Having chalked up many hours playing in country & western bands, pedal steel guitarist Susan Alcorn’s recorded output, which is considerable, is stylistically wide-ranging as it emanates from the avant-garde. Her latest CD is Canto, available now through the Relative Pitch label. It’s a striking set documenting Alcorn’s trip to Chile to play with free improvisors and folk musicians in a group she named Septeto del Sur. Five original compositions including the titular suite and one interpretation of a song by the great Chilean folk singer and cornerstone of the nueva canción movement Victor Jara broaden Alcorn’s sound in unexpected ways.
Baltimorean Susan Alcorn’s discography begins in 2000 with her debut CD Uma. Also released that year, she played on Eugene Chadbourne’s “To Doug” 7-inch, a tribute to the exemplary Texan Doug Sahm. Since, she’s recorded with Chadbourne on additional occasions (as who wouldn’t seize the opportunity) and with a diverse list of heavyweights on the avant scene: Pauline Oliveros, Ellen Fullman, Michael Formanek, Mary Halvorson, Nate Wooley, Joe McPhee, Ken Vandermark, Ellery Eskelin, Ingrid Laubrock, Janel Leppin, Astroturf Noise, and Jandek.
Those esteemed collaborators could lead one to assume Alcorn excels at abstraction, and yes, that’s right, and yes, free improv is a part of Canto’s stylistic weave. But this disc is also extremely solid compositionally, with Chilean folk, including nueva canción, and contemporary classical part of the equation.
Nueva canción chilena was a 1960s-’70s leftist movement with a prominent musical component that took influence from traditional Chilean folk (the nueva canción impulse also emerged in Argentina, Cuba, Spain, Catalonia and Nicaragua). Amongst the best-known exponents of nueva canción chilena are Violeta Parra, Rolando Alarcón, Isabel Parra, Patricio Castillo and of course Victor Jara, who was brutally tortured and murdered after Augusto Pinochet seized power in Chile in 1973.
It was a visit to Chile in 2003 to study the region’s language and music that kindled Alcorn’s love of nueva canción, leading directly to the formation of Septeto del Sur and the recording of Canto, which was cut in November of last year in María Pinto, Chile. Along with Alcorn’s pedal steel, Septeto del Sur features Luis “ToTo” Alvarez on guitar, Claudio “Pajaro” Araya on drums and cuatro, Francisco “Pancho” Araya on charango and quena, Rodrigo Bobadilla on flute, quena, zampoña, guitar and vocals, Amanda Irarrazabal on double bass and vocals, and Danka Villanueva on violin and vocals.
Worry not, for Canto isn’t an example of an avant-gardist helicoptering into some remote region for a shallow interaction with authenticity. In Septeto del Sur’s lineup, the brothers Araya do have an extensive folk background as Bobadilla and Villanueva have direct experience with nueva canción (Bobadilla having played with Patricio Manns, for example). Closer to where Alcorn thrives, Alvarez and Irarrazabal have played with Lukas Ligeti and Joëlle Léandre, respectively.
In the opening piece “Suite Para Todos,” a rich tense melody driven by violin and flute are seamlessly intermingled with methodical excursions into improv (Alcorn gave an instruction to the players to imitate birdsong), and what registers is the prevailing emotional range of the piece, not the change in tactics. The collective instrumental acumen is also immediately apparent, both in technique and how it’s obvious the group is listening and reacting.
The core of Canto is the larger three part suite that deeply reinforces the music’s commitment to history and Alcorn’s devotion to social justice. Her playing of a Chilean folk melody is exquisite in “Canto I. ¿Dónde Están?,” attaining just the right tone in relation to the title, which is a response, specifically a chanted phrase, to Pinochet’s “disappeared.” As the piece progresses, the powerful interplay of improv and composition take hold, and then Alcorn comes back in with the melody for the section’s close.
At nearly 13 minutes, “Canto II. Presente: Sueño de Luna Azul” is the disc’s most galvanizing stretch as it solidifies the titular suite’s sizable achievement. “Presente” is another people’s chant and “Sueño de Luna Azul” is linked to the Mapuche (the indigenous people of south-central Chile and Argentina) poet Elicura Chihuailaf, these sources strengthening the thematic unity of the suite as the duration of the section allows for fruitful structural variation.
When a promo text mentions Ennio Morricone, there is often cause for worry. But not here. In fact, “Canto II. Presente: Sueño de Luna Azul” might be the subtlest similarity to Morricone I’ve ever heard (and I’ve heard a lot), and I will further note that it’s unlikely to be a direct homage to the Maestro. But the group does deliver a reharmonization of Olivier Messiaen’s “Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum” (“I Await the Resurrection of the Dead”), and that sort of thing simply isn’t in the wheelhouse of a bunch of half-steppers.
Contrasting from the first two sections, “Canto III. Lukax” is dedicated to a specific individual, namely Lukax Santana, Chilean improvisor (member of the groups Quimantu, Quilombo Expontáneo and the London Improvisers Orchestra, with whom Alcorn has played) and former political prisoner. Alcorn again opens the piece and maintains her presence as the full ensemble joins. Amongst the treats are a splash of wiggly-woozy string motion reminiscent of Mary Halvorson.
“Mercedes Sosa” is another dedication, this one to the essential Argentinian folk singer, and it’s notably a song Alcorn first recorded on her debut Uma. Unlike “Suite Para Todos” and the Canto suite, the track begins with the full ensemble sounding wonderful, and deeper into the piece a superb unwinding of brief solo spotlights emerges.
Irarrazabal vocals and Alvarez’s guitar help to elevate “El Derecho de Vivir en Paz” to a rare height, though as is the case throughout, the ensemble never sets a foot wrong. A musically grand experience, Canto is a gripping remembrance of those who struggled against fascism, serving as a reminder that the current uprising of despots and hatemongers is part of a much longer history. The fight continues.
GRADED ON A CURVE:
A
