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Rediscovering musical roots

An engaging pair of songstresses put a fresh face on old traditions

By Brooke Edge
For The Prague Post
July 18th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Baca finds inspiration in her people's oral history.
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How about spending a night on the town getting a history lesson? Perhaps a few hours of learning about world cultures?
Whether they know it or not, concertgoers will be doing just that at the hands of two dedicated and entertaining masters of folklore and tradition who will be performing in Prague next week.
Czech accordion virtuoso Jana Vébrová and internationally acclaimed Peruvian songbird Susana Baca will share the stage at Lucerna Music Bar (Vébrová with an opening set before Baca’s headlining performance). Both embody a commitment to traditional music of their respective homelands — Vébrová eager to share her passion for folklore and culture with other Generation Xers of this region, and Baca world-renowned for spreading her native stories and songs.
Baca has won over her legions of fans with exuberant, inspiring performances of songs firmly rooted in the culture of Afro-Peruvians. From her live act, in which she sways in flowing gowns, crooning and dancing barefoot while her band jams on traditional Afro-Peruvian instruments such as the quijada (made from a donkey’s jaw bone), to her popular albums of passionately re-imagined slave songs, practically every artistic step Baca takes is toward educating people through music.
Born in Lima, Baca spent her formative years in a coastal neighborhood populated by Peruvians whose ancestors were brought from Africa by Spanish colonizers. Songs and dances that had been passed down through generations were still preserved and prevalent in the tight-knit Afro-Peruvian society, and as a young adult Baca became interested in investigating and preserving the roots of her culture.
“When I was young, I found myself singing old folk songs and was curious where they came from,” she told Afropop.org. “There was nothing ever written about our music or our history, so I went out in search of oral history.”
Drawing on pilgrimages to village elders to hear them sing, asking family matriarchs for dance steps and years of other research, Baca has created nine records of modern Afro-Peruvian music popular with both critics and fans. Since 1995, she has recorded albums for Luaka Bop, the world music label founded by former Talking Heads frontman David Byrne. Many of her records infuse the traditional Afro-Peruvian rhythms with Baca’s more recent interests, including R&B, jazz and creole beats.
“My repertoire is both old and new,” she explained. “That’s how you mature in life, and how you grow into your culture.
“I never wanted to become a museum for the dead,” Baca added. “Interpreting the old and traditional songs in a new way has always been my greatest goal.”
For Vébrová, taking the accordion beyond its stereotypical role as accompaniment for beer hall singalongs and onto the stage as backup for her emotive songs is an opportunity to share her people’s history and customs via music.
“It is certainly necessary to keep these traditions, so that we and children of the end of the 20th century realize that we have some roots, that there are things we can be proud of, that we do belong somewhere,” Vébrová says. She sees herself as part of a larger effort by Czechs to rediscover the culture of their ancestors.
“One can even see it in tourism,” Vébrová says. “Czechs are more and more frequently traveling abroad, but at the same time they are traveling more around the Czech Republic and getting to know their home country. And that is very important.”
By mastering the accordion and integrating it into the repertoire of a modern-day music act, Vébrová hopes to teach her audiences more about the Czech Republic, just as Baca has done for the lively, rich Afro-Peruvian heritage of her native continent. Vébrová has yet to meet Baca, but is looking forward to sharing a stage with her.
“I think she is the kind of woman who gives her performance human and, above all, feminine energy,” Vébrová says. “We could be similar in that, and that is why we fit together.”

Brooke Edge can be reached at tempo@praguepost.com


Other articles in Tempo (18/07/2007):

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