Dedicated to all social leaders and human rights defenders who are now memory ...
Commissioned by the Los Angeles Philharmonic Association Gustavo Dudamel, Music & Artistic Director
According to the Institute of Studies for Development and Peace (Indepaz), since the signing of the Peace Agreement in Colombia in 2016, as of October 2021, 1.260 social leaders and human rights defenders have been assassinated.
Why do they ¨turn into memory¨ these people who fight nobly for a just cause?
As an artist it is impossible for me to answer this question in a concrete way, it is for this reason that I take advantage of the invitation of Power to the people! to express with sounds the pain, the helplessness and the frustration that I feel every time I find out about the murder of one of these people.
Ecos de la Memoria is an emotional catarsis of sound expressions, such as songs of mourners from Colombian indigenous communities, represented by the strings playing their instrument and singing the interjection ¨Ay!¨ -expression of lament and pain-. Also heard, in the winds and percussion, rhythms and melodic lines influenced by hip-hop music -a form of expression against inequality and injustice-. More than 50 musicians percussion with their voices doing beatbox, which serves as the rhythmic basis for a trio of pans, after an intervention by the entire orchestra emulating a social protest, to exhibit a musical cacerolazo.
Echoes and resonances are heard throughout the sound journey, represented with chords at the beginning and at the end expressing screams of rage and pain, and counterpoint imitations between the different instrumental groups.
These echoes are the legacy that social leaders and human rights defenders hope will continue to resonate in our memory and that of our children, and thus, to be able to achieve a change for the planet and humanity.
Picture by Víctor Agudelo
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