By the Hand of the Father
CD/Media
About Productions is pleased to announce the release of
the CD Recording of
By the Hand of the Father–Songs & Stories of Men Who Straddled a
Border and Passed on a Distinct Cultural Legacy
The CD captures the power of the groundbreaking theater work that has
been hailed as creating a "poignant vision" of the unique 20th century
journey of the Mexican-American father.
Musical Guests:
Pete Escovedo, Rosie Flores, Ruben Ramos (Los Super Seven)
and Cesar Rosas (Los Lobos)
Stories written by Theresa Chavez, Eric Gutierrez and Rose Portillo
Performed by Rose Portillo and Kevin Sifuentes
The CD is available nationally at all record stores
(filed under "Alejandro Escovedo")
OR can be ordered directly from About Productions
$17 (including postage)
This purchase supports the programs of the not-for-profit theater company.
Just send a check indicating the # of CDs you are ordering in the memo of the check and mail to:
About Productions
145 N. Raymond Ave.
Pasadena, CA 91103
aboutpd@aol.com
626/396-0920
THE FOLLOWING IS AN EXCERPT FROM A PIECE BY SUSAN MARTINEZ
PUBLISHED IN THE MAGAZINE Rap and Rock Confidential:
The soundtrack to my story arrived in the mail on a CD last week. "By the Hand of the Father" is
the music and selected stories from the theatrework created by Alejandro
Escovedo in collaboration with playwrights Theresa Chavez, Eric Gutierrez
and Rose Portillo. The play and music explore the relationships between immigrant
fathers and their children, but the CD could also be the sonic companion
to my journey as a woman staking a claim where race and culture are defined
and undefined by the migration of time, boundaries, and blood.
"By The Hand of the Father" is not just about the border, and I don't mean any disservice by saying that, because the lyrics and imagery are tangible and fragrant, among the most exquisite poetry I have ever heard: "On
the border of a new age, I have a foot in each century. But when time was measured
differently and borders had another meaning, my father had a foot in each country,
where the mud on each boot caked the same and the dirt sifted the same through
each hand and the earth had but one scent."
This is the music of contradiction and resolve, of carrying twice the story instead of clutching a history half-lost. It is a landscape populated by guitars and fathers who bury their sons; by violins and lovers swept up in Italian waltzes at the Aragon ballroom; by the mourning of a cello as a daughter wonders what makes her father's hand suddenly strike... it is the man who cries after a lifetime of marriage that he wasn't a saint but he stayed. After all this, doesn't it matter to have stayed?
These are the songs of defending your identity, even to your own parents. I am not the first child in my father's family brought into the world in spanish, more likely I was the last; nor am I the first of a wave of Mexican-Americans: my father's family has lived in the same area of the west where it is the nation's border that has migrated, not just the people. Mom bristles when I remind her that though her side of the family settled New England, dad's side was here first. When my great-great-grandfather traveled west to find gold, he cut through my other great-great-grandfather's sheep pasture and silver mine to get there.
"We met at a point in space and passed off a genetic code, a hand to hand return
to earth. Two separate bodies, two separate minds under one roof. And when
you leave this earth we will return to that point for just a moment, our two
bodies becoming one continuous line til we float away from each other, two bright
signals across a bright universe transmitting a message in pure silence."
My father died 15 years ago and it is too late to ask him questions I did
not know to ask when I was young. He cannot tell me his stories one more
time; it is up to me to remember them as best I can and pass them to the
next generation in all of their pain and beauty, his cries of "my heaven, my blue-eyed heaven" when
I took my first breath just part of a continuous line with whatever I say
next.