BRIGHT STARS IN A CANARIAN CONSTELLATION

BRIGHT STARS

IN A CANARIAN  CONSTELLATION

seen and heard by Norman Warwick

Sounds and songs from the Canary Islands, territory or the Atlantic Macaronesia, can be heard in the extraordinary voice of Olga Cerpa and on the instruments of a historical band of popular music of those islands.

Canary Islands is an archipelago of seven islands off the Atlantic Sahara coast, only one hundred miles away from the African continent, however its people and culture has been greatly influenced by its strategic geographical position, halfway among three continents. Its importance as a shipping route between Europe and America has a very long history: Christopher Columbus provisioned water and food in the Canary Islands on his voyage of discovery of the New World.

In 1492 some of the islands had already been brought under the Crown of Castile. Its aboriginal population, of the north african neolithic age, was decimated by the Spanish, although some of their customs were preserved (names, eating habits, clay pottery and ceramics, etc.). Later on, besides mixing between Natives and Spaniards, Canary Islands began a mixing cultural and population process that have marked its history. Portuguese colonizers, African slaves, Jews, Maltese, Genoese, etc., arrived on their shores too.

The relationships of the Canary Islands with America, especially Cuba, Uruguay, Puerto Rico and Venezuela have been very fruitful over the last three centuries, as a result of the emigration of canaries to those countries, where they founded cities and towns and become part of emerging Creole societies. But curiously canaries, excellent farmers and colonizers, reach the southern U.S. territories; as well as San Antonio Texas, is founded by Canarian settlers.

Mestisay is one of the most popular bands of the Canary Islands, where folk music lives in all its forms, from the most traditional, particularly linked to festivals and country fairs and family tradition, to the most advanced and modern music.

Mestisay hoard multiple influences, coming from Canarian musical roots, although their sound also incorporates influences from countries and communities with extensive relationships with the Canary Islands: Portuguese Music, for instance, in a common Atlantic way, Bolero, through the Mexicans and Cuban films from the forties, African music sounds and rhythms are easily identifiable geographically with the country so close to the Canarian archipelago.

All this work forms a musical synthesis that insists in the perviousness and mixing of the Canarian culture. It is a kind of music which could be considered as “Atlantic”. The group has recorded 22 albums throughout its history and has developed several projects including highly successful theatrical productions.

The band has toured more than 20 countries across three continents. Most of its discography is played by OLGA CERPA (left) , the female voice of the group. With two nominations of Latin Grammys, she is very popular in the Canary Islands;  is considered as the most important female voice of the Canarian popular music over the last two decades, which is a reflection on her remarkable vocal power, artistic personality and extraordinary scenic imprint.

Of the more than twenty albums the various ensembles of Olga and Mestisay, several are particularly highlighted on the musicians´ web site. These include Tropical Path, a multinational production, captured in a book-disc with an extraordinary design, recorded by three symphonic bands from Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, Mexico City and Havana, covering historical repertoires of Latin American popular music from the 40s and 50s of the last century.

Other albums listed are A Night Of Boleros and Canciones Del Sur, as well as the 25^th Anniversay album, The Whole Life.

Also in the list of nine selected albums is Jallos. Songs Found On The Shore.  A great American writer, Butch Hancock, said to me in an interview ´that I always intend what I write for light years of travel´. In a similar vein another Americana artist, John Stewart writer of Daydream Believer, that ´when I die, I hope maybe some lonsome picker will find som healing in my songs´.

So, beachcombing for melodies, lyrics, rhythms and songs might be a rewarding way  to work with music.

You can look out, too, for Little Fado and other love songs.

Some of the highlights of Latin American popular songs from the last century are “dressed” and musically embellished with sounds and instruments from fado.

Atlántico Radio sounds particularly eclectic. It is described on site as an album with Atlantic resonances and music that is linked to the African shore and the Cape Verde Islands. With collaborations such as Nancy Vieira (Cape Verde), Manecas Costa (Guinea Bissau), Luis Morera (Canary Islands), Hevia (Asturias).

Estación Lisboa, the final album on this list of recommendations was recorded between the Portuguese capital and the Canary Islands, this is the second part of the experiment that began with “Pequeño fado”. The album is enhanced by the presence of two prestigious Portuguese singers, Ricardo Ribeiro and Helder Moutinho.

We knew that  on the stroke of 9.00 pm Olga Cerpa and Mistesay were due to give the closing live performance of the Festival de Los Remedios, and that we would need to be there pretty early to acquire seats. The matter was further complicated by the timing of the preceding event.

Scheduled for 8.00 pm, just an hour before Olga and the guys were due to take to the stage, there was a poetry reading to be held in the close-by Casa de Culture, in the courtyard behind the stage.

Yaiza Municipality had been keen for poetry to be included on the wide agenda of what is really a patronal festival. So they invited two great local writers and poets: Jaime Quesada and Manuel Concepción, protagonists of the poetic ‘Mano a mano’ to the event on September 7th.

The reading began at 8.00 pm as advertised and was a masterpiece of timed oratory, with even a little choreography evident as the two poets and their interviewer made frequent movements out of their on-stage armchairs to the podium to make their points. They were of course excellent poets and the rhyming schemes were so carefully crafted and deliberately emphasised that even we who do not speak enough Spanish to have fully captured the ´meaning´ of this poetry, specially written for the occasion, were in no doubt that these poets were making gentle jibes at one another.

Their work was presenting poetry as a story narrative, telling the story of Los Remedios whilst at the same time pointing out poetry´s importance and obligation as a reliable narrator. It was all good fun and held a full-house audience of around 150 in utter silence apart from appreciative applause at the end of each reading.

I have always marvelled at how well Lanzarote fits arts and entertainment into even its most sacred celebrations, and that was certainly the case again tonight.

All the ladies in the audience looked colourful and glamorous in what I call ´nonchalant chic´ and the men, whilst not suited and booted, were nevertheless appropriately attired in ´smart casual´.

We now had a five minute stroll to bring us to the square in which the stage had been erected.

It was a town square, packed and totally devoted to the charisma and artistic personality of Olga Cerpa and the band, who offer sounds and songs from the Canary Islands, although they also made the leap to other continents giving inspirations that are the heritage of art, and art is universal.

The square felt very Canarian with the musical tribute of the artists, eight in total, as there are eight Canary Islands, to César Manrique, or the Folías that Olga Cerpa came down to perform next to her audience, expressing her feelings, “I got goosebumps,” many agreed after those intense emotions, but those who enjoyed the performance could also feel themselves on a corner of Havana, in the colourful neighbourhood of La Perla in San Juan, Puerto Rico or in the streets of Cape Verde close to embracing the sea.

Yaiza boarded the Mestisay boat captained by Manuel González, creator of the group in the early eighties, musical director and composer of many of its hits, and the Yaiza audience would enjoy the intercontinental journey where the coplas, the son, the décimas, the cumbia and the Canarian airs came together on the same deck of cultural expression where there are no classes, where creation and joy triumph as a consequence of that absence.

We wandered across the courtyard and as we approached the arena in front of the stage we saw that 798 seats were already occupied of the original 800 that had been laid out in anticipation of a good-sized audience for the free-till-full concert. We jumped on those last two seats in a rush, as if we were playing a very competitive game of musical chairs. Within a minute or so we were sitting comfortably and with no sense of shame or guilt, as another 500 seats were immediately being laid out by stewards behind us.

The soft lighting hanging in the trees and the brighter lights from the coco cola stands the crepe bars out on the car park lent all sorts of shadows and silhouettes, as people queued for food before the concert began.

Olga´s band, the seven piece Mestisay took to their floor spots, picked up their instruments and played her on to the floor to stand centre stage, and the audience erupted.

We had seen Olga and this line up perform in 2019 (five years ago !) at the Cesar Manrique Festival in Arrecife and had been incredibly impressed.

In those few minutes the audience seemed to have increased exponentially to a total of over a 1,000 people and many had congregated in front of the stage as Olga commenced her first song, an obvious fans-favourite that immediately had loyal friends and front row dancers singing and clapping along.

Her voice can be soft and girlish as well as lived-in and mature. She is an energetic stage performer, and an empathetic communicator with her audience, and she stepped down off the stage to sing among her fans.

She sings romantic songs with a passion, and sings popular songs with obvious pleasure.

She is also funny and generous with her musicians.

The seven piece band consisted of three stringed instruments, percussion, brass and wind instruments, as well as the ´trumpeto´ played by the gentleman who seemed to be unobtrusively directing this mini orchestra. In fact, so full was the sound, it could have been a full symphony orchestra. It was, of course fusion music of the very best kind, a wonderful non-hierarchical merging of sounds picked up by travelling musicians with an ear for what works well together.

It was neither rock nor folk-lore but was simply well-arranged music brilliantly delivered. Instruments came between vocal verses playing together blending Canarian music with influences from Africa and Europe, sometimes even carrying echoes of songs like Dancing On The Ceiling by Lionel Richie.

Olga and the band crammed over twenty songs into this show that also boasted a superb filmic backdrop with photographs old and new of important people and places throughout The Canary Islands. Most of the women in the audience danced and shimmied but that was great because as the song says, You´ve Got To Dance Like Nobody´s Watching.

Olga Cerpa and Mestisay were brought back for a number of encores, but  scheduled to start at 11.00 pm there was a DJ led Throng Of Blowtown (Studio 54) style event that we thought we were probably about seventy five years too old for.

So we set off home (12 miles south to Playa Blanca) and then realised that, of course, all the roads through town were still closed. We had to drive at slightly slower than walking pace along unlit sidetracks and detours searching for diversion signs that would enable us to wind our  way, snake-like, to join the LZ 2, at a point about 12 miles north ! Still, we then made swift progress back home on the motorway, and our five cats were waiting for us on the patio when we arrived home, asking ´what time do you call this?´

As we sat with Clinger, Little Black Cat, Rollover, Stray and Pretty But Thick on our knees on our garden furniture, we spoke to them of poetry and music and arts, and religion and families and politics and why life here on Lanzarote so much appeals. But sometimes when our Spanish cats want us to be quiet they just pretend they can´t speak English.

So Dee and I chatted between ourselves of the twenty or so  songs we had heard, including Graciosera, Décimas de Lisboa, Son del Perola and Rosa de los vientos, and a repertoire that sums up the last five albums by Olga Cerpa and Mestisay. Voice, strings, wind instruments, leather and harpsichord harmonized in a spectacular concert.

Since seeing them play on that previous occasion we mentioned earlier, at the Cesar Manrique Festival in 2019, these musicians have grown in confidence and stepped up several rungs of the ladder and we hope we won´t have to wait as long to see them again.

As I sat down to write this review the following morning an e mail pinged in from our friends at Lancelot Digital, a major news stream on the island. I was delighted to read that they, too, were full of praise for the concert (and, indeed, the festival as a whole).

The artists are by now  packing their bags to travel to Colombia, land of cumbia, a genre with indigenous, African and European roots, which Mestisay performed in Yaiza, as is its rich musical production. The audience stood up and said goodbye to the group invited by the Yaiza City Council to participate in the Fiestas de Los Remedios. It was applause of gratitude not only for the band who had played so brilliantly and that lifted the singer up where she belongs, but was surely also a nod of thanks to those in Yaiza who had made such a festival, such a night, and such a performance possible.

The prime references point for this article were a piece publihed in Lancelot Digital, reviewing the previous evening´s concert with total enthusiasm and Olga´s web site.

Please also note that part of this piece has been previously published by Lanzarote Information and PASS IT ON # 67.