Here are some images and music to take you to South America--to the places I have written about--for Navidad.
Let's begin with music. Here is my favorite Christmas hymn, bar none. It is Ariel Ramirez's "Navidad in Verano," from his oratorio based on South American folk melodies. That angelic voice is the late GREAT Jose Carreras. It inspired a scene in Invisible Country, where a wounded war veteran finds his voice and sings again for the first time after suffering horrors. I suggest you log on to it and let it play in the background while you look at the pictures.
Potosi
Ornaments that show the Cerro Rico and the interior of the mine.
A children's chorus
Paraguay
The Government Palace got up for the holidays.
A banner of celebration
Buenos Aires
Two angles of the Plaza de Mayo
Calle Florida, where I placed the dress shop that figures in Blood Tango.
PAZ A TODOS LOS HOMBRES!
Annamaria - The Monday before Christmas
Christmas in summer.It’s when it happens in South America and also the name of my favorite Christmas hymn.
Many writers tell me that they listen to music while
working.Some say absolutely not.I myself don’t do anything without music
playing.Not drive.Not cook.Not write.Certainly not decorate
the Christmas tree.
Years back, while shopping for the playlist to inspire Invisible Country, I came across the
work of the Argentine Composer Ariel Ramirez.If you don’t know of him, I want you to introduce you to him today.If you know his work, you will know where I
am going and will likely want to follow.
Born in Santa Fe, Argentina in 1921, Ramirez was destined to
be a school teacher like his father, until a vocation in music took him
over.Given the country of his birth, he
began by studying tango, but then he met Atahualpa Yupanqui, a great Argentine
folk singer and songwriter.Ramirez
became an aficionado, student, and worldwide proponent of traditional music of
South America.
The rhythms of that music became his greatest inspiration
and the basis of his masterpiece: the Misa
Criolla.The Washington Post called his non-Latin mass “a stunning
achievement.”The text is Spanish.The instrumentation, the tempos, the melodies
highly influenced by indigenous South American Indian music.It is gorgeous.Here is a taste, with the angelic voice of the late, great Jose Carreras:
For this time of year, Navidad
Nuestra is his Christmas
oratorio—again a fusion of Spanish and Indian musical cultures, and a beautiful
one.
For me, though, my favorite of his pieces is Navidad in Verano.While I was writing Invisible Country, I listened to it every day at least once.In the end, I put the song in the mouth of my
character Salvador Leon, and it inspired one of the most intensely emotional
scenes in the book.
I wish I could play the best version of it for
you here, but is not available on YouTube, or it requires the dreaded
Flash Player. The one I recommend is in this CD:
If you use iTunes,
you can hear samples there, can download the whole album ($9.99) or just Navidad in Verano ($1.29).It is a truly lovely Christmas hymn.Here is a version you can access now.It is not the best, but it is true to
Ramirez’s vision and it is heartfelt:
