{"id":15647,"date":"2023-06-26T11:08:16","date_gmt":"2023-06-26T16:08:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=15647"},"modified":"2024-01-31T12:11:59","modified_gmt":"2024-01-31T18:11:59","slug":"miguel-zenon-builds-a-bridge-from-his-puerto-rican-soul-to-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevernacular.com\/?p=15647","title":{"rendered":"Miguel Zenon builds a bridge from his Puerto Rican soul to the world"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Pianist Luis Perdomo and saxophonist Miguel Zenon shared an intimate experience of the deepest feelings and highest art. All photos by Jim Kreul courtesy Arts + Lit Lab<\/em><\/p>\n

MADISON JAZZ FESTIVAL Review, Vol. 2<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Miguel Zenon and Luis Perdomo<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

Arts + Literature Lab, June 13<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

As a critic, it is far from my wont to walk away from a concert with the utterance that tripped forth from my lips after a duet performance last week by alto saxophonist Miguel Zenon and pianist Louis Perdomo. But I said it, \u201cI think I just died and went to heaven,” the hoary clich\u00e9 clunking about shamelessly.<\/p>\n

And therein lies the rub, I\u2019ve concluded. You see, I really was experiencing something deliriously pleasurable during this concert. No question, Miguel Zenon, a Guggenheim and MacArthur Fellow, is a monumental artist. He has emerged in recent years exploring with ardent, rigorous intelligence and reflection the cultural and historical legacy of his native Puerto Rico and Latin America in music and song. His 2014 album Identities are Changeable<\/em> won numerous awards including this writer\u2019s best jazz album of the year, for its exploration of the permeable ways that Puerto Rican and other Latinx New Yorkers see themselves. As I commented in my Culture Currents, it explores the \u201cincreasingly bifurcated nature of racial and national identity in America, typified no more strikingly than in our Puerto Rican culture.\u201d Zenon interviewed and recorded numerous people in New York City and Puerto Rico and their testimony about fluidity and duality of identity rings fresh and true. \u201cI think more people are realizing that you can be more than one cultural self at the same time,\u201d comments Juan Flores.<\/p>\n

And last year\u2019s Zenon\u2019s Musicas de las Americas<\/em> probed with fascinating depth the innermost byways of Pan-American culture, especially focusing on the consequences of colonization.<\/p>\n

By contrast, the album performed at this month\u2019s Madison Jazz Festival, El Arte Del Bolero<\/em>, seems less ambitious but in the experience proved no less consequential, at least emotionally, psychologically, and perhaps spiritually. It\u2019s an album of duets by arguably Zenon\u2019s closest collaborator, pianist Louis Perdomo, and comprises songs traversing their lifetimes, \u201csongs from the times of our parents and grandparents\u2026 As essential to our development as the music of Charlie Parker, John Coltrane, or Thelonious Monk, but perhaps even more familiar,\u201d Zenon explains in the liner. \u201cWhen we play these songs, we can hear the lyrics in the backs of our minds \u2013 something that provides a very deep connection, one that is hard to replicate in any other situation. It is beyond familiar. These songs are part of us.\u201d<\/p>\n

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The Arts + Literature Lab in Madison, where Zenon and Perdomo performed, is a multi-purpose art gallery\/arts and literature workshop\/concert space.<\/em><\/p>\n

The effect, in a jazz sense, manifested the ease of musical quotation as natural as breathing for them, and best exemplified historically by tenor saxophonist Dexter Gordon.<\/p>\n

So, if the songs seem simple compared to modern jazz that\u2019s only a superficial quality. The musicians brought a lifetime of listening and music-loving to these, as elemental as their birthrights. The sheer beauty and ardent passion they infused them with captivated us. Many of these songs compared to the finest Tin Pan Alley melodies and one recalled \u201cThe Shadow of your Smile.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lyricism rarely gets much finer. That and the lack of drums lent an intimacy comparable to a hand laid in your own, or arms embracing, even a kiss. Yet for all the tenderness, the musicians filled their sweet cups with the protein of creative jazz. The mind was lit as much as the heart in song after song, which were mostly big hits in Latin America in their day.<\/p>\n

Also, a dialectical power hovered that is almost excruciating, as exemplified by \u201cLa Vida Es Un Sueno,\u201d written by Arsenio Rodriguez.<\/p>\n

The title translates as \u201cLife is a dream,\u201d but that phrase is deceptive, snuggling up to bucolic notions. In a press release, Zenon explains that the closing lyrics of the song convey his sentiment as well as anything:<\/p>\n

La realidad es nacer y morir<\/em>
\npor qu\u00e9 llenarnos de tanta ansiedad
\ntodo no es m\u00e1s que un eterno sufrir
\ny el mundo est\u00e1 hecho de infelicidad.<\/em><\/p>\n

por qu\u00e9 llenarnos de tanta ansiedad<\/em>
\ntodo no es m\u00e1s que un eterno sufrir
\ny el mundo est\u00e1 hecho de infelicidad.<\/em><\/p>\n

That translates into English as:<\/p>\n

The reality is to be born and die
\nbecause filling us with so much anxiety.<\/em><\/p>\n

everything is nothing more than an eternal suffering
\nand the world is made of unhappiness.<\/em><\/p>\n

That, and the rest of the lyric, may be too bitter a cup to swallow for many comfortable gringos. But slavery, racism and colonialism have normalized that reality for countless Latinos, as well as African-Americans. And here Zenon\u2019s horn let loose with utterly anguished moans, remembrance of deep-scared experience.<\/p>\n

So, Zenon and Perdomo hardly diminish the pang of Rodriguez\u2019s sentiments, but their playing proved as artful an anodyne as one could hope for, a salve to the suffering soul and, Lord knows, we all suffer, thus the universality of the music, even as it enlightened us.<\/p>\n

Zenon possesses an alto sax tone all his own, though one can imagine a blend of tenor saxophonist Stan Getz and alto saxophonist Paul Desmond, the latter lending a dryness to the former\u2019s \u201csweet rain.\u201d His inventiveness seems as inexorable as a waterfall.<\/p>\n

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And pianist Perdomo is as harmonically blessed as any pianist while capable of rhapsodic and sensual skimmings of the skin, with his classical training.<\/p>\n

As for me, I had recently recovered from Covid positivity yet was still struggling with the lingering Covid fog, which affects one\u2019s mood, lucidity, energy, and psyche. Yet memory of the music<\/em> remains vivid. Indeed, El Arte del Bolero<\/em> was conceived and first performed during the pandemic and that experience, along with those embedded in the composers\u2019 songs, fueled the profound melancholy permeating these exquisite, sometimes soul-wracking utterances. So I wrestled with the strength of these emotions as I bathed in them, awash in the complexity of their poignant and plangent textures. I thank higher powers for the music\u2019s all-too-human qualities, even as it buzzed my brain in the stimulating setting of The Arts + Literature Laboratory\u2019s art gallery\/concert space.<\/p>\n

El Arte Del Bolero<\/em> will stay with me like a tattoo on my soul, and I\u2019ve never been happier to be so \u201cdefaced.\u201d Indeed, I\u2019m facing the sun with no fear of burning, even if the pain can be all too real.<\/p>\n

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  1. Arsenio Rodriguez, \u201cLa Vida Es Un Sue\u00f1o,\u201d https:\/\/www.cancioneros.com\/lyrics\/song\/29825\/la-vida-es-un-sueno-arsenio-rodriguez<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

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