Across Borders and from Diversity a Personal Experience
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Contribution to the I International AGACOM Conference: Beyond Boundaries: Networks of Diversity. Panel: Changing Media: Research and Instructional Shifts in Communication. November 21, 2017. Published in GRIAL Journal T. 56, No. 219 (pp 58-63). Translated from the original Galician by Mónica Álvarez. Across Borders and from Diversity A Personal Experience C RISTINA PATO Music has the ability to express emotions and sen- Castro. When the president of AGACOM and sations so profound that words alone cannot ex- professor at USC, Francisco Campos Freire, asked press them. Te communicative power of music me to “refect on protection strategies of Galician cul- has been studied through interdisciplinary ap- ture beyond Galicia” and Víctor Freixanes suggested proaches all over the world, from the scientifc that I flter an “opening perspective” through my perspectives of neuroscientists such as Oliver experience, I decided to question what was it, real- Sacks (Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain), ly, that opened doors for me to the cultural market Daniel Levitin (Tis is Your Brain on Music) and in the United States: a linguistic coincidence Gottfried Schlaug (Director of the Music and wholly unrelated to my playing the bagpipe... Neuroimaging Laboratory at Harvard Medical School) to the semi-humanist pedagogy of Lúa Descolorida Howard Gardner, Professor of Cognition and Ed- ucation at Harvard University (Creating Minds: An In 2006, I was in the second semester of my Doc- Anatomy of Creativity as Seen Trough the Lives of torate in Musical Arts at Rutgers University. In Freud, Einstein, Picasso, Stravinsky, Eliot, Graham, the United States, Music and the arts in general and Gandhi). are part of a university’s system and regulated as such. My specialty, and the main reason I moved My experiences as a professional musician over the to New York, was to fully focus on the lyrical, op- last twenty years, as an interdisciplinary educator eratic, and symphonic repertoire I so enjoyed as a at the University of California Santa Barbara, at pianist throughout my academic career in Galicia Harvard University, and at Te College of the and Barcelona. Even though in Spain a degree Holy Cross, as well as my passion to share univer- offered a specialization in chamber music, it did sal narratives through personal events informed not grant the exceptionally detailed training of the this talk on the communicative properties of music Yankee system. My area of concentration, Collabo- at the International AGACOM Conference. rative Piano, comprised instruction in the diction of languages in the traditional lyrical repertoire Te director of the Royal Galician Academy, au- (German, Italian, French) and in the not so tradi- thor and professor Víctor Freixanes, suggested in tional (Russian, Slavic and Scandinavian). It com- his remarks at the conference that "to be different is prised as well an extensive study of vocal work to exist” and spoke of “language as a marker of social with piano (art songs), complete operas, and an identity.” Silvino Lopes, president of MEDIA- instrumental repertoire specifcally with piano COM - Cape Verdean Association of Communi- (sonatas, trios, quartets...). Being a collaborative cation Sciences, also spoke about language as “an pianist meant being in constant conversation with instrument for the conception of identity” while jour- one’s fellow performers, creating and recreating nalist María Yáñez reminded us that “the future is musical productions as an ensemble, and living in oral communication” when comparing oral/audiovi- constant learning since this feld of study possesses sual versus textual languages; Yáñez noted as well one of the most extensive repertories. that the frst Galician language blogs were started by Galicians in the diaspora (fllos.org).2 During this second semester, the Vocal Perfor- mance Department Chair asked me to be the pi- My background as a professional musician in the anist for a Master’s class of the Russo-Argentine United States is directly linked to the Galician composer Osvaldo Golijov. One of his composi- language, specifcally to the work of Rosalía de tions was intended for soprano and piano and, ac- Cristina Pato is an Artist and interdisciplinary educator. Learning Advisor for Silkroad, arts organization founded by Yo-Yo Ma. 2017 Blodgett Distinguished Artist-in-Residence at Harvard University. cording to her, I was the perfect collaborator since to the public about his music at Rutgers Universi- the language of the piece was like Spanish. My task ty. At that time, all accompanying musicians met as pianist included working with singers on the to rehearse and receive his advice before the event, diction of the melodic line, and the fact that this and my curiosity to know how much he knew work, in particular, was in a language similar to about Galician culture led us to a long conversa- mine prompted her to think of me to collaborate tion about language, identity, and—how could it on the correct diction with the singer. When I re- have been otherwise—the Galician bagpipe. Tis ceived the music score in order to study it, I saw conversation led both to an invitation to speak at that the title of the piece was “Lúa Descolorida” 3 the university where Osvaldo Golijov taught, Te (Colorless Moon in Galician, my own language, and College of Holy Cross, and to a profound immer- the name of a poem written by the most iconic sion into the possibilities of the sounds of the writer of 19th century Galicia, Rosalía de Castro). Galician bagpipe. As a result of the poignant combination of melan- choly, longing, and emotion that shaped my re- And so everything began in this way, with a Gali- sponse to the piece, I worked on it with unrivaled cian poem and a curious composer who had noth- passion. After making a phonetic transcription, I ing to do with Galician culture...by the time I met sent the singer a recording of the recited poem as him, Golijov had already spent some years placing well as a second recording with the poem follow- Rosalía de Castro’s oeuvre at the epicenter of con- ing the rhythm of the song. Tat was a magical temporary music. time: just when I had decided to leave behind my life as a bagpiper in Galicia to follow the dream of Te Silkroad Project and Yo-Yo Ma being a pianist in the United States, Rosalía de In September of 2006, Golijov arranged From Air Castro appeared to remind me of the power and to Air, a chamber piece that included two move- the beauty of the difference factor. ments with the Galician bagpipe (in low G). Te Golijov reached Rosalía de Castro’s work through story of how this work was written and made its his admiration for Federico García Lorca. Having debut at Carnegie Hall reached the front page of 4 fallen in love with the sound and symbolism of the the art section of Te New York Times and led me Galician language, he wrote a piece for the sopra- to the organization that changed my life: Te no Dawn Upshaw and the pianist Gilbert Kalish Silkroad Project. Established in 1998 by the cellist in 1999. Tis composition included various ver- Yo-Yo Ma (of Chinese origin, born in France and sions and orchestrations, and it was, in a certain raised in the United States) with the idea of using way, the climax of one of his most popular pieces: the Silk Road as a metaphor for contact and cul- La Pasión según San Marcos, a macro composition tural exchange through music: to fnd musical intertwining Latinamerican roots with classical connections to the east and west embracing differ- language through the composer's own effort to ences, to reassess the power of music in society, to understand the relationship between his own reli- create the tools to make it possible and to place gion, Judaism, and Christianity. music at the center of a global conversation: “Yo-Yo Ma conceived Silkroad as a reminder that even as In the frst decade of the 21st century, Osvaldo rapid globalization resulted in division, it brought Golijov was the most renowned composer in the extraordinary possibilities for working together. Seek- world of classic-contemporary music: he received ing to understand this dynamic, he began to learn requests by the Metropolitan Opera of New York, about the historical Silk Road, recognizing in it a Lincoln Center and the Chicago Symphony as model for productive cultural collaboration, for the well as for soundtracks by Francis Ford Coppola. exchange of ideas and tradition alongside commerce Golijov presented a conference/master class open and innovation.” 5 In this manner, an organization was born that to this day responds and reacts to more compact projects within our own respective the challenges of a society with a created language communities—tours through India guided by imbibing the experiences and traditions of its col- Sandeep Das and through China with Wu Tong, lective parts. All members of the organization are or participation in my own festival, Galician Con- independent artists who joined Silkroad to collab- nection (2012-2014)8. In addition to working with orate and create “a musical language centered in dif- Harvard, we collaborate with Stanford, Berkeley, ference (...) able to serve as a metaphor (...) for a more Princeton and Rice; with museums like the Art hopeful world. ” 6 Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Natural His- tory in New York, or the Aga Khan Museum of I began working with Silkroad in 2006 led by Toronto; and with the public schools of Montana, Golijov’s work. In 2011, I became a member of its Iowa, Massachusetts and New York in the integra- leadership council and have been its Learning Ad- tion of art.