Boosey & Hawkes (Hendon Music)
The title of this work is an evocation of the legendary Papaloapan or "Rio de las Mariposas", whose banks reach the river port of Tlacotalpan, Veracruz, where as a child and teenager I knew the regional sones, besides having heard them many times with musicians such as Los Folkloristas and Salvador "El Negro Ojeda".
Images and memories of those trips are what nourish my desire to explore and play in a simple and personal way, with all these contrapuntal, rhythmic and melodic fabrics that occur naturally in a music so rich and full of tradition. On the other hand, I have also wanted to focus the harp not only within the context of Western European music, but as an instrument that has always been linked to our roots, and that its melodic and rhythmic possibilities can lead us to new articulations of language, but always within new contexts and reconstructing a path that, as indicated by the Venezuelan composer Paul Desenne, shows strata of an imaginary musical archeology that represents what we could call the history of musical miscegenation of our lands.
The piece was commissioned by the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México to be premiered at the Second Latin American Harp Encounter, by Venezuelan harpists Annette León and Isabel Santos and Mexican percussionist Ricardo Gallardo.
— Gabriela Ortiz
