Abraham Barrera - Raíces (2020)

The Atlantic was crossed by conquerors and friars, nobles, rogues and scholars, but also, from the very first voyage, by musicians and, frequently, to recruit those who would travel on those fateful transatlantic trips, a sailor was selected for his musical skills. In this album, two extraordinary musicians from our country, mezzo-soprano Eva María Santana and composer / jazzman Abraham Barrera musically traverse a long history of those crossings of the ocean: the rhythms and sadness of the slaves, the refined vocal technique of the great opera singers who visited us in the 18th and 19th centuries, or the pianos and pianists that came from Spain, Italy, France, the Austrian Empire and what is now Germany. But the Atlantic crossings are back and forth, Ricardo Castro, Julián Carrillo and Manuel M. Ponce, composers and virtuosos, crossed it to perfect their studies whilereaping ovations in crowded auditoriums. Mexico applauded many European divas like Henriette Sontag, the soprano who premiered Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, but also returned the favor, sending Angela Peralta or our great contralto Oralia Dominguez. Music expresses identity, it is the way we talk to nature, our gods, lull our children or cry for our dead, sing our joys and failures, dream our fleeting hopes. Roots, takes us by the hand in a delicious journey through the memories of our parents and grandparents, but today these memories become ours as well, in this great reinvention of the traditional turned into a contemporary jazz language that is irresistible.