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the density of life in the selva. There are songs for moving the cat-
tle when the timbre of the voice is agudo (sharp) as it has to carry in
the open air. There are more intimate cantos de ordeño [milking
songs] that Ana sings which are love songs, some with double
meaning speaking of the life of the campesino peasants of the
region and the cattle farmer’s life. Some use Spanish verses and
couplets, but you can always feel essential indigenous essences.”
And the dancer? “Well as you see the role of the zapateador
dancer is important, as for us the dancer is another musician. In
the llanero countryside, when you are playing you feel the feet of
the people beating out the root 1-2 rhythm with their feet. The
low notes of the harp follow what the dancer does, marking the 1-
2 beats of the 3/4 with the left hand, while the right hand deco-
rates, following the melodies a lot of the time, reproducing the
singer’s voice and sometimes doing variations. We like to play with
rubato, with the exception of the precise rhythms of the maracas
and cuatro. For María Laya the harp plays countermelody orna-
menting in double time. The maracas play ‘chaqueti chaqueti cha-
queti’; while the cuatro does the same, sometimes with strumming
and double strumming, with special rhythmic effects from picking
all the strings. The bass is playing the fundamental ‘pum pum’
heartbeat pulse of the dance, same as the left hand of the harp.
The cajón plays chukka-chukka like the bass. We try to play in dif-
ferent registers and give the group the widest acoustic spectrum.”
“José’s zapateo dancing is on ‘pum pum’ with lots of play with
rhythms, like a kind of ‘chauchacui chauchacui’. He uses shoes
made from the cowhide: traditionally associated with our region,
and the sound comes from the action of the foot direct with the
wooden floor, not on a special board. Once all dancing was couple
dancing but we do solo dance as well, which is a bit like solo fla-
menco dance. I think that was the reason Martin, one of the co-
organisers of the Dutch Bienal Flamenco, invited us there in 2008.
He saw us at the Utrecht Rasa Festival: we had just come from
Slovenia and he thought the group had the same ingredients as
flamenco. The Dutch press called us “turbo jazz flamenco”!
S
o why the cajón? “We wanted the sound of the
dancer’s feet in all our pieces even when the dancer is
not dancing. Our cajón player is a dancer and he plays
the dance rhythms of his own feet with his hands on
the cajón. It’s a great rustic sound, quite thick and natu-
ral. We only started to use cajón timidly five years ago and then
fully in 2007 in Wales. We tried the tambora and something like
the Argentine bombo leguero and drums used for cumbia but
the sounds were too rubbery. The cajón is drier. We used the
Peruvian cajón first, but then I saw flamenco guitarist Pepe
Habichuela in Bogotá with his cajón player who had a beautiful
arsenal of small percussion. The flamenco cajón has internal
chords attached which we found really sounded good: it vibrates
and gives this fast, dry, percussive sound.
So that’s a real ida y vuelta (coming and going) story: the
Peruvian cajón taken from Lima in the 1970s by Paco De Lucia’s
band to Spain where they adapted its sound to suit their flamen-
co aesthetic, returning to another part of South America, to
Colombia, courtesy of flamenco guitarist Pepe Habichuela? “Yes
and it makes sense because the region we come from is full of
people who migrated from the 17th century onwards from the
wellspring of flamenco in Andalucia in southern Spain, so there is
common ancestry present in our music. Our first cajón was made
by a Peruvian instrument maker in Bogotá and finally we bought
a Spanish flamenco cajón in Bristol last year.”
Early on in their career Cimarrón played internationally at The
Kennedy Center in Washington. In 1997 they made their first UK
appearance in Colores De Colombia (Colours Of Colombia) at the
Barbican Centre. Their 2003 US Smithsonian folkloric recording Si
Soy Llanero was nominated for a Best Traditional World Music
Grammy. They play at many major US events such as Miami’s Festi-
val De Hispanidad. Back home these days, Rojas works as a region-
al assessor for the Culture Ministry teaching harp to harp teachers
and designing programmes for young students. He’s also compos-
ing and developing Cimarrón’s music: “I want to get as much of
the sounds of indigenous people into the joropo because that is
music of the pueblo mestizo. For centuries the sound of the jaw-
bone and the ciervo de cuernos (deer horn) and some flutes have
not been heard and I think they must be. I want to integrate them
and the sound of the selva and the Orinoco and the Amazonas
into joropo – that is our project!”
Catrin Finch & Cimarrón’s new album Live Yn Byw (Astar Artes
AARCDA001) will be available on general release later this year:
www.astarartes.com myspace.com/catrinfinchandcimarron
Cimarrón will be playing Womad Charlton Park 2009 on 24th
July and will return to tour the UK in Feb – March 2010.
www.cimarroncolombia.com F
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