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Composer Johanny Navarro has compiled a catalog of diverse work rooted in Afro-Caribbean traditions, especially Puerto Rican culture. Her music has been presented in Cuba, Mexico, Spain and France. In 2020, she was featured as a resident artist at the Massachusetts International Festival of Arts.
Her opera ¿Y los Pasteles? Ópera Jíbara en dos actos, for which she was awarded the 2020 Discovery Grant from Opera Grants for Female Composers by Opera America, had its premiere in July 2022 in San Juan, Puerto Rico. She was recently a finalist in Atlanta Opera’s “96-Hour Opera Project” with the premiere of Atlanta: 1906 (2022) featuring a libretto by Deborah D.E.E.P. Mouton.
As a resident artist at the American Lyric Theater in New York, Navarro premiered The Magic Cabbage (2022) with a libretto by Joshua Banbury; her one-act comedy Working for the Macbeths (2024) has a libretto by Marcus Yi.
Civic Fellows will perform Navarro’s Belén: Un canto sagrado a mis ancestros (Belén: A sacred chant to my ancestors) at a chamber music recital May 17 at Symphony Center’s Buntrock Hall. Tickets are free, but reservations are required.
In a program note, Navarro describes Belén: Un canto sagrado a mis ancestros as a piece that "honors and recognizes the beautiful legacy and inheritance of our ancestors. Skin, philosophy, religion, culture and music are exalted through the work. Belén, in the Afro-Puerto Rican context, is considered a sacred chant. It is a toque (a rhythm) that is performed with the barriles (bomba drums), maracas, cua (two wood sticks), singers and dancers. It honors the life of a person who is no longer with us. This tradition, of African origins, has remained from generation to generation in our culture, and it is the inspiration for the piece.
"The work’s main aspect is to explore a variety of sonorities of bomba [an African-based genre born in Puerto Rico], such as melody, polyrhythm, instrumentation and dance, and to incorporate them as crucial sound elements for the composition. Throughout the piece, it will expose and develop various elements as African melodies and toques de bomba (bomba rhythms) like yubá, holandé, seis corrido and belén. The main purpose of Belén: Un canto sagrado a mis ancestros is to remember and honor my ancestors, the Puerto Rican bomba and all my black heritage."
In an interview with Brian McCreath, broadcast in 2022 on Boston’s WGBH-FM, Navarro talked about the work and its roots:
Brian McCreath: In Belén: Un Canto Sagrado a Mis Ancestros, I’m fascinated not just with the music itself, but what you write about the music. You say that this is in honor of all those who have come before you, your legacy, your ancestors. And I wonder if this has always been something you carry, the importance of your ancestors, or if it’s something that at a certain point in your life, you sort of turned to it and realized, “wait, there are these people that came before me.” Tell me about that experience of your life.
Navarro: I guess that at some point I started to think about my ancestors and how I am here and doing what I’m doing — in this case, composing music — and how all of my heritage, my influence, the music, the folklore, the cuisine, everything has inspired me to become a composer in that sense. So for this piece, I wanted to honor all of those people who inspire me in some way for making me a composer. So I wanted to create this piece for those would evoke these chants and the singing and these beautiful lines and try to create the whole piece based on that first melody and try to evoke this sense of honor and respect. Actually, it had something like a dance part, a very energetic rhythm part, but it’s a celebration also of the ancestors in our music and our traditions as well.
McCreath: That is the thing about this piece: You have this melody that is continual and splits off into variations, and you change the context of that melody, including the little scene that’s very energetic, almost like a party scene. So that’s where the chant comes from. It’s almost like a chant, over and over.
Navarro: Yeah, and repeating itself in a different context. But it’s like this big melody line, and then we keep repeating that line again and again until the end. And it’s this beautiful chant, this melody. It’s very important in the terms of bomba. When you have a cantadora [singer], she or he sings the chorus, the refrain. So that’s very important in the aesthetic of the bomba that the melody is very important.
You know, people are always singing, even when they have a piquete, that’s when the bailador/bailadora [dancer] enters and does the dance. But always, we have the melody. This is very important that you can not only recognize that melody, but you can also chant, you can always sing with the singer or the cantador/cantadora. So for me, it is very important to get that beautiful melody perfectly beautiful, crafted to make a statement of the melody and the importance of the melody in this case, like a chant.
McCreath: The piece also draws, as you put it, on the African influence on Puerto Rican music. I’m just curious because for those of us who aren’t as familiar with Puerto Rican music history or music legacies, how big a role does that African influence play in general?
Navarro: I think it’s bigger than we thought because all of these African Afro-Caribbean sounds influence everything. For example, one of the famous rhythms or musical genres is salsa. Well, that’s la clave, that’s tumbao, that’s Afro-Caribbean, that’s African. So that’s the sound of el Caribe. And then we come to something very famous right now with reggaeton. That has something to do with [Africa] also.
McCreath: For you, how much do you personally connect to that African element of Puerto Rican and Caribbean music?
Navarro: My father is a musician, a pianist. And so he had me playing salsa and singing and then doing the clave and trying to dance also, so we can have this sense and feeling of Caribbean music and how it’s supposed to sound and how it’s supposed to be felt, to get that feeling. So when I started composing, I discovered that I could hear the music and I could hear my ideas in that sense as an Afro-Caribbean influence. I would hear the tremado [trembling], it was very natural for me. And then the swinging and la clave. That’s basically what I try to do with the music and I’m very, very inspired by that.
McCreath: I wonder if this piece, Bélen, is representative of your work in general or was this a little bit of a departure? Did you do something different in this piece that you hadn’t really done before?
Navarro: Every time I try a new piece, I try something different and I try to take a risk. If people listen to my music and know my story and where I come from, they can [hear] the change in every piece, because I’m taking more and more risks every day and every time because I just want to. I want to be challenged and try to make something in a piece, a piece of art and trying to combine all of these colors, usig my filter of Afro-Caribbean music and trying to give birth to this new sound that I’m trying to achieve.
McCreath: Tell me a little bit about your experience with this project, El Puerto Rico. and the bringing together of these composers, even though you haven’t really been in the same place at the same time, you’re still part of this little community for this project. Tell me about the other composers who you have met through this and other sounds you’ve heard and what that means to you.
Navarro: One of the beautiful things about this is working with these composers from Puerto Rico, most of them are not currently living in Puerto Rico, like I am, but we can connect. It’s amazing, it’s beautiful, because we can connect in different ways as music creators, as a musician, a performer. So this amazing project, is beautiful in the sense that we can connect not only with composers, but musicians also, with everyone here, in production and everything. It’s beautiful.
