Forbidden Roots (2013)

Genre: Latin Jazz

In Spring of 2013, I again took advantage of  a Gift of Jazz course taught by pianist Marc Sabatella, this time on Latin Jazz.

As a history teacher, I naturally turned to the past to find inspiration for my composition. Recent academic research had rekindled my interest in 1492, the date from the well-known children’s rhyme that is  instantaneously recognizable even to those who “don't know much about history”:

In fourteen hundred ninety-two Columbus sailed the ocean blue.

Here are the details apropos to this song:

In January, 1492, the Muslim Moors surrendered to the Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, which completed centuries-long attempts by the Spanish to take back the Iberian peninsula from Muslim control. This reconquista (reconquest) not only paved the way for Spanish exploration of the New World (Columbus landed in Cuba in October of that year), but also left the Spanish in no mood to tolerate any non-Christians within their realm.

Not only were Muslims expelled from Spain, but in March, 1492, the Alhambra decree also deported all Jews (unless they agreed to convert to Catholicism). Earlier in the century there had been pressure on Jews to convert to Christianity, but many of these conversos, who were "Catholic by faith, Jewish by blood" were still viewed with suspicion by the Spaniards.

By 1492, this “conversion” became an ultimatum and Jews were given all of three months to leave. Depending on the source, approximately 50,000 families (some 200,000 people) fled the country.

The well-known voyages of Columbus set into motion a series of events that would have far-reaching consequences for affairs on both sides of the Atlantic, as five thousand of those conversos left for the Americas in the great wave of Spanish migration to the New World. Some of these people were outwardly Catholic, but continued to practice rituals associated with Judaism.

Thanks to anthropological studies and genetic geographical mapping, we now know that many of these converted "Crypto-" or "hidden” Jews settled in Mexico (in the state of Nuevo León) and in Bolivia, Peru, Argentina, and Chile in South America. Some settled in other parts of Latin America: Costa Rica, Puerto Rico, Jamaica and the Dominican Republic.

Latin (Afro-Cuban) jazz is a rich stew that emerged from the blending of Spanish and African elements mainly on the islands of Cuba and the Dominican Republic. Thanks to Jelly Roll Morton, who considered it a critical ingredient in jazz and coined the term, this Latin element is often referred to as the "Spanish tinge.”

My composition, "Forbidden Roots," is a musical homage to the many thousands of Sephardic "Crypto-Jews" who settled in the New World. I imagine that some members of that flood of converted Spanish Jews helped create the traditions that we now call "latin" jazz. I’ve characterized my composition—something between son montuño and Klezmer—as “Spanish tinge with a Hebrew hinge.”

“Forbidden Roots” premiered at Dazzle Restaurant on June 12, 2013 with Marc Sabatella on piano, Tim Libby (trumpet), Sam Bittner-Baird (trombone), Jon Cullison (bass), Manuel Lopez (drums) and Eric Trujillo (congas and percussion).

Four years later, in Spring 2017, I audited a big band composition/arranging class taught by trombonist, composer/arranger and University of Colorado faculty Paul McKee, who graciously allowed me to rescore my piece for big band and have it performed by the very talented students of the CU Thompson Jazz Studies program.

Presently I’m working on a home studio version of the piece. Stay tuned for that!