Desert Island Disc: The Venezuela Joropo (Victor Feldman)

My dad had a great record collection when I was a kid. Looking back at it, it was a weird collection. Some of it was kind of predictable given the day and the age: Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, Roger Williams, The Limeliters, Stan Getz and João Gilberto. I loved all that stuff and have a soft spot in my heart for some of those albums to this day (Getz/Gilberto was one of the first albums that Michelle and I bonded over, having discovered that both our fathers had had it in their collections). But there was a lot of unusual stuff as well for an American music collection back then: The Sounds of Paraguay, Los Tres Caballeros, albums by Amalia Rodrigues and The Soviet Army Chorus and Band.

I don't remember that when I was a young kid those albums were actually played much in our house. But I managed to finagle them all from my folks, and along with the albums, I acquired something of my dad's decidedly offbeat penchant for all things foreign and/or exotic. One of those albums, The Venezuela Joropo by Victor Feldman, became one of my all time favorites. Victor Feldman was a respected jazz pianist whose resumé included gigs with such luminaries as Miles Davis and Cannonball Adderley. In the mid-60s, the bossa-nova craze was in full swing and American artists were looking to Latin America for musical inspiration. While most were turning to countries like Brazil and Cuba, Feldman ended up looking to Venezuela, of all places. Venezuela's musical history was different from its neighbors: it had been influenced less by African musical trends than other countries and its colonial Spanish roots were better preserved. It was, in short, an unlikely place to seek inspiration at a time when bossa nova and samba were all the rage.

But the album, a mix of original compositions and traditional folk tunes, makes me wonder why more jazz artists never picked up on the potential of Venezuelan folk music. Here's a composition by Feldman called "Caracas Nights:"



And here is "Pasión." Ethnomusicologist Robert Garfías wrote the liner notes for the album and said the following about this cut: "Certainly the most amazing piece on the entire record is Victor Feldman's composition "Pasión."Although it is an original composition by Feldman it captures as much of the true flavor of Venezuelan folk music as can be heard in "El Gavilán" [a traditional joropo that Feldman also recorded]. The performance retains the tight, synchronized rhythmic quality of Venezuelan music throughout, but it is the natural ease and the strong Venezuelan flavor of the tune itself which makes it practically impossible to distinguish from traditional Venezuelan music."



The Venezuela Joropo has long been out of print and has never been transferred to CD. So I was delighted a few years ago to get some software that allowed me to digitize my old albums. This was the first one I chose: not a moment too soon because I would have certainly worn the album out. Here's to you, Pop!