'Suit for Iya'

Latin Beat Magazine, Dec, 1998

First Congregational Church, Oakland, CA

Saturday, October 10, 1998

As I worked my way up to the balcony of the First Congregational Church in Oakland, the church was filled with anticipation for the debut performance of "Suite for Iya," the complex musical celebration to be unveiled by Guillermo Céspedes, musical director of the renowned Afro-Cuban son band Conjunto Céspedes. It was a challenging epic that transformed a series of prayers to the Santería Orisha Ochun into a musical bouquet fusing sacred Afro-Cuban folklore with classical, jazz, and choral music, a mega-undertaking.

The lights dimmed and the musicians positioned themselves on stage in a broad tiered setting with 50 La Peña Community Chorus members at the top in half-circles, the Onyx String Quartet a step below with a brass and woodwind section on each side, and three batá drums on the floor featuring percussionist Michael Spiro playing the large Iya drum.

As the drums began a slow series of rhythmic patterns, Céspedes came out glowing in a gold yellow African outfit to sing the opening prayer to Elegua. In a raw raspy tenor voice he sang out in full voice, as the chorus responded. The imbalance in the acoustics made them sound distantly faint. But when the strings came in and the full ensemble struck with a ping pong of counterpoints and lush harmonies, it felt powerful and majestic.

After the first piece, Guillermo spoke about the project, funded in part by the Rockefeller Foundation and the Zellerbach Family Fund. The next Oru (ancient prayers that form part of the liturgy in the Yoruban Orisha tradition) was to Ogun and Guillermo resumed as concert master guiding the massive group through a complex road map, playing the chekere gourds, or taking a break to explain the vignettes as they unfolded. It was a delightful aural journey. The instrumentations of these prayers showcased their innate melodic beauty with commendable writing and arranging assistance by Chilean singer Lichi Fuentes and trombonist Wayne Wallace. The prayer to Yemaya was exquisite and a perfect example of the high caliber musicianship involved. The Onyx String Quartet played with superb intonation, an exceptional cohesiveness and a collective emotionalism that is rare.

Originally, Bobi Céspedes, the renowned Afro-Cuban singer, was slated to sing the lead Akupon parts but she landed a gig with drummer Mickey Hart on his Planet Drum 2-- "Supralengua" tour and couldn't make it. This concert suffered as a result. Overall "Suite for Iya" was marred at places but reflected a beautiful work still in progress. There were also many unseen spiritual layers to the project that really were more about ritual involvement of the local Santería and Ifa communities than musicality.

"The real story of Suite for Iya," Guillermo wrote me a few days after the event," is its process coming forth. It began with a request from Ochun for a concert in her honor using violins and symphonic instrumentation. Before the piece was arranged I spent a lot of time talking with elders from the Ocha community playing sequenced tapes for them and in a formal manner requested their blessing to do something that to me is out of the ordinary. It was real prayers, by real priests, directed to real Orishas.

"The next step was to recruit priests from the various houses in the Bay Area willing to participate and do their best to create an artistically valid piece. The prayers to Ochun had to come from priests as well as our broad community. In addition I had to bring Ochun to the concert, which requires not only nerve but ritual supervised by elders.

"At every step of the way any decision I made had to balance musicality with the 'real ritual', the spiritual part of it. The piece was a mandate for me to publicity affirm and acknowledge Ochum, mixing how I sing to her at bembe's with a lush a classical orientation as my budget would allow. Not a cultural acknowledgment of the Orisha but a very real one, done by practicing priests and not necessarily performers. Undoubtedly this took some emphasis away from the piece just as music, but Ochun wanted her community to come together through this piece."

An important and commendable work, it marks a musical and spiritual maturity for a tremendous musician who has given the Bay Area a wealth of music over his almost 20 years as a musician and bandleader here. I hope Guillermo Céspedes presents this work again maybe as a musical symbol of cultural healing between the races leading into the year 2000. It is a message and musical fusing that speaks about the acceptance in this day and age of a religion that arrived on slave ships that has blossomed into a strong spiritual force in the Americas.