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Nubes (Chapareke solo)

from Spiraling (Early Works) by Kanahuaxtli

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Nubes (clouds) is a musical piece played mainly with my chapareke, which is a traditional raramuri (tarahumara) instrument. This instrument is very sacred and special. It was used for the deer hunting ceremony and other ancient rituals, but it's utilization has been reduced drastically so the chapareke was under menace of disappearing some years ago.

I had the honor of participating in an indigenous mexican art researching team were I proposed to go in the search for a chapareke master to record him and to exhibit this unique instrument. The team acceded so one traveller buddy went into the mountains of Chihuahua, were the raramuris live. He found the master, the recording was done later on (contact me if you want to hear these recordings), and I asked my partner, that if he finds a chapareke available I was going to be super happy with this instrument.

He found it and brang it to me. In that time I had some experience playing murchang (a nepalese and indian jews harp) so after some experimentation, I made the chapareke produce it's unique sound! So I have been playing it since that time. Not being a raramuri intimidates me a little bit, but I play it with a deep respect. I honour, thank, and recognize the traditional use of it but I play it the only way I can do it: in my own way.

In the recording I processed a little bit the audio to amplify it's sound and make it sound more like it sounds for the player. I did this because the sound of this instrument is very intimate: when the player plays the strings, their sound goes into the players mouth, were, with subtle tongue and mouth movements, the vibrations are modulated and modified so different overtones are accentuated. It's like an ancestral synthesizer's frequency filer. This is very subtle and the volume of the chapareke is a bit low for an external audience, but when you play it, you feel the vibrations and listen to it's sound inside your head.... a normal recording losses this magic, so this is my try to reproduce it. I hope you like it!

Read more about the chapareke in the raramuri cosmology in the track "Un Rezo"

credits

from Spiraling (Early Works), released January 10, 2021

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Kanahuaxtli Guadalajara, Mexico

Kanahuaxtli is the most recent project of Oscar Rojas who is dedicated to the exploration of multiple traditional instruments as well as contemporary sounds. His meditative, atemporal music is an invitation to contemplation and introspection.

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