Grupo Rebolu.

Hamilton, Gabrielle

Editor's Note--A new column rises up from this past year's membership bonus, "Voices in New York." This CD-of-the-monthprogram, curated by our NYFS Board of Directors, celebrated the latest works of New York's master musicians, poets, and storytellers. The interviews and write-ups of these artists that accompanied the monthly CDs seemed too good to pass up. With this column, we pass them on to you, perhaps encouraging the purchase of a CD to help to support our New York talent.

Grupo Rebolu's CD, Abriendo Caminos (or Opening Roads), offers the listener 10 high energy tracks featuring the sounds of Colombia's northern Caribbean coast. Nine of these tracks were written by the group's director, Ronald Polo, with arrangements by co-director, Morris Canate. Friends since childhood, Ronald and Morris grew up together in Barranquilla, Colombia, and first met as youngsters enrolled in the Escuela de Musica de Barranquilla, Carlos Franco. Morris comes from a family of traditional musicians and dancers, and it was his aunt, an instructor at the school, who encouraged him to enroll. Ronald's brother pushed him to join, and Ronald quickly made up his mind that music was going to be his life. They began as dancers in the school, and having won their category at Barranquilla's annual carnival, the youngsters continued to develop as artists. By the time they were 17, they had recorded a CD, and the school encouraged their group to travel internationally. Thirty members of the school performed in France, China, Japan, Spain, and Portugal, playing Colombia's traditional music and some of Ronald's original compositions. This experience profoundly shaped the lives of Ronald and Morris, and when they came to the US years later, they immediately began planning a new group. Gabrielle Hamilton sat down with Ronald and Morris and Johanna Castaneda, a vocalist in the group and Ronald's wife. They talked about Rebolu's CD and what traditional music means to the group so far from their homeland. Here are some excerpts from that discussion:

Gabrielle: When did Rebolu officiaUy form in NY?

Morris: The name actually came along in 2004 or 2005 with the thought of putting together a band, but we didn't actually get together until 2008. And it started with my student in Chicago offering me a gig, and we put together aband for the show and Rebolu grew out of that.

Ronald: The first person to come to the United States was me, and I asked Morris if he wanted to come, and three years later he came with Fabian Diaz. The idea was to start a group, because we all played together in the school, and Fabian was one of the best musicians we had in Barranquilla. He played everything--gaitas (native flute), percussion, and trumpet. He decided that he wanted to move to Boston and then died suddenly of appendicitis. But it was really the three of us when we started here. We started a group similar to Rebolu. From there, Pablo Mayor invited me to sing with Folklore Urbano.

Gabrielle: Tell me about your writing process. Do you hear the music first? Do you sit down with Morris?

Ronald: The composing comes naturally. If I come up with an idea at any moment of the day, I'll record the song on my cell phone with whatever melody I have. Then when I get home, I write out the songs. And then I meet with Morris and show him my ideas and ask him what he thinks. Most of the time, he'll tell me: "I like this song; we can arrange it like this," and we figure out the percussion.

Johanna: He has tons of voice recordings in his cell phone, because he comes up with stuff in the middle of the day at work.

Gabrielle: It seems to me that there are three different themes on your CD: songs about love and relationships, songs celebrating the traditional rhythms, and songs about immigration experiences, such as the last song: Manana me voy de aqui (I leave here tomorrow).

Johanna: It's all life experiences!

Ronald: Yes, I write about things that happened to me or Morris or Johanna. La Manga is about my hometown. It's named La Manga because it looks like a sleeve with one street running down from the mountains into the town. It's not a town of rich people but they're happy, and I always think of my hometown. El Viejo Jose is about my dad, so I call him "Old Joe," and Morris' dad too, who is also Jose. And Morris' middle name is Jose too.

Gabrielle: And La Sorpresa? It seems to be about all the singer's bad relationships.

Morris [laughing]: That's not me!

Ronald [laughing]: It's not only me! What I do when I write a song is try to find the humorous part and the true part too. So it's not only my story, but the story of a lot of my friends and a lot of different cases. If you hear the first verse, it is about a man meeting a woman close to the river, but after he gets to know her he finds out that she is married, and the next woman he meets is pregnant, and the next is drunk. And so the chorus sings, "Don't bother me!" Now, the second CD of Rebolu is coming out with more surprises! And I think I've grown up now, so the lyrics are nicer and explore issues like death. In one song, death visits the singer, they argue, and the singer pleads with him to give him a little more time to write music.

Gabrielle: What does Grupo Rebolu mean to you?

Morris: Rebolu balances my life in the city. New York is not an easy city; you have to be strong and work hard and Rebolu is my escape.

Ronald: Rebolu is my other son; it's my future; it's the hope that things are going to be better. It's cool music.

Gabrielle: What do you want your listeners to hear when they listen to your CD? Is there anything you want to tell listeners who perhaps do not understand Spanish?

Morris: I want people to feel the positive energy of the group.

Ronald: People should know they are listening to traditional Colombian Caribbean rhythms: gaitas, tambora, puyas, chande, bullerengue, cumbias, fused with a New York style. That's my starting point. We are traditional musicians, so what I do is take traditional rhythms from the north coast of Colombia and add other sounds of Puerto Rico, Cuba, Mexico, Peru. Everything you hear, you can get something from; and that's what I do, picking up the vibe from Latinos based in New York City. We've created new sounds and a new group, and I think it is a great b and to hear and to see.

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To contact Grupo Rebolu go to: http://www.gruporebolu.com

Grupo Rebolu's CD, Abriendo Caminos, was the October 2011 featured selection in the New York Folklore Society's CD-of-the-Month Voices in New York membership program. For more information about the group, visit the New York Folklore Society's directory of traditional artists: http://www.nyfolklore.org/ tradarts/ music/ artist/gruporebolu. html

Gabrielle M. Hamilton is a folklorist with extensive expertise in the Indigenous and Hispanic traditions of the Americas. She is director of Education and Public Programs at the Flushing Council on Culture & the Arts. She serves as Board President of the New York Folklore Society.