A Closer Listen
As Grand River has chosen wind as her subject and Concepción Huerta has chosen fire, the Umor Rex label may be working toward an Elements series. El Sol de los Muertos (The Sun of the Dead) features a volcano on its cover, but the image is metaphorical as well as physical. Inspired by the writings of Eduardo Galeano, the album is a primal cry that erupts from the depths of the earth.
“Magma como la vena en el territorio” is as sorrowful as drone can sound, reminiscent of the recent work of Richard Skelton, who in similar fashion has also been addressing erased histories and recovered pasts. The press release references Visión de los vencidos (The Broken Spears), which contains the “account of the defeated,” a lost text rubbed from official histories. When one combines this with the plague of “the disappeared” in Mexico, one realizes how much may be buried beneath the surface: not only bodies, but a reticence to speak. When Concepción Huerta mentions the voices of silence, she is writing not only about the silenced voices of history and the dead, but the silence of those who are very much alive. Ironically, this makes El Sol de los Muertos – an album without words – a voice.
The listening test is not whether one can hear the specific subject matter in the music – such a feat would be implausible – but whether after learning the subject matter, one can hear the resonant emotion. In this, the album is an unqualified success. “La Tierra y sus poderes subterráneos” in particular exemplifies the growing anger of a populace whose roots have been excavated and destroyed, a particular travesty in a culture that reveres ancestry. The piece is so dark as to be nearly gothic in nature. Fury, like magma, is ready to burst forth; in the title track, it does.
“El Sol de los Muertos” combines the visceral impact of an air raid siren, a herd of trumpeting elephants and a call to arms: repeated blasts with a brass counterpart. The subterranean rumble represents a shift in power, from militaries and governments back to the people: as if the massed dead are a force of their own, allied to the living resistance, marching from the mountains. In “Los Ecos de las Voces del Silencio,” she gives them both sound and presence, an amassed energy.
While rooted in Latin America, the theme is universally applicable. The forces that silence truth are active in every land. The encouragement of the release is found in the metaphor: the thought that a tipping point might be reached, and the very earth might erupt in protest. Lava literally creates new land. (Richard Allen)
Wed May 14 00:01:28 GMT 2025