In 1940, the Polish-born British anthropologist Bronislaw Kasper Malinowski signed a prologue to the first edition called Essays Cuban counterpoint of tobacco and sugarby the Cuban sage Fernando Ortiz, a book that ended in several decades and will be considered by all as one of the five identifying books of the great Cuba.
Malinowski’s prologue begins by talking about Cuba at the beginning of a scientific trip to the island of La Palma, Islas Canarias. “On a trip to the island of La Palma, I got to know and love Cuba,” writes Malinowski. Immediately remember that Cuba was among those emigration travelers who returned to La Palma dressed in white and with a familiar musical as they walked through the streets they acquired during their stay on the Caribbean island. Malinowski was referring to what we call ourselves in La Palma Indiansa way to celebrate Cuba with joy and without expat families.
Whenever I read the writer of La Palma, for whatever reason, I remember – even in writing, as on this occasion – the words of Malinowski, which define a fundamental element of our history and our peculiarity: the transculturation of the emigrant traveler to America and, above all, the return to the island with the hope of making it great and happy, in constant communication with a much wider world than the island of Demphra. Walcott is an island.
Transculturation and insularity: two things, two concepts that are undying scars in the palmera cultural identity. Transculturation and insularity yes. I always wanted to sing to Luis MoreroFor many decades, I have remembered some vivid concepts in my historical memory as the basic pillars that connected the island to the world. The way it was to sing to Luis Morero an eternal return to the island of La Palma, to its history, its impulses, its hopes, its musicyour resistance in the face of our geological fragility.
I remember writing an article for a local Canarian outlet for more than four decades that aimed to explain in a few words a certain feeling of desire, trying to suggest every song by Luis Morera and the Taburiente group that they opened the fireplace in traditional Canarian folklore until there was no trace of italways stuck in the same music and popular tunes we have since childhood in school.
Perhaps it was for me the first time, to learn in Taburiente an intellectual revelation of the first order, brave and eager to study with care and feeling, with pantomime and rigor, because the phenomenon of Taburiente and the voice of Luis Morera opened paths in the music and folklore of the islands that from there continue open to all the horizons of the archigolapié.
It was all a musical revolution that brought new forms and contents and new forms of interpretation to the musical history of the island of La Palma. This is the way to be on top of the scenario in full implementation; those forms of placing oneself in the sun of the world with an artist’s equipment; These journeys that followed inexorably through the music were the journeys of the Indians, the journey of return, the journey and return to the island that cannot be forgotten because it was completely impossible.
Epifanía, digo, y exaltación, nuevos colores que confirmaban que el viaje era lo importante, como reclamaba el poeta Cavafis, y que para ese viaje sí se necesitaban alforjas, ambiciones y valentías. Morera, siempre al frente, clavaba con el estacazo de su voz y sus maneras la hipnosis amistosa en quienes lo escuchábamos tratando de traducir exactamente qué mundo era el que buscaban aquellos muchachos que se lanzaban a la revolución de un folklore canario anclado en sus leyes inamovibles hasta ese momento. Y todo eso lo hicieron con atrevimiento y trabajo, con superación, sin romper ni manchar en ningún momento los límites ocultos del folklore insular.
He seguido todos estos años imaginando a Luis Morera y Taburiente en otros ámbitos mundanos distintos del insular. He soñado, y los he visto soñando con mi imaginación, en un teatro inmenso de Los Ángeles, aplaudidos por multitudes enloquecidas por el fervor de su música. Eso es lo que entonces les propuse en mi artículo citado: correr la aventura de Ulises por el mundo y encontrar, por fin, ese lugar al sol que se merecían por su obra. Y Morera siempre estaba ahí, cuatro pasos por delante de los demás, enfrentándose a sí mismo en cada balada, en cada versión de piezas fundamentales del folklore insular canario. Escúchese hoy lo que es un clásico único: “Viento sur”. Siéntense a escuchar la versión que Taburiente y Morera hacen de “La alpispa” de Néstor Álamo.
Ah, and in everything he does, it is the “Morera style” that attracts the brightest feelings of people who admire and understand him. It will always be his style: a return to the island, a return to the archipelago, a return to the Canary Islands, both in his voice and in his painting, with the will to integrate into the same island of La Palma; integration, identity structure, Canarian counterpoint of time and its spaces.
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