New Music USA Online Library

Gemido de la guitarra

Joelle Wallach

One of Wallach's "Three Spanish Songs" or "Sin Mananas,"  Gemido de la Guitarra is a long song, almost a concert aria, based on a l921 poem, La Guitarra , by Federico Garcia-Lorca.  The poem was inspired by Lorca's extensive research (with daFalla) into the cante jondo, the indigenous poetry and song of southern Andelusia.  Wallach's song, like the Lorca poem it is based on, reflects the passion and mystery, the profound and abiding anguish of the realm of the gypsy guitar. In describing this tradition, Lorca wrote:

The figure of the cantaor is found within two great lines, the arc of the sky on the outside, and on the inside the zigzag that wanders like a snake through his heart. When the cantaor sings he is celebrating a solemn rite, as he rouses ancient essences from their sleep, wraps them in his voice, and flings them into the wind....  He has a deeply religious sense of song.  Through these chanters, the race releases its pain and its true history....They were prodigious interpreters of the peoples' soul who destroyed their own hearts in storms of feeling.

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