Pasionaria La
Valentina Montoya Martínez
Mr McFall’s chaMber
Pasionaria La
Valentina Montoya Martínez
Mr McFall’s chaMber
Valentina Montoya Martínez vocals
Victor Villena bandoneon
Cyril Garac violin 1
Robert McFall violin 2
Brian Schiele viola
Su-a Lee cello
Rick Standley double bass
Phil Alexander piano
Producer: Paul Baxter Engineer: Ben Seal
24-bit digital editing: Paul Baxter & Robert McFall
24-bit digital mixing: Paul Baxter
24-bit digital mastering: Paul Baxter
Concert photography: Marc Marnie
Cover photograph: Sofía Sequeiros
Design: John Christ
Booklet editor: John Fallas
Iain Sandilands percussion Recorded on 17-18 March 2012 in the Tom Fleming Centre, Erskine Stewart’s Melville Schools
Delphian Records Ltd – Edinburgh – UK www.delphianrecords.co.uk
With thanks to Ann McFall, Norman Motion and to the staff of Erskine Stewart’s Melville Schools
Women are at the heart of this disc: warmhearted South American mothers, women on the town, little girls hanging scared on their mothers’ coat-tails, blondes kissing fruitsellers in the Buenos Aires rain, heroic activists in the Association of Families of the Disappeared; women flirting, dancing, taking their men to task, looking for love; mothers, daughters, lovers. The disc brings together two areas of repertoire which we have often combined in performance – Valentina Montoya Martínez’s own songs and music of the tango nuevo, mostly by Ástor Piazzolla. There are several numbers from Piazzolla’s short opera (or ‘operita’), María de Buenos Aires. In this work the main character, María, represents tango itself. Her changing fortunes reflect the changing fortunes of the dance. Born in the suburbs, she moves to the bright lights of the city centre, where she is confused, corrupted, and finally dies. At the end of the opera she is reborn. Valentina’s own songs also tell a story of displacement and, similarly, reflect the changing fortunes of her native Chile.
Valentina arrived in London one dreary winter’s day as a young child with her family, fleeing the terrifying violence of Pinochet’s regime. Her father stayed behind and was imprisoned and tortured in the infamous Chacabuco concentration camp in the northern desert. Growing up with her mother in Birmingham, Valentina’s family home
was a refuge of South American culture and friendship. She grew up listening to Chilean singer-songwriters such as Víctor Jara, Isabel Parra, the Argentinian Mercedes Sosa and the Uruguayans José Carbajal (‘El Sabalero’) and Alfredo Zitarrosa and others in the nueva canción tradition. She also listened to tango –especially tango songs, of which her mother had a great many recordings. Valentina herself became a singer of a wide range of Latin American folk music.
1997 found Valentina living in Scotland. One late evening that year, arriving at Edinburgh’s Bongo Club, where she and her boyfriend, Scottish guitarist David Russell, were to perform, she walked into the middle of a set by Mr McFall’s Chamber which included an arrangement of Ástor Piazzolla’s Soledad.
At the end of the evening Valentina found us at the bar and asked if we would be interested in performing some classic tango songs with her, and naturally we said yes. The repertoire which we subsequently developed together, song by song, was in part taken down from tape recordings that Valentina’s mother had made from a regular Chilean radio programme which played traditional tango. Many of these songs, therefore, were favourites of Valentina’s mother’s – especially the Héctor Stamponi song, ‘Quedémonos aqui’, which became a song of great significance between mother and daughter.
It was many years later that Valentina started to turn up with some songs of her own. She had been writing songs for a number of years, performing them, alongside Chilean folksongs, in Mexico after university and then back at home in Birmingham. She had been quietly adding to this collection during her early years in Scotland. However, in 2007 there was a new outpouring of songs in response to her mother’s last illness and death, which threw many memories into sharp relief.
Tango de la espera is addressed to the tango itself, which here is transformed into a friend, confidante and place of solace for a woman who is alone. The tango understands suffering and, through its musical and lyrical warmth, provides a shawl of comfort and a source of illumination during sombre moments of solitude and heartbreak. You paint the night with a bitter brush! You write verses, remembered experiences; you light my steps loyal friend, beloved tango! Tango of waiting, you know well what it is to love …
In Cartas Valentina, while caring for her sick mother, finds a box of old letters from a family friend. In the song this discovery makes her want to travel back to those happy times and escape the bleakness of the present – all that remains is the wind and a past …. Adiós Poeta is a farewell to another good family friend, the writer Gerald Denley. During her last illness,
Valentina’s mother had asked after Denley. Valentina, sitting at her bedside, had done some research on her mobile phone, only to find out that he had been run over and killed three years before, crossing a road in Frouxeira on the north Spanish coast, a place he loved and regularly visited. She chose not to break the news to her mother.
Versos is addressed to Valentina’s father –… imprisoned bird … – and is about the dashed dreams and aspirations of his generation and the brutal punishment meted out to them for trying to take flight for freedom. Obsérvalo bien is a call from a female tango dancer asking people to join her in seeing the plight of the world and in trying to create harmony beyond the dance. Madre selva is a tribute both to Valentina’s own mother and to the ‘big-hearted’ mothers of South America in general. Madreselva is the Spanish word for honeysuckle, but it is also the name of a famous tango song. Separated into two words – madre selva – it could mean ‘mother forest’, and Valentina, because of her mother’s fondness for the tango tune of that name, as well as its ‘mother nature’ implications, has used the word(s) as a symbol of South American motherhood.
Guitarra mía deals with disillusionment: the paper lantern represents the ardent but shortlived ardour of a man; the guitar represents the
strength of a woman who has wised up to the true nature of a conceited man: It is not your rejection or indifference which hurts me, but those lost steps in the light of your presence. Milonga del 2007 – the milonga is a folk dance, precursor of the tango, from Uruguay and Argentina. Valentina wrote this song during the turbulent months of her mother’s illness. Its up-tempo beat embodies that whirlwind period; her longing for inner stillness in the turmoil and her burning wish to halt time in order to evade what was by then an inevitable conclusion. I’ll explain! The days, the nights … time passes like sand through my fingers ….
Sola celebrates the Chilean activist Sola Sierra, president of the Agrupación de Familiares de Detenidos Desaparecidos (an association for families of the disappeared) and active within Amnesty International. She died of a heart attack in July 1999. Valentina had met her during the demonstrations in London at the time of Pinochet’s being held there for possible extradition to Spain, and wrote the song to commemorate this brave compatriot, who had had the courage to confront the dictatorship publicly in its early years. It is, as such, a celebration of the strength and solidarity of South American womanhood, as is suggested by the way Sola is addressed in the song as nuestras madres, ‘our mothers’.
It is possible to put the rebirth of the tango tradition in recent decades into context by going back in time and quoting Frank Zappa’s spoken introduction to his own Be-Bop Tango in 1973:
Some of you may know that the tango, which is not a very popular dance any more, was at one time reputed to be a dance of unbridled passion. [laughter]
Back in the old days when it wasn’t so easy to get your K’s off, when it was hard to make contact with a member of the opposite camp and you had to resort to things like dancing close together and going hey those were the days! – well, those days are probably gone forever, I don’t know, unless Nixon is going to bring them back a little bit later
We gather from Zappa’s sardonic tone that he considers tango not only ‘not a very popular dance any more’, but also, as his reference to Nixon indicates, something only danced by sleazy old men. It was as it happens during roughly the same period, albeit in Buenos Aires, that Ástor Piazzolla was re-launching the dance in a radically new guise, which he named tango nuevo. Yet only a decade or two earlier Piazzolla himself had been convinced, like Zappa, that tango was finished. In the early fifties he had made a determined attempt to cross into classical composition, studying, at the suggestion of his first composition teacher Alberto Ginastera, in Paris with Nadia Boulanger from 1954 until 1955. It was famously she who persuaded Piazzolla that
it was futile for him to try to escape the tango tradition in which he had grown up; that whatever future he had as a composer – and she had great confidence in him – it would be within that style. A direct outcome of his harmony and counterpoint studies with Boulanger can be seen in the many fugues in Piazzolla’s music, as represented on this disc by Fuga y misterio. Such sophisticated musical forms played no part in traditional tango.
Piazzolla’s return to Buenos Aires, and the formation of both his Orquesta de Cuerdas and his Octeto Buenos Aires, the first vehicles for launching his tango nuevo, took place in 1955. Thus tango nuevo evolved at exactly the same moment as the emergence of rock’n’roll for Zappa’s generation. The ripples from that dramatic rebirth of the tango from the mid-fifties in Buenos Aires are still growing and reaching distant shores: for the second time, as in the 1920s, tango has become a global phenomenon (even without presidential directives!).
Piazzolla’s María de Buenos Aires, written in 1968 to a somewhat surreal libretto by Horacio Ferrer, describes the death and rebirth of tango itself. The character of María is a personification of the tango. Born in a slum suburb, carried into the dance halls of the city centre, corrupted and confused, María dies at the end of the first act. Following her funeral, attended by beggars and factory girls on the night shift, her spirit
haunts the city, and is eventually reborn, her birth gossiped over by spaghetti-kneaders and stonemasons. The opera has a cast of thieves, brothel-keepers, sparrows, organgrinders, psychoanalysts, drunk marionettes and ghosts. In Yo soy María, María introduces herself: María tango, slum María, María night, María fatal passion, María of love, of Buenos Aires, that’s me. During Fuga y misterio she moves through the city in a trance, from the suburb where she was born to the bright lights of the city centre. In Tocata rea the duende, the presiding spirit, accuses the bandoneon of corrupting María: I’ve seen your gang of rogue bandoneons beat their dark wings and scorch their button-panels to the beat of the macumba; and in the aftermath of the evil deed, bleeding from the stained ivory, the voice of María showing all her kiss! At the end of the number the duende takes an axe to the bandoneon and splits it down the middle so that it dies ‘in a sort of tango nausea’. Our fourth and final number from the opera is Allegro tangabile. During this number the germs of María’s rebirth are sown. The stage direction is:
The three ‘marionettes drunk on things’ leave the bar with their friends and, on behalf of the duende, take the miracle of fecundity to María. A symphony of marionettes, clay angels, chaplains, street musicians and singers run amok in the streets of Buenos Aires, looking for the germ of a child to give to the shadow of María.
At the beginning of the disc is another Piazzolla song with a text by Horacio Ferrer – Los paraguas de Buenos Aires (‘The Umbrellas of Buenos Aires’). Again, this is a surreal, fanciful description of Buenos Aires on a rainy day. Another Piazzolla instrumental number, Vardarito, is dedicated to the memory of the violinist Elvino Vardaro; unsurprisingly, it takes the form of a showpiece for that instrument. Finally, as proof that the tango tradition is indeed fecund, that it is forever engendering new musical initiatives and directions, Notango is a recent composition by our own pianist for this project, Phil Alexander. His own programme note reads:
The idea behind the piece was to write something that was heading directly towards a tango, but took a turn at the lights – as if all the ingredients of a traditional tango had been taken apart and put back together, but not quite in the same way.
sixties, was spending a year’s sabbatical there – her first visit since her childhood. Much has been wrecked: the beaches and dunes where she had played as a child stained with oil, ugly high-rise developments, the desert ripped up for copper, the streets dirty, the people reticent.
In memory of my courageous mother; and of Hugo Chávez Frías (1954–2013), el guerrero máximo de nuestros tiempos.
The arrangement of Valentina Montoya Martínez’s songs was initially a group effort involving Victor Villena, Phil Alexander and me, as well as, of course, Valentina herself. I subsequently wrote down and developed many of the arrangements while in Chile for six months between September 2011 and March 2012. My wife, who had grown up in Chile in the
The Chile of Pablo Neruda, Víctor Jara and Violeta Parra is long gone. Since that time the country has been despoiled by forty years of unregulated exploitation by an untrammelled free market set up during the dictatorship. For many Chileans brought up in exile here in Europe, the ruthless business ethic of today is at odds with the socialist Chile their parents’ generation had dreamed of creating. Many of the issues raised in Chile in the sixties, however, are re-emerging: the unacceptable extreme differentials of wealth; ownership of mineral resources; education. In many parts of South America there is not only considerable economic growth but also a move towards a fairer society. Chile has largely resisted such reforms so far – generally people don’t want to risk a repetition of the violent conflicts of the past. But a rebirth of optimism is, at the least, possible. Valentina’s songs not only help to document Chilean experience, but also plead for a way forward. Above all, however, they show us her feelings, as a refugee and as a woman.
A todas las pasionarias de todos los tiempos; aquellas mujeres de gran corazón que luchan y que han luchado por la justicia, por la paz y por la vida hasta el último aliento.
Con mucha gratitud y amor a todas las grandes figuras históricas de latinoamérica que me han inspirado, guiado y fortalecido durante una vida de exilio. Y a mi familia que me ha ayudado en el camino: mi madre y mi padre, Yanette, Gastón, Betty, Robin, Gillian, Stuart, mi amado Chelito y David.
Y por último, pero no menos importante, a Robert McFall, por haber creído en mí.
Valentina Montoya Martínez
© 2013 Robert McFall
1 Los paraguas de Buenos Aires (The umbrellas of Buenos Aires)
Está lloviendo en Buenos Aires, llueve
Y en los que vuelven a sus casas pienso
Y en la función de los teatritos pobres
Y en los fruteros que a las rubias besan
Pensando en quienes ni paraguas tienen
Siento que el mío para arriba tira
“No ha sido el viento si no hay viento”, digo
Cuando de pronto mi paraguas vuela
“No ha sido el viento si no hay viento”, digo
Cuando de pronto mi paraguas vuela
Vuela…
Y cruza lluvias de hace mucho tiempo
La que al final mojó tu cara triste
La que alegró el primer abrazo nuestro
La que llovió sin conocernos antes
Y desandamos tanta lluvia, tantas
Que el agua está recién nacida, vamos
Que está lloviendo para arriba, llueve
Y con los dos nuestro paraguas sube
Que está lloviendo para arriba, llueve
Y con los dos nuestro paraguas sube
Sube…
A tanta altura va querido mío
Camino de un desaforado cielo
Donde la lluvia a sus orillas tiene
Y está el principio de los días claros
Tan alta el agua nos disuelve juntos
Y nos convierte en uno solo uno
Y solo uno para siempre, siempre
It’s raining in Buenos Aires, it’s raining
And I’m imagining people going home; Shows in backstreet theatres;
Fruitsellers kissing blonde women;
I’m thinking about the people who have no umbrella
When I start to feel mine pull upwards!
I tell myself ‘It can’t be the wind, because there is no wind!’
When all of a sudden my umbrella takes off …
I tell myself ‘It can’t be the wind, because there is no wind!’
When all of a sudden my umbrella takes off …
Takes off …
And through rains of long ago passes the one Which, at the end, wet your sad face;
The one which brightened our first embrace;
The rain which fell before we met;
And we retrace so many rainy days, so many
That the water is reborn,
That the rain falls back upwards
And now our umbrella rises with both of us!
That the rain falls back upwards
And now our umbrella rises with both of us!
Rises …!
It rises so high, my sweet
On its way to the wild sky
Where rain beats its banks
Where sunny days begin
En uno solo, solo, solo, pienso
Y solo uno para siempre, siempre
En uno solo, solo, solo, pienso
Pienso…
Pienso en quien vuelve hacia su casa
Y en la alegría del frutero
Y en fin, lloviendo en Buenos Aires sigue
Yo no he traido ni paraguas, llueve
Y en fin, lloviendo en Buenos Aires sigue
Yo no he traido ni paraguas, llueve
Llueve…
Horacio Ferrer (1933–)
2 Tango de la espera (Tango of waiting)
¡Con que así te llaman!
Tango de la espera
Quejido lejano
Tú guardas mi pena
¡Hoy tengo frío!
Tango de la espera
Tú sabes bien lo que’s amar
Cúbreme en tu manto
Enciende la vela
Tú ves bien pasa mi noche
En una pieza ajena
Contás los minutos
Que marcan el desvelo
The water is so high it melts us
Dissolves us into one – just one alone
And only one for ever and ever and ever
Into just one, only one – (I imagine)
And only one for ever and ever and ever Into just one, only one – (I imagine)
(I imagine …)
I imagine someone going home
The happiness of the fruitseller
And finally – just that it’s raining in Buenos Aires
I haven’t even got an umbrella! It’s raining
And finally – just that it’s raining in Buenos Aires
I haven’t even got an umbrella! It’s raining
Raining …
So that’s what they call you!
Tango of waiting
A distant groan
You watch over my suffering
I’m cold!
Tango of waiting
You know well what it is to love
Cover me in your cloak
Light the candle
You see well my night pass
In a strange room
You count the minutes
Which mark my sleeplessness
Dibujas la noches
¡Con agrio pincel!
Escribes los versos
Memorias vividas
Alumbras mis pasos amigo leal
¡Tango querido!
Tango de la espera
Tú sabes bien lo que’s amar
¡Tango querido!
Tango de la espera
¡Tú sabes bien lo que’s llorar!
¡Y el amanecer!
Hiere poco a poco
Cuando así ilumina
Todo la verdad
¡Horas perdidas!
Tango de la espera
¡Tú sabes bien lo que’s amar!
¡Tango querido!
Tango de la espera
Tú sabes bien lo que’s llorar
¡Hombré! ¡Qué mal hecho! Es tu pecho de metal
¡Hombré vanidoso!
No sabés lo que’s amar
Valentina Montoya Martínez
You paint the night With a bitter brush!
You write verses remembered experiences; You light my steps loyal friend
Dear tango!
Tango of waiting
You know well what it is to love
Dear tango!
Tango of waiting
You know well what it is to cry
And the dawn Hurts bit by bit
When it lights up The whole truth
Wasted hours!
Tango of waiting
You know well what it is to love!
Beloved tango
Tango of waiting
You know well what it is to love Man! How badly behaved you are! Your heart is made of metal
Conceited man!
You don’t know what it is to love
3 Cartas (Letters)
Abro la caja de recuerdos donde guardo tus palabras miro aquel sobre abierto y siento que me llamas miro aquel sobre abierto y siento que me llamas
Tanta belleza en tus palabras esa pureza que me abraza como quisiera volver a aquellos tiempos perderme en la alborada como quisiera volver a aquellos tiempos perderme en la alborada
¡Querida! Acá estoy en Estocolmo… ¡estoy congelado! El mate me quita el frío y me hace recordar los momentos compartidos con los compañeros y tu familia que lindos cantares y recorridos todavía tengo ‘Cien años de soledad’ y lo llevo a todas partes, como una Biblia ‘lo mágico real’: ¡Tema que tanto te encantaba! bueno compañera, esta carta, por así decirlo (!) es corta, mañana otra, mientras el frío y dios me lo permita Abrazos a todos
Roberto
I open the box of memories
Where I keep your words I look at that open envelope
And feel that you’re calling me I look at that open envelope And I feel that you’re calling me
So much beauty in your words That purity which embraces me; How I would love to go back to those times Lose myself in that daybreak How I would love to go back to those times Lose myself in that daybreak
My dear, Here I am in Stockholm … I am frozen! The mate tea takes away the cold and makes me remember the moments shared with our friends and your family what great singing sessions and journeys I still have ‘A Hundred Years of Solitude’ and I carry it everywhere like a Bible ‘Magical Realism’: a subject that enchanted you so!
Well, dear friend, this letter (for want of a better word!) is short – tomorrow a new one, God and the cold willing … Hugs to all, Roberto
Vuelvo al presente y me detengo sumergida en la nostalgia
cura mi sufrimiento
o al menos me lo calma
cura mi sufrimiento
o al menos me lo calma solo queda el viento y un pasado
4 Adiós Poeta (Farewell, Poet)
¡El poeta ha muerto!
En su tierra querida
Con sus manos abiertas
Señaló su partida
¡Tres años sin vida!
Y yo no lo sabía
A Frouxeira,
Playa de tu pasión
Te acogió
Por siempre con amor
Llegó aquel duende imprevistamente
Y en la ronda te llevo
¡Qué tragedia tu partida!
Qué dolor no estás con vida sin tiempo, sin despedida
I come back to the present and I stop
Submerged in nostalgia
It cures my suffering
Or at least calms me down It cures my suffering
Or at least calms me down
All that remains is the wind and a past
The poet has died!
In his beloved country with his open hands he signalled his departure
Three years without life And I didn’t know!
Frouxeira
The beach which you loved Received you
Forever with love
A spirit arrived, so unexpectedly And took you with him at the roundabout
What a tragedy, your departure!
What sorrow that you’re no longer alive
Without time, without saying goodbye
Gerardo, Gran poeta escritor
Gitano, De noble corazón
¡Tus ojos se funden! Firme en mi mente
Como tú no hay otro
Nunca olvidaré los años
De tus risas, tus encantos
Amigo, padre y hermano
Parece que todavía te veo Contando tus andares gitano querido ¿oyes mi canto?
A Frouxeira, Playa de tu pasión
Valentina Montoya Martínez
6 Versos (Verses)
Ahora ya se ha oscurecido y la lluvia cae afuera corren lágrimas por mi ventana corre mi pena en mis venas
Ya no estás más a mi lado… Pajarillo encarcelado
Por cantar un verso censurado
Y emprender un vuelo libertario
Gerald, Noble writer, poet, Gypsy, Big-hearted man
Your gaze embeds itself Firmly in my soul
There is really no one like you
I will never forget those years
Of your laughter and jokes
Friend, father, and brother
It seems that I can still see you, Recounting your travels, Much-loved gypsy; Can you hear my song?
At Frouxeira
The beach which you loved
Now it has become dark And the rain is falling outside
Tears are running down my window
Pain is running in my veins
You are no longer by my side
Imprisoned little bird
For singing a forbidden verse And taking wing for freedom
Valentina Montoya Martínez
Tu canto
Es la fuerza
Es el río
La montaña
Y el amor que conduce la vida
7 Obsérvalo bien (Take good note!)
Le hablo a Ud, señor
Y a Ud, señora
Y a Ud, señor presidente
Y a los que no bailan
Y a los que bailan también
Cara a cara en un abrazo
Bajo la luz de aquel farol
Hay un dolor plantado en mi alma
En mi tango milongón
Aquí mi motivo mi fundamento
Obsérvalo bien
Porque nos queda muy poco tiempo
Pa’ retroceder
Se retuerce mi alma frente a tanta fechoría
Muere un niño ensagrentado
Su padre desconsolado
¡Qué mundo tan despiadado!
Acércate, escucha esta canción
Tango de amor, pasión
Revolución
Your song Is strength; It is the river
The mountain And love which drives life on
I’m talking to you, sir
And to you, madam
And to you, Mr President
And to everyone who doesn’t dance
And to those who do dance as well, Face to face in an embrace
Under the light of that street lamp.
There’s a sadness rooted in my soul, In my milonga-like tango.
Here is my motive, my reason Make sure you really take note
Because we only have a very short time To reverse the process.
My soul flinches in the face of such cruelty.
A blood-stained child dies, His father is inconsolable. What a heartless world!
Come close, listen to this song
Tango of love, (com) passion, Revolution.
Aquí mi motivo, mi fundamento ¡Obsérvalo bien!
Porque nos queda muy poco tiempo
Pa’ retroceder
El planeta enferma, muere el día y la noche
Los recursos disminuyen
Y seguimos consumiendo
Desbocados, sin medida
Acércate, escucha esta canción
Tango de amor, pasión
Revolución
Y dicen que no hay otro modelo
En este charco arrabalero
Donde solemos bailar
Y dicen que soñar no cuesta nada
saben bien que bien pensado tu sueño es rebelión
Acércate, escucha esta canción
Tango de amor, pasión
Revolución
Y dicen que chillar no vale nada
En éste mundo que reclama
A toda boca, sanar
Y dicen que te dejes de bobadas
Saben bien que en dos patadas
Tu grito es rebelión
Here is my motive, my reason
Make sure you really take note
Because we only have a very short time
To reverse the process.
The planet is ailing, day is melting into night; We are running out of resources
Yet we keep on consuming
Without restraint, out of control.
Come close, listen to this song
Tango of love, (com)passion, Revolution.
And they tell me that there is no other model
In this urban puddle
Where we go out and dance
And they say that dreaming is easy; they know well that a well-designed dream can break the chains
Come close, listen to this song
Tango of love, (com)passion, Revolution.
And they say that protest achieves nothing
In this world which is crying out
Loudly to heal
And they say you should stop your foolishness
For they know well that in two kicks
Your cry is rebellion.
Valentina Montoya Martínez
Acércate, escucha esta canción
Tango de amor, pasión
Revolución (¡vamos! )
Tango de amor, pasión
Revolución
8 Madre selva
Madreselva en flor
Madre selva de gran corazón
Madre selva mi vida, mi tierra mi voz y mi país mi continente y raíz
Madreselva en flor
Madre selva de gran corazón
Madre selva el prado la luz que alumbra mi existir mi continente y raíz
Madreselva en flor
Madre selva de gran corazón
Come close, listen to this song
Tango of love, (com)passion
Revolution (come on!)
Tango of love, (com)passion,
Revolution.
Honeysuckle in flower
Big-hearted madre selva
Great forest
My life, my land
My voice and my country
My continent
And people
Honeysuckle in flower
Big-hearted madre selva
Great forest
The meadow
The light
Which illuminates my existence
My continent
And people
Honeysuckle in flower
Big-hearted madre selva
Madre selva
Te dejo
Mi amor
Mi verso, mi canción
Mi homenaje
A ti
10 Guitarra mía (My guitar)
Trigueño de mis amores estrellita alegre y fugaz te fuiste tan pronto vida no te quisiste quedar
Breve fue la chispita la luz que en mi encendiste sin embargo largo fueron los besos que a mí me diste
¡Cómo lloró mi guitarra!
Ante el rechazo y desdén
No pretendiste apreciar
Lo que era un verso de miel
No le diste tiempo al tiempo tenías prisa ternura cariño tú no dejaste germinar la aventura
Farolito de papel guitarra mía
Mother forest
This is My love
My verse, my song
My homage
To you
My love with wheat-coloured hair
My happy, fleeting little star
You went so quickly, my love, You didn’t want to stay
Short was the little spark
The light which you lit up in me, However, long were the kisses
Which you gave me
How my guitar wept!
In the face of rejection and disdain
You didn’t try to appreciate
What was a honeyed verse
You didn’t give time to time, You were in a hurry darling, My love, you didn’t allow the seed to blossom
Little paper streetlight
My guitar!
Valentina Montoya Martínez
Valentina Montoya Martínez
Y todo lo que vivimos por las calle, la colina fue todo un gran espejismo no eras lo que yo creía
No me duele tu desprecio tampoco tu indiferencia
sólo aquel paso perdido en la luz de tu presencia
Farolito de papel guitarra mía
No te olvides del momento que parado en la vereda me viste alta y taconeando para cantar en la peña
Farolito de papel guitarra mía
Valentina Montoya Martínez
11 Milonga del 2007
¡Milonga!
Esta milonga es para guardar mi sentimiento me explico los días, las noches el tiempo pasa como arenita por mis dedos
And everything that we lived On the street, on the hill
It was all a big mirage
You weren’t what I believed
It’s not your disdain which hurts me
Nor your indifference
It’s just those lost steps
In the light of your presence
Little paper streetlight
My guitar!
Don’t forget the moment
When you stood still on the pavement; You saw me walking tall on my heels
To sing in the Peña
Little paper streetlight My guitar!
Milonga!
This milonga is To put away my feelings
I’ll explain
The days, the nights
Time passes
Like sand through my fingers
¡Milonga!
me muerdo el labio no encuentro forma de detenerlo
¡Me explico!
¡Los dias! ¡Las noches!
¿Tanta memoria como guardarla y no abandonarla?
Lágrima nacida de mi cansado mirar nadie ha de saber el costo de tan bello cantar
verso de mi alma, verso de amor y sentimiento
¡Me explico! los días, las noches
sólo tú sabes
lo que es el modo del sufrimiento
Valentina Montoya Martínez
Milonga!
I bite my lip
I can’t find a way
To stop
I’ll explain!
The days! The nights!
So many memories
How am I to store them and save them from oblivion?
Tears born
Of my tired gaze,
No one will know the cost
Of such a beautiful song
Verse of my soul, verse of love
And of feelings
I’ll explain!
The days, the nights
Only you know What it means to suffer
12 Sola
(para la asociación de los familiares de los desaparecidos AFDD / dedicated to the Association of Families of the Disappeared)
¡Sola!
¡Te veo!
Digna y solemne
Años de lucha
Ojos serenos
Dibujan nuestra gente
¡Sola!
Han sido tanto los años
¡¿Hasta cuando?!
¡¿Hasta cuando?!
¡¿Hasta cuando?!
¡Sola!
Hasta el día de justicia
¡Memoria!
Quisieron borrar
A nuestros queridos
Desaparecidos
¡Reinventar la historia!
Pero tú, Sola
Nuestras madres
Sola
No permiten el olvido
Valentina Montoya Martínez
Sola!
I see you!
Dignified and solemn;
Years of struggle
Serene eyes
Portray our people
Sola!
It’s been so many years
How much longer?
How much longer?
How much longer?
Sola!
Until the day of justice!
Memory!
They sought to erase
Our loved ones
The disappeared
And reinvent history!
But you, Sola Our mothers
Sola!
Forbid oblivion
15 Yo soy María
¡Yo soy María de Buenos Aires!
De Buenos Aires María ¿no ven quién soy yo?
María tango, María del arrabal!
María noche, María pasión fatal!
María del amor! De Buenos Aires soy yo!
Yo soy María de Buenos Aires
si en este barrio la gente pregunta quién soy, pronto muy bien lo sabrán las hembras que me envidiarán, y cada macho a mis pies como un ratón en mi trampa ha de caer!
¡Yo soy María de Buenos Aires!
Soy la más bruja cantando y amando también!
Si el bandoneón me provoca… Tiará, tatá!
Le muerdo fuerte la boca… Tiará, tatá!
Con diez espasmos en flor que yo tengo en mi ser!
Siempre me digo “Dale María!” cuando un misterio me viene trepando en la voz!
Y canto un tango que nadie jamás cantó y sueño un sueño que nadie jamás soñó porque el mañana es hoy con el ayer después, ¡che!
I am María of Buenos Aires!
María of Buenos Aires – don’t you see who I am?
María tango, slum María
María night, María fatal passion
María of love, of Buenos Aires, that’s me
I am María of Buenos Aires
If someone in the quarter should ask who I am, The women will know right away And envy me,
And every guy will fall at my feet
Like a mouse in my trap
I am María of Buenos Aires
I’m a witch both in singing and in love
If the bandoneon arouses me … tia-ra, ta-ta!
I bite it hard in its mouth … tia-ra, ta-ta!
With ten flowering spasms that I’ve got in myself
I always say to myself, ‘Go ahead, María!’
When a mystery comes climbing up my voice
And I sing a tango nobody ever sang
And I dream a dream nobody ever dreamt: Because tomorrow is today and then comes yesterday, hey!
Lyrics and translations
¡Yo soy María de Buenos Aires!
De Buenos Aires María, ¡yo soy mi ciudad!
María tango, María del arrabal!
María noche, María pasión fatal!
María del amor! De Buenos Aires soy yo!
I am María of Buenos Aires!
María of Buenos Aires – I am my city!
María tango, slum María
María night, María fatal passion
María of love! Of Buenos Aires, that’s me
Horacio Ferrer
Valentina Montoya Martínez was born in Chile, the daughter of a former political prisoner and a political refugee. Her exiled family arrived in Britain in 1977. She grew up surrounded by the folk music of her native land – a central part of her life in Britain and often the focal point of a small community of exiles. She began to accompany her own singing on guitar when she was twelve, and soon began performing at Chilean cultural events. She also developed a love of Argentine tango, from the many recordings her mother had brought over from Chile. Her vocal training, she says, ‘was the struggle for survival in a foreign land, the fight against cultural invisibility and the love of my people and our musical traditions’.
She graduated in Comparative American Studies from Warwick University in 1994. She then spent two years teaching English and Drama at the University of Puebla in Mexico, as well as singing in local venues and cafes. On her return to the UK she undertook a master’s degree on the work of Víctor Jara, one of her main inspirations, and then set off for Edinburgh, where she met David Russell, an accomplished Scottish guitarist and sound engineer. Together they formed their folk band ‘Valentina and Voces Del Sur’ and made their debut at the legendary old Bongo Club in Edinburgh, where a chance encounter with the Scottish ensemble Mr McFall’s Chamber led to the beginning of an ongoing and fruitful collaboration singing tango.
To date, Valentina and Voces Del Sur’s performances include numerous venues and festivals in the UK, Portugal, Chile and Mexico. The band also supported Eliades Ochoa on his only Scottish date at the Edinburgh Picture House. Valentina and David will be releasing their band’s next album, A Little Book of Love and Exile, in the spring of 2013 on the Massive Productions label in Greece. It was recorded in Athens and on the island of Ikaria and was produced by Greek composer Vangelis Fampas, who also plays on, and wrote a song for, the album.
Selective discography:
Revolucionario (2001) with Mr McFall’s Chamber
Voces del sur – live at the Roxy Art House ( 2005) Senderos (2007)
Luces del Puerto (2013)
Victor Villena was born in Argentina in 1979. In 1997 he was named Young Bandoneon Player of the Year by the National Tango Academy of Buenos Aires, and also won the first prize in the Cosquín National Soloists Competition. He has played in a number of leading tango orchestras, as well as in the Gustavo Beytelmann Trio. After moving to Paris he joined the world tour of the band Gotan Project. He has performed
as soloist with l’Orchestre Symphonique de Radio France, l’Orchestre Symphonique Besançon, the Emerald Ensemble, l’Orchestre Symphonique Pays de la Loire, the Moritzburg Festival Orchestra, the Brussels Jazz Orchestra and the Stockholm Jazz Orchestra. In 2004, along with Alejandro Schwarz and Cyril Garac, he formed Quinteto El Déspues.
In 2007 Victor was music director for a production of María de Buenos Aires at the San Carlos National Theatre in Lisbon. He tours widely both as soloist and with Quinteto El Déspues, and gives masterclasses in tango at the World Music Department of the University of Arts, Rotterdam. He has played with musicians such as Baiba Skride (winner of the Queen Elizabeth violin competition 2001), Henri Demarquette, Jan Vogler, Mira Wang, Carrie Denis, Frank Braley (winner of the Queen Elizabeth piano competition 1991), Nemanja Radulovic, Olivier Charlier and Peter Bruns.
Philippe Hirschhorn, Bruno Giuranna, Joseph Silverstein (concertmaster of the Boston Philharmonic Orchestra) and Sigmund Nissel (Amadeus Quartet).
He is regularly sought after as a performer at chamber music festivals in France and abroad. He has recorded for Virgin Classics/ EMI and several other labels, has been broadcast on French, Dutch, Greek, Bulgarian and Portuguese radio and TV networks, and has also worked on several French cinema productions, including recording the principal theme from the soundtrack of Stéphane Brizé’s award-winning film I am not Here to be Loved , and acting as violin coach to Juliette Binoche for the movie Alice and Martin (for which he also recorded the music). He recorded the music of Lalo Zanelli, of the world-famous group Gotan Project, for the film My Place under the Sun, and was also leader of the string section for the group’s most recent album.
Mr McFall’s Chamber was formed in 1996 as a response to an increasingly narrowing demographic for classical music in Scotland at that time. The original string quartet, which has remained almost the same lineup throughout the group’s history, played to nightclub audiences and offered a mixture of types of music, some popular, some way-out. More recently the group, often with a more extended line-up than in its earliest days, has tended to take over concert halls instead, while still offering repertoire which spans the divide between classical and non-classical.
The group has commissioned many new works from a variety of composers over the years, and has collaborated with a number of singer/songwriters. It has also set up many educational projects around Scotland, such as North Ayrshire’s ‘Tango Fest’, in which more than three hundred young string pupils performed a programme of traditional tango numbers with the group in December 2012.
Discography:
Like The Milk (1999)
Discipline Global Music DGM 9809
Revolucionario (2001)
Mr McFall’s Chamber MMCC 002
Upstart Jugglers (2001)
MMCC 003
Live at the Queens Hall (2005)
MMCC 004 (DVD)
Music From Newcastle (2008)
International Centre for Music Studies, University of Newcastle ICMUSCD001
Gavin Bryars: Epilogue from Wonderlawn/Eight Irish Madrigals/The Church Closest to the Sea (2009)
Delphian DCD34058
Birds and Beasts: music by Martyn Bennett and Fraser Fifield (2010) Delphian DCD34085
Cyril Garac started his musical education at the conservatories of Grasse and Nice, and then studied with Alain Moglia and Christian Ivaldi at the Conservatoire National Supérieur de Musique, Paris, graduating from the latter institution with its prestigious First Prize with a unanimity of votes from the jury in both violin and chamber music. He continued to refine his playing under the guidance of artists such as
His inquisitive character has also led him to the wonders of tango music. He performs regularly with Gustavo Beytelmann, with whom he formed a trio in 2009, and has collaborated with several respected musicians from the world of tango. As a tango violinist he has participated in productions of the Lisbon Opera, with TangoVia Buenos Aires in Rome, with Mr McFall’s Chamber in Edinburgh, and with Tanguarda at the March Music Days in Ruse, Bulgaria.
Michael Marra: live on tour (2010) Delphian DCD34092
The Okavango Macbeth: an opera by Tom Cunningham and Alexander McCall Smith (2011) Delphian DCD34096
Gavin Bryars: The Church Closest to the Sea
Mr McFall’s Chamber, Rick Standley double bass
DCD34058
The double bass has always been close to Gavin Bryars’ heart. His own instrument, it has also featured strongly in his music for other players – as in The Church Closest to the Sea, written for Mr McFall’s Chamber and their bassist Rick Standley. Bryars’ music straddles worlds: classical and jazz, composition and improvisation, the works on this disc moving between the lushly sensuous and the coolly laid-back as they meditate on geographical and emotional borderlands.
‘deceptively simple sounds whose complexity is revealed in the aftertaste
… jazz riffs on the double bass against a distinctly Caledonian drone, hypnotic and insistent. Whenever I hear Bryars’ music, I want to hear more’ Norman Lebrecht, www.scena.org, November 2009
Birds & Beasts: music by Martyn Bennett and Fraser Fifield
Mr McFall’s Chamber
DCD34085
Martyn Bennett was one of Scotland’s most innovative musicians, combining the traditional and modern, the local and the international.
A long-planned collaboration with Mr McFall’s Chamber was never realised during his tragically short lifetime. For the group’s second disc with Delphian, Robert McFall has put together a programme of his own sympathetic arrangements of Martyn’s music alongside original works by Fraser Fifield, another of Scotland’s virtuosic musical innovators. The premiere recording of Bennett’s Piece for string quartet, percussion and Scottish smallpipes epitomises his sophisticated mastery of fusion.
‘Bennett’s multi-faceted legacy is being advanced on several fronts, and this is a very worthwhile addition’ The Scotsman, April 2010
‘a satisfying, serpentine dalliance of whistle, violin and percussion’
The Independent, May 2010
Michael Marra: live on tour 2010 with Mr McFall’s Chamber
DCD34092
First released in 2010 as an immediate record of a memorable tour, this treasurable disc now stands as a homage to the irrepressible spirit of Michael Marra, who died in Dundee, aged sixty, on 23 October 2012.
‘Aficionados will know Marra’s utterly idiosyncratic material … but the sympathetic McFall’s settings bring a new, almost cinematic element, managing to complement the frequent quirkiness of these songs while emphasising the compassion which glows amid the surrealism’
The Scotsman, November 2010
The Okavango Macbeth
Alexander McCall Smith libretto, Tom Cunningham music
Mr McFall’s Chamber DCD34096
The Macbeth story as played out in a troupe of baboons in Botswana?
This fanciful idea inspired the writer Alexander McCall Smith and the composer Tom Cunningham to come up with their chamber opera, The Okavango Macbeth. Set in the Okavango Delta in northern Botswana, the opera deals with the efforts of an ambitious female baboon, Lady Macbeth, to encourage her husband to murder the dominant baboon, Duncan. The response to the opera’s premiere in the No 1 Ladies’ Opera House led many to conclude that in this extraordinary and unusual tale a new operatic gem has emerged.
‘McCall Smith’s succinct libretto is spun by composer Tom Cunningham into gorgeous tuneful melodies that linger’
— The Scotsman, April 2011, FIVE STARS
