Holiday concert puts Christmas story in Latin America with centuries of music from the region

NINA MOINI: A choral music nonprofit focused on reflecting the racial and cultural diversity of the Twin Cities is holding its annual holiday concert this weekend. The show will focus on music from Latin America in a performance called Navidad Nuestra, "Our Christmas." Ahmad Anzaldúa is the artistic director of Border CrosSing, and he brought some singers and instrumentalists to talk with YourClassical host, Tom Crann, in the Minnesota Public Radio Studio in St. Paul. Here's their conversation.

TOM CRANN: Ahmed, welcome. It's great to have you here.

AHMED ANZALDÚA: Thank you so much. I'm happy to be here.

TOM CRANN: Tell us who else you brought.

AHMED ANZALDÚA: Well, I brought with me our executive director, Matthew Valverde, who is also a wonderful singer in the group, Mari Ésabel Valverde, who will be singing alto, Cherolyn Fischer on the accordion. And then we've got Vladimir Garrido, who is part of our Andean band. And he'll be playing the bombo and the charango today.

TOM CRANN: So Border CrosSing, you take us on different journeys between periods, between cultures. Tell us about this concert. You've put together music of Advent and Christmas. What can we expect?

AHMED ANZALDÚA: Well, that is definitely the theme of the Cantada Navidad Nuestra by Ariel Ramirez. But I think the main thing here is, this is a holiday concert. It is all music about Advent and Christmas and the big Christmas story. But it is told from Latin American perspectives, going back 500 years. So every composer on the program, every text on the program is by a Latin American composer or poet. And they bring various perspectives to this music that we don't often hear from the Baroque and Renaissance and classical and romantic Christmas and Advent music from Europe.

TOM CRANN: Now, we don't have a harpsichord here in the studio. I wish we had, and you wanted us to have. So you're going to play on the piano. But the sound world that people will hear is very much a Baroque and also, you mentioned, the Andean band as well, the kind of melding of those two?

AHMED ANZALDÚA: Absolutely. So we're going to have an ensemble of period instruments from the early music. So harpsichord, violins, bassoon, recorders, double bass, et cetera. And we're going to have an Andean band. So various types of flutes, quenas and zampoñas, charango and guitars, accordion, bombo, different types of percussion instruments. And they all come together in all of the music. So we do integrate the Andean instruments into the Baroque ensemble.

TOM CRANN: So let's hear a piece now from-- we're putting this just before 1700, right? And this is an Advent hymn. Tell us about it. It's called "The Morning Star?"

AHMED ANZALDÚA: "La Matutina Estrella." Yes, the "Star of the Morning." So this piece tells a really interesting story, because there's a community in Bolivia, in the region of Chiquitos, Bolivia, Chiquitos became a hotbed of music in Latin America starting in the 1600s. The Indigenous people in Chiquitos, previous to being colonized by the Spaniards, were known for their musical traditions and for their woodworking.

And after being colonized, this place became a place where instruments were built. It had an opera house. It had makers of violins and cellos and string basses, choirs and orchestras. And to this day, it is the site of an annual festival of Baroque music that is quite nice. So this piece in particular would be sung for the first Sunday of Advent at a church in Chiquitos that is built in such a way where the stained glass of the church comes alive with the sun as it comes up that morning.

TOM CRANN: Oh, wow.

AHMED ANZALDÚA: So this would have been sung in the dark and timed so as the sun is coming up, the whole place comes alight.

["LA MATUTINA ESTRELLA" PLAYING]

[SINGING IN SPANISH]

TOM CRANN: A Bolivian Advent hymn from the late 17th century, "The Morning Star," or "La Matutina Estrella." We heard members of Border CrosSing, including at the piano, their artistic director, Ahmed Anzaldúa. And also, we heard Matthew Valverde singing. He serves as their executive director as well. And we're here in the Maud Moon Weyerhauser Music Studio. You'll be performing that, Ahmed, not with a piano, but with, if you will, a proper Baroque ensemble, right, with continuo and a recorder?

AHMED ANZALDÚA: Exactly, yes. My role at this concert is to conduct. I'll be conducting and leading the action. But I won't actually be playing this time.

TOM CRANN: For those who have never been to a Border CrosSing concert, tell us what that experience is like and what you are trying to create.

AHMED ANZALDÚA: Well, Border CrosSing started with me wanting to tell stories about immigrants and about Latin America and about my own culture that I wasn't seeing in my circles, in my circles of classical choral music and early music. So that's where it started. And in fact, several of the folks that are here with me have been playing or singing with Border CrosSing since the very start. But the central idea is always to tell a cohesive story that gives context to humanity, to the people, then the music that we're talking about.

The music on this program specifically, most of the time when we talk about colonization and about evangelization of the Americas, it tends to be talked about something that is imposed on. We tend to hear music by European composers working in the Americas or music that tells European stories. And in this case, every piece on the program is told using poetry and music by Latin American composers of all of these different periods.

The magic and what makes special this Advent and Christmas music is that you have the confluence of Christian European traditions and Indigenous Latin American traditions and West African traditions all coming together in these places. The artistic musical result of these is always unique and something that you don't hear very often when all you listen to is music from Western Europe, from that period.

TOM CRANN: We're talking with Ahmed Anzaldúa of Border CrosSing. And we are listening to some music as well that illustrates his points for their concerts, Saturday the 20th at the Cesar Chavez School, and Sunday the 21st in Minneapolis at 4:00 PM at Incarnation Catholic Church. Tell us about your instrument, Vladimir Garrido. It's called the charango. And to me, it looks like halfway between, let's say, a mandolin and a guitar. Is that accurate?

VLADIMIR GARRIDO: Yeah, yeah, it's tuned like the ukulele. It's just missing one of the strings. This has 10 strings in total. It's an instrument from the Andean culture, originally made out of our armadillo shell, from the armadillo called quirquincho.

TOM CRANN: Wow.

VLADIMIR GARRIDO: It's most found in Bolivia, in the Andes Mountains. Those animals are protected now. So you can't make them anymore. But we have beautiful wooden charangos that are also electric, acoustic. And that's one of the instruments I use for one of the songs we just played today.

AHMED ANZALDÚA: The piece that we're going to hear is "La Anunciación," "The Annunciation." And the piece opens with an iconic accordion solo. It just grabs you. And we've been playing this piece, I think, since Border CrosSing's second year. And every time that accordion solo has been played by our wonderful accordionist, Cherolyn Fischer, who is here with us.

TOM CRANN: Cherolyn, what's it like playing that solo?

CHEROLYN FISCHER: Oh, it's one of my favorite pieces to play. This particular piece, "La Anunciación," I have to move. I have to move to play it. So I'm usually moving around in my chair or jumping around a little on stage because it's just so full of emotion and life and celebration.

["LA ANUNCIACIÓN" PLAYING]

NINA MOINI: That was YourClassical host, Tom Crann, talking to Ahmed Anzaldúa, the artistic director of the Twin Cities choral nonprofit Border CrosSing.