Writing The Second Symphony: Naa Okùnkùn ti Òkúta Dídán
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It has never been my habit to write anything about my music. In fact, I tend to “poeticize” in program notes whatever intention or catalyst that pushed me to write the piece in the first place. That way I shroud in some sort of “validity” the fact that I wanted to share something. In the same fashion, that was the case of my second symphony Naa Okùnkùn ti Òkúta Dídán (Yoruba for: The Darkness of the Shining Stone).
I started writing this piece on June 20th, 2020 and, quite feverishly (or perhaps manically), by August 11th, 2020 the work was done. As it is typical, I was satisfied with the work until I placed the double bar—in that moment I doubted every single note that I placed on that paper. But that is a feeling I’m quite familiar with… Even though this year has been quite a bizarre one with the COVID-19 pandemic, I can affirm that, somehow, I have been able to be productive. By the beginning of the summer I had already finished 6 pieces, two of them which I started by the end of 2019. However, all of those pieces were commissioned by different people and, even though I poured every single drop of honesty, and composed about the subjects I believe are important to me, I still felt the yearning to write something that spoke in first person, something that could scream those feelings that are not always easy to put into words or welcomed to talk about. By this time I knew I wanted to write a symphony!
“I knew I wanted every movement to come from the same melody, and for the whole symphony to feel as a continuous and organically evolving entity.”
When one hears that word—symphony—a whole history of music gets summoned. Titans of the orchestral writing that presented lengthy statements of transcendental nature with their symphonies come to mind. However, I knew that I wanted to tackle my second symphony in a different way. I definitely didn’t wanted to write a lengthy one because, thinking in a practical way, in our times, that is not the best way to approach it. Unless some conditions are met, lengthy pieces by living composers tend to stay unperformed. More so when one is writing a piece that it was not commissioned; when one is writing out of pure need. Still, I had a structure in mind and a through line of what I wanted to express. I knew I wanted every movement to come from the same melody, and for the whole symphony to feel as a continuous and organically evolving entity. That is what I did—which was quite out of character for me as my composition process is literally a progression that happens during the composing of the piece. I, for the first time, drafted something before tackling the actual piece. Now, many might think that it is “messy” or “unnecessary complicated” to composed without a draft. I do not write a draft but, by the time I’m on the paper, I have the whole structure of the piece in my head. I enjoy this a lot because it keeps me engaged all the time. I’m constantly connected to what I’m doing instead of orchestrating something that is already drafted. For that reason, the only thing that was drafted for this symphony was the melody I wanted to work with and a skeleton of the harmony that would accompany it in its final statement.
But, all of this is quite superficial when it comes to create a work of art, at least for me. I am a strong believer that, in our human lives, absolutely nothing happens in a vacuum. Everything leads to something, and all of it is submerged in the story of our being. For that reason, no matter how detached form a subject matter one might want to be, there will be a conscious and unconscious machine filtering the decisions we make. With this symphony that machine was quite conscious, more so when the everlasting racism problem in this country came to a boiling point with the murder of George Floyd.
Woman Dancing Puerto Rican Bomba accompanied by the traditional “Barriles” drums
I am proudly a Latino! A proud Puerto Rican! I proudly carry Afro-Caribbean blood! And I am a proud Gay man! All the human rights associated to those elements of my identity have lately been attacked unabashedly in this country and that has been hunting my head unremittingly. I have experienced, and come to expect, violent, physical and emotional racism. Those experiences, plus the experiences that the non-white community suffers in this country kept tallying up to the point of constant anxiety and fear. Like a pressure cooker, I felt that I had to scream to be able to release some of it to keep going. That marked the genesis and overall musical narrative of this symphony.
Now, if someone reads the program note for the symphony, all of this would not necessarily be apparent—and this is something I still battle against. I went through so many program note drafts, all the way from absolute rawness and directness, to completely poetic and filled with symbolisms. I landed on something slightly vague and “in between”… And to be honest, I am not entirely satisfied with it yet. (Click to read Program Notes) One of the issues of carrying a non-white skin is the perpetual, piercing, and aching need to verify if whatever one presents is white-non-offending and white-approving—more so in the field of classical music which, to this day, is filled with blatant racisms and devaluing of anything non-white or non-European, and, of course, non-male.
“Naa Okùnkùn ti Òkúta Dídán [. . .] is an offering to my Afro-Caribbean roots through the filter of the experiences I, as well as my fellow Puerto Ricans, have faced in this country.”
Putting program notes aside and approaching what I truly wanted to share musically, Naa Okùnkùn ti Òkúta Dídán—title chosen in the Yoruba language as it is spoken in Nigeria, one of the African countries from which the Puerto Rican Bomba music came and evolved from—is an offering to my Afro-Caribbean roots through the filter of the experiences I, as well as my fellow Puerto Ricans, have faced in this country. From the “Puerto Rican Syndrome” being used to justify the forced sterilization of women, the federally created and funded Puerto Rican Eugenics Board, the killing of our people by the police in Chicago in the 70s, the testing of Agent Orange on Puerto Ricans without informed consent, the attempt to eradicate the population with cancer by Dr. Cornelius P. Rhodes, all the way to how we were treated and left to die after hurricane Irma and Maria. And these are just a couple of examples… The pressure of all that emotion and hurt could not, or at least I couldn’t, put into words. Thus, I used the language I feel most comfortable with: music.
So, yes. My second symphony is a short one but packs a lot. I have been incredibly sincere with it. I have cried, I have stayed awake long nights, I have even sometimes felt paralyzed. But I put into paper something incredibly personal. And I really hope I get to share it with you soon.