Concert charts music spread by slave trade
In the summer of 1444, an enterprising and well-connected trader by the name of Lançarote de Freitas returned to Lagos, Portugal, with his small fleet of six ships carrying some 235 Berbers kidnapped from a coastal region of West Africa that’s now part of Mauritania.
Knighted on the spot by Portugal’s Prince Henry the Navigator, Freitas had forged the first tragic link in a chain that gradually bound together the fate of three continents, as the trans-Atlantic slave trade built Europe’s New World empires, devastated African kingdoms, and spread African peoples and their culture throughout the Americas.
At first glance, early music pioneer Jordi Savall is an unlikely artist to attempt a 360-degree musical portrait of the systemic human trafficking that shaped the modern world. But with his ambitious, international production “The Routes of Slavery: Memories of Slavery (1444—1888),” the unsurpassed master of the viola da gamba has put the African experi-
ence at the center of the story.
Presented Saturday, Nov. 3, by Cal Performances at Zellerbach Hall and Sunday, Nov. 4, by Stanford Live at Bing Concert Hall, Savall’s UNESCO-sponsored “Routes of Slavery” features some two dozen instrumentalists and vocalists from Mali, Colombia, Mexico, Brazil and Venezuela. The project builds on Savall’s longtime eight-member Hespèrion XXI ensemble and his frequent collaborators in Tembembe Ensamble Continuo, which specializes in Baroque Hispanic and Mexican traditional music.
The roots of “Routes” date back decades to early in Savall’s scholarship when he started discovering 16th century “Spanish and Portuguese songs and dances inspired by African traditions,” Savall says. For “Routes” he realized that tapping into West African griot traditions provided a window into “what life was before slavery. This is the music of these people when they were free.”
Featuring the dynamic Malian vocalist Mohamed Diaby, kora master and vocalist Ballaké Sissoko, and dancer-vocalists Mamani Keita, Nana Kouyaté, and Tanti Kouyaté, Savall frames these centuries-old song forms “as point of reference,” he says.
“Mali was the biggest empire of the 13th century, and these griot songs are like the troubadour traditions of Europe, but with improvising and ornamentation this is so beautiful,” he adds.
While the musical journey ends in Brazil, which in 1888 became the last Western nation to abolish slavery, Savall doesn’t rely on music to tell the whole story. Historical texts on slavery, beginning with 15th century chronicles and concluding with words written by the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. shortly before his assassination in 1968, are woven through the production (nonEnglish language vocals will be performed with English supertitles).
For the Bay Area performances, the narration will be delivered by veteran actor and educator Aldo Billingslea — a mainstay in productions by the American Conservatory Theater, Aurora Theatre, California Shakespeare Theatre and Lorraine Hansberry Theatre, where he’s serving as interim artistic director, among others.
At both Cal and Stanford, preconcert events offer more context on the legacy of slavery.
Cal Performances presents “Journeys of Belonging” at 3 p.m. Saturday, Nov. 3, in Wheeler Auditorium. The free public forum includes a talk by Savall, musical activities led by vocalist Melanie DeMore, and a panel discussion exploring the concept of citizenship including Mina Girgis, musicologist and founder of the Nile Project.
As “Routes” wends its way from West Africa through the Americas, the production doesn’t just celebrate the resilience and beauty of African diaspora culture. It illustrates with striking detail the way that music served as an unbroken thread that traversed the Atlantic, a cultural fabric that flourishes to this day.
“The thing that’s important is that the musical language was the most free language,” Savall says. “When so much else was taken from African people, there were no mistakes with music.”