Francesca Rivera

Nearly 40 people were in attendance for a music concert and lecture presentation featuring Cristóbal Soto, the world renown Venezuelan mandolinist, composer, and educator. The mandolin is one of the most important melodic instruments in Venezuelan folk music, and Soto used the hour to present original compositions and introduce a range of important musical genres found in Venezuela. Accompanying Soto were Aquiles Báez - a Venezuelan guitarist, arranger, composer and professor at the Berklee College of Music in Boston - on guitar; and Jackeline Rago - the artistic and musical director of the Venezuelan Music Project and the founder of Venezuelan Music (formerly Grupo Campana) - on cuatro, the four-stringed folk guitar and national instrument of Venezuela.

The trio performed five original Soto compositions written in the style of traditional music: two danzas, one contradanza, and two merengues - a 5/8 parade music that sounds nothing like the 2/4 Dominican merengue familiar to U.S. audiences. His contradanza was particularly moving, demonstrating a rare beauty and delicacy made possible by the trio's sense of timing, phrasing, and execution of dynamic ranges so difficult to render on acoustic instruments. Soto then - with Rago providing English translations - presented brief histories, cultural contexts, and demonstrations of these and other genres found throughout his homeland.

The lecture/demonstration featured performance genres specific to Venezuela, including the merengue, golpe, and joropo, as well as genres found throughout Latin America, including the contradanza, ballad, waltz, and calypso. (The calypso rarely features mandolin, and it was a treat to hear it in this context, as Soto displayed the full sonic range of the instrument and established how versatile it can be in the hands of a maestro.) Soto introduced each genre's rhythms, commonly-used instruments, performance contexts, and evidences of European, African, and Indigenous Amerindian influences (song forms and singing styles, rhythmic foundations and collective participation, and the maracas, respectively). He explained the importance of rhythmic foundations in Venezuelan music, as musicians must know the basic rhythmic structures and aim to maintain the distinct rhythmic feel of each genre. Rhythmic foundations are accounted for either by percussion, non-percussion instruments taking on percussive roles, or being implicitly present within the melody. These rhythmic roles can be as obvious as the cuatro's mute strums imitating stick beats, or as subtle as the mandolin's arpeggiated plucks demarcating the rhythmic feel of a campana (bell).

Two other significant music and cultural values were demonstrated: collective participation and versatility. Soto invited audience members to try playing the foundational merengue rhythm on a metal cheese grater, and Rago showed how an ordinary gas tank cap becomes a beautiful calypso-accompanying campana. Soto's eagerness to directly involve the audience and the do-it-yourself-instruments reflected the importance of everyone engaging in the music, playing and dancing to the rhythms. Versatility appeared to be an integral part of the training of musicians in the Venezuelan traditions. Each performer on stage was knowledgeable in a wide variety of musical genres, knowing all the parts for each song; the three swapped instruments regularly, with Soto, Rago, and Báez each taking turns at the cuatro, bumbac drum (so named because when you play the two main strokes it sounds like "BOOM-bak"), scraper, and bell.