Gabriela Ortiz, winner of three Grammys, hopes to pave the way for other composers

His music is walking and dreamlike, in literal terms. “I start creating while I’m on the treadmill or when I walk outside. After 20 minutes, I enter another state, I don’t know if it’s like meditation, and that’s where I come up with ideas. Also from dreams or when I wake up.”

This is how Gabriela Ortiz Torres describes the origin of her creative act, which led her to win three awards at the 68th Grammy Awards on Sunday, including two for her album Yangaplus another for his piece Dzonot.

The first two awards were for Best Compendium of Classical Music and Best Choral Performance, while Dzonot was recognized as the Best Contemporary Classical Composition, a historic event for Latin American concert music, also possible thanks to the participation of the Los Angeles Philharmonic, directed by the Venezuelan Gustavo Dudamel.

With a happy and serene countenance, the composer born in 1964 in Mexico City offered a press conference yesterday at the Faculty of Music of the National Autonomous University of Mexico, her alma mater and where she works as a teacher.

It was a gentle encounter, but also revealing, as when the author pointed out that the fundamental basis of her creativity comes from “a deep dialogue” with silence. “It is very important, silence is the awareness of sound; it passes in time and allows you to draw with sound. I have to be at peace and with myself to have that space for creativity.”

For Ortiz, music is, in essence, an act of human communication, and in sound, in composition, she stressed, she has found “the best way” to express herself.

Regarding his process, he maintains that it does not require academic formulas, but is nourished by intense human experience. “Life is the best food for creativity. An artist thrives on living. If you don’t live with intensity, if you are not open to what life can offer you, then I don’t know what you are going to talk about, and that includes social and personal issues; it can include very hard things, like death.”

He cited, for example, the music of Gustav Mahler, of which he assured that in a single symphony we find the summary of the human condition. “There is nature, death, despair, tenderness,” he explained and added that composing is also a form of self-knowledge.

Yanga Conception

On Yangasaid that the idea arose from the fact that the flutist Alejandro Escuer, her husband, encouraged her to know and delve into the story of Gaspar Yanga, the liberating maroon, after reading a novel. It was an investigation that captivated her.

“Yanga belonged to the nobility of the Congo and arrived in Mexico in the 16th century as a slave. He managed to escape, retreated to the mountains and founded towns called palenques. He was like a kind of Robin Hood. He negotiated with the Spanish crown and founded the first free town in America, San Lorenzo de los Negros, today Yanga, in 1612.”

In that story he also found a fascinating challenge to explore in musical terms, since it involved the three roots of Mexico: the Afro-Mexican, that of the native peoples and the European.

The initial project was an opera, but he had to shelve it for several years, dust it off and transform it when Gustavo Dudamel commissioned him to create a new work for the Los Angeles Philharmonic, which would be programmed alongside the Ninth Symphony the Beethoven.

“I said: ‘help, help’, what do I do next to the Novena of Beethoven?” he recalled with humor. What he chose was to escape from that colossal symphony and do something completely different. “I couldn’t compete. It seemed to me that Yanga represented that idea of ​​freedom, but we could approach it from this side, from this continent.”

Thus, she invited the Tambuco percussion ensemble, from Mexico, because for her it was very important to include sound in the instruments. “It is not (a work) literal, it is not going to sound like a Veracruz son or something of African origin. The only thing I proposed was that the instruments were of African origin that came to this continent. That came to enrich our music.”

To the question of what it means to be awarded as a Latina woman in the current context of the United States, Ortiz responded first of all that it was in that country, and not in ours, where she was given the opportunity to record two albums dedicated to her orchestral music.

In a critical tone, he accused the lack of sufficient institutional support in Mexico for music and art in general, illustrating it with the disappearance “with a stroke of a pen” of orchestras, as recently happened with the one in Boca del Río, Veracruz, “without anyone saying anything.”

Having won three Grammys in the aforementioned categories is relevant for her, as she hopes that it will open the voice to other Latin American composers who “have fought a lot.” Also “of all the women composers who are there, of all those women and men performers who have been working. We have great musicians in Latin America and it is hard for us to gain visibility and to be touched.”

Regarding politics, he recalled that that nation is going through a very complicated time, especially in terms of migration. “For this reason, it seems important to me that these recognitions are at this time, because there is a part of the population of that great country that is the United States that is also resisting, talking about this and trying to change things.”

Regarding the protests against ICE’s immigration policies seen at the Grammy ceremony, the composer spoke firmly: “artists have that right. In a problem like this, which is violating human rights, why are you going to stay silent? If they can use a platform this visible, it seems fundamental to me.”

Pursue your dreams

When addressing all those who want to dedicate themselves to music, especially girls and women, Ortiz Torres told them: “yes it has been difficult and it is a long job, but if this is your passion, you must pursue that dream, you have to work very hard. Talent is not enough.” He warned that his own path has been going on for more than 30 years.

To conclude, Ortiz stressed that the most valuable thing for her is not the awards, but being able to listen to her music, and in that sense she recognized the great importance of the performers, without whom, she stressed, there could be no music.

“Forgetting about the performer is a serious mistake. Music, especially from the second half of the 20th century, had for me the big mistake of forgetting about the performer and the listener, and it turned out to be a kind of extremely hyper-rational exercise, where what mattered most was the process, not the result. You have to be very careful there, because for me the result is essential.”