Conga

Description

Conga-Line in Hell began in my imagination as the visual image of an endless line of dead people dancing through the fire of hell. I gradually started hearing the music, and Dante's Paolo and Francesca da Rimini story soon became part of the scene. This inferno is humorous, sarcastic, grotesque and at times also terrifying. I rely mainly on the dramatic and expressive qualities of rhythm to convey the evil forces that govern my imaginary hell. As thematic material I primarily use rhythmic claves (Spanish for clef or key) as they are used in Latin American music: a sort of 'rhythmic tonality' to which harmony and melody must conform. The rhythmic pattern of the conga dance beats throughout the piece and is at times distorted into a 13/16 pattern. It employs unusual percussion, unusual rhythmic structures and instruments are often playing at their most extreme registers. The piano is used 'obbligato' as a sort of metronome, very much like the harpsichord of the old Baroque times. -- Miguel del Aguila REVIEWS: A "delicious send-up of Minimalism. Here, sequences in stepwise motion career out of control, a comic device Haydn also used to wonderful effect." -- Bernard Holland, The New York Times "[It] sounds, at first, like idiosyncratic pop, and it touches on jazz and salsa before morphing briefly into a slow, lush Viennese dance, then back to speedy jazz." -- Allan Kozinn, he New York Times..