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from NewEar Africa in America concert January 21, 1999 8pm @ St. Mary's Episcopal Church 13th & Holmes in Kansas City, MO

This composition is based on a particular style of AfroCuban music called Guaguanco, which comes from a family of styles collectively called Rumba in Cuba. These musics are very African, yet at the same time very creolized in their blending of Spanish vocal melody and harmony with African percussion ensemble playing. I take this idea a step further by transferring the supporting percussion parts into pitched percussion instruments, the vocal parts into horns and creating an extended, modernistic harmonic palette nested in a dense polyrhythmic texture. In the spirit of many Rumbas, I open the piece with a hormonized arrangement of a Yoruba song that requests permission of the the "house" to proceed with a ceremony, or in our case, the presentation of this work. The title of the piece comes from an improvised coro my teacher Agustín Romero-Diaz created one afternoon at our weekly Rumba sessions. Literally, the spanish coro means "In Kansas City they have have Güiro" (a variant on a Cuban coro "En la Corea hay Güiro"). Now most of us think of that strange fishlike thing we had in music classes that was often called a scratcher when we see the work güiro. In Cuba, güiro means the actual slotted gourd scraper and also a beaded gourd called a shékere. More importantly referenced in my composition is the idea of a Güiro being an event, the actual playing of Rumba or Bembé (a Santeria ceremony). When double checking spelling with another Cuban friend, writer/musician Pablo LaRosa, I was informed the translation implied a sense of amazement, that "even" in Kansas City you'll find Güiro happening.

credits

from Patrick Alonzo Conway - live archival recordings of compositions for newEar 1994​-​2008, released March 17, 2020
Dr. Thomas Aber - bass clarinet
Alonzo Conway - quinto cajón
Jan Faidley - soprano sax
Dwight Frizzell - clarinet
Leah Hokanson - piano, percussion
Mark Lowry - percussion
Jeffrey Ruckma - trombone, percussion
Ingrid Stölzel - keyboard, percussion

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Patrick Alonzo Conway/Syncretica Kansas City, Missouri

Patrick Alonzo Conway is a percussionist, wind player and composer. He has studied with noted master drummers from around the world and has traveled to Cuba and Bali to study. Pat holds a Masters in Music Composition from the UMKC Conservatory, was a founding member of newEar and works with Chris Hazelton's Boogaloo 7, Matt Hopper's Agora Peoples Liberation Big Band of Greater KC, and BCR. ... more

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