JARDINEROS

en un ritual de lenguas • degustan tierra

entre sus labios y escupen • invocando la

nostalgia alucinante del sol de mediodía

JARDINEROS

HERY PAZ I ROMÁN DÍAZ I FRANCISCO MELA

With JARDINEROS (GARDENERS), HERY PAZ summons two kindred spirits from his diaspora: master percussionist ROMÁN DÍAZ, (also featured on vocals) and veteran drummer FRANCISCO MELA to search beyond the forms and codes of Cuban musical structures by reimagining syncretic, rhythmic and poetic materials into personal improvisational and instrumental practice. Far from ritualism, mysticism and traditional constraints, JARDINEROS is a poetic declaration to freedom, a landscaping of new grounds for uncompromising dialogs among Cuban Improvisers.

Cuban musicologist Lea Cárdenas elaborates on JARDINEROS: “Approaching this album pretending to listen to what we traditionally understand as Cuban music would be a mistake. The revolutionary nature of the instrumental formats used, the novelty in Paz’s writing to graph the musical content through unconventional notation, the creative freedom that he offers to each of the musicians who accompany him on this journey, open new stylistic pathways...”

Paz comments on the music’s origin: “long before elucidating any musical ideas for this project there was a very concise poem I wrote…

in a ritual of tongues • they savor soil

between their lips & spit • invoking the

hallucinating nostalgia of the midday sun

GARDENERS

…which conjured a profound and bewildering nostalgia from my childhood back home in what I can only describe as sensorial abstractions. Not quite memories, these are tactile feelings taking root somewhere deep between my imaginarium and reality. My back on a cold cement floor, the brass tasting water of a well, the burning smell of a charcoal pit or the paralyzing lethargy of the high noon heat... ...This music is my humble attempt to portrait those feelings and events in all their poetic mystery.”

Featured on drums is Francisco Mela, who has been a frequent and close collaborator of Paz since his arrival on the New York scene. Mela is a favorite amongst jazz’s elite instrumentalists including Joe Lovano, McCoy Tyner, Chucho Valdez, Cooper Moore, and Willian Parker, to name a few. Mela is a true Cuban original, he has distilled the sounds and intricacies of our music into a consummate improvisational language of his own that dismantles any stylistic barriers. Completing the trio is master percussionist Román Díaz, who is a living repository of Afro-Cuban culture initiated by his elders into the ancient African brotherhood of the drum. He is an internationally renowned ambassador of Cuban music, an important Olú Aña or “keeper of the sacred drum” and a great innovator. “Román is a poet in every sense of the word, I’m extremely honored that he wrote “El Real de las Palmas” for me, so I had to find a way to include it in the musical narrative of the album.”

JARDINEROS offers a recontextualization of Cuban popular music, based on the use of sounds and interpretive resources belonging to the most experimental musical styles. It is a return to the roots, the reaffirmation of an identity, of an idiosyncrasy that is consolidated and preserved from memory and life experience... Paz concludes and reflects “It fulfills a shared necessity among Cuban contemporary artists to establish new dialogues to explore and expand our folkloric constituents beyond their traditional form. So, I set out to create a flexible compositional space, for us much like GARDENERS to cultivate, nurture and sustain that conversation...”