jade” fashions a sublime cello-led meditation on Mexico’s subterranean rivers where, as Ortiz notes, “everything comes to life”. The Toh bird, the rainforest explorer’s friendly guide to fresh water, soars in “El vuelho de Toh” (“Toh’s Flight”). The proud creature ignores the Mayan rain god’s warning of an impending storm, before losing its beautiful tail and hiding underground out of shame. Dzonot honours jaguar, the turquoise-browed Toh and the fragile ecosystems that support them, while warning against the existential threats of rampant deforestation and ecological destruction. The album opens with Yanga, commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic as a companion to Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and its closing celebration of universal brotherhood. Ortiz turned to the tale of Gaspar Yanga, a 16th-century African prince captured and transported to Mexico as a slave. Following his escape, he led daring raids on Spanish settlements, earned concessions from the colonial powers after bloody battles, and finally became ruler of the independent town of San Lorenzo de los Negros in today’s state of Veracruz. Yanga became a model for Mexico’s struggles to gain independence from Spain in the early 19th century, hailed by separatists as “the first liberator of America”. Ortiz’s composition enlists a battery of the African percussion instruments—guiros and cabasas among them—that came to Latin America during colonial times, and uses their colours to create an electrifying response to Yanga’s story. The work’s choral writing, infused with Congolese chants and vigorous rhythmic riffs, sets a freshly written text by the Spanish author and music critic Santiago Martín Bermúdez, directing Yanga’s people to “leave the slave trade, leave death far behind” and find freedom. “Gabbi’s music expresses things that are not easily described in words,” says Weilerstein. “That's why I believe that music is our deepest art form. It makes it the most universally understood art, because it transcends language, it transcends words. Dzonot is a wonderful example of music of our time that evokes an entire world in sound—it's really quite remarkable.”