Denibeé Yucuñana

As I began my composition in homage to the illustrious Oaxacan artist Rufino Tamayo, I remembered that my first encounter with his paintings, at age nine. The experience took place in the city of Florence (1975), in an Italian Renaissance palace where his paintings were exhibited at night, illuminated by lamps whose intense white light made them align with the edges of the canvases, making them appear as though they were suspended in the air. At the end of the tour, visitors passed through a room where an interview with the Mexican painter was projected; in this interview, he stated at one point that his colors were imbued with the light of the Oaxaca Valley and that he was the son of Zapotec parents who sold fruit in the market.

From this memory arose the title of the piece, which has a multifaceted meaning: "Denibeé"¹ (in the Zapotec language) and "Yucuñana"¹ (in the Mixtec language) are words that mean "Hill of the Tiger," which is, in turn, the name of the street in Mexico City where the house I grew up in is located, and where I still have my studio to this day. The two Indigenous words are recognized in Spanish as "Monte Albán," which is the archaeological site or acropolis that dominates the view of the Oaxaca Valley from the top of the hill, where Rufino Tamayo saw his first light and an infinite number of others that enabled him to conceive a world of color with a profoundly Mexican essence. Therefore, my work aims to be, in musical terms, an exploration of color and light, moving from the ethereal and diffuse to the concrete and warm.

—Gabriela Ortiz
August 1999

¹ See the Encyclopedia of Mexico, second edition 1977, Volume XII, Zapotecs, pages 560 and 561.