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When I watched the first cut of the project, it became clear to me that I had to find an element that would represent the film through its soundtrack. Something like the "musical sound" of the film. The characters in the film have such a strong link with nature and their surroundings that I felt the maguey/nature was in fact an omnipresent character they all interacted with and that it was worth representing it in the music. This idea reminded me of an old collaboration I had years before on a stop motion animation of the legend of Pulque (an ancient beverage that also comes from the maguey). It was through that project that I first came to know the Mayan trumpet/Quiote instrument which fit just perfectly in what I had in mind for Sons of Mezcal.
I have a history of exploring the sonic capabilities of instruments and non-instruments which has led me to always be on the lookout for "new" sound sources that range from traditional instruments to random objects (like the metallic reel of a 35mm film). The use of Quiote opened the door to the idea of using traditional Mexican instruments but, being the experimenter, I had little interest in using them in their traditional style. With the Requinto and Jarana, for example, I used a lot of rhythmic “rasgueo” which is when you scratch the strings to produce a chord but I would dampen the strings with a piece of cloth so that only the texture of the scratch would come across, without the notes. Related to this, it’s worth mentioning that I generally love to work with spoken word/poetry in my more experimental collaborations. Since everything Don José is charged with power, I would approach his voice as if it was an instrument, and have the rest of the music react to it. In the end, I would say that the Quiote represents the spiritual/nature character and the Requinto melodies represent the humans interacting with it.
I needed to get the Quiote sounds early on because they were the initial source of inspiration. Since the score was to be developed later on, I had to get as much material as I could from the interpreter in different speeds, metrics, textures and extended techniques in preparation for music that hadn’t yet been written. It was a pretty long recording which I eventually used to produce a virtual instrument that I can play digitally in my studio. It’s so much material that to this date I haven’t even finished exporting it all!
Since most of the instruments are of folkloric origin, their usual interpreters don’t generally tend to read sheet music. This meant that I couldn’t really rely on writing the score and having them record it in a rented studio where every second counts. Of course, the risk of contagion during the ongoing COVID pandemic made it even less attractive to bring people into a confined space for long hours/days. So, I decided to purchase a Requinto & perform it myself together with a Jarana & other instrument I already own. I’m not a guitar player so this meant a lot of practice to get those fingers ready for the big moment.
