Tres Musicos is:

Hades Hernández: vocal, cajón peruano, quijada, bongo, congas, clave, cencerro, shekere, campana, tambor batá, tambor de candombe, timbal, maracas, plenera.

Alejandro Huidobro Goya: vocal, guitar, jarana jarocha, cajón peruano, quijada, güiro, tambor de candombe, plenera, zapateado, cajita peruana, clave, tambor batá.

Ole André Farstad: guitar, cuban tres, requinto jarocho, guitarrón de mariachi, bass, harp, charango, tambor batá, katá cubano, tambor de candombe, plenera, cajón peruano, vocals.

Tres Músicos is a trio dedicated to explore the richness and styles of traditional forms of Latin American music. The group, based in Bergen, Norway, was born as a musical project aimed at an audience made up mainly of children and young people. Mexican Son Jarocho, Afro-Peruvian Festejo, Cuban Son, Colombian Cumbia, Puerto Rican Plena and Uruguayan Candombe are some of the traditional genres that Tres Músicos has studied and interpreted over the years. This album is our own interpretation of these styles.


CAMINO

1 CAIMAN DEL CARIBE
Son cubano - Cuba

2 CANDOMBE DE LA SIRENA
Candombe - Uruguay

3 LA MULITA DE BARTOLO
Festejo - Perú

4 HUELE A…
Rumba afro-cubana - Cuba

5 EL CASCABEL
Son jarocho - México

6 PLENA DE LA VAQUITA PINTA
Plena - Puerto Rico

7 GUAGUANCÓ DEL FÅRIKÅL
Guaguancó - Cuba

8 CANGREJO MORO
Son-timba - Cuba

9 CUMBIA DE LOS TRES MÚSICOS
Cumbia - Colombia

10 LA BAMBA
Son Jarocho - México


About the songs:

1) Caimán del Caribe (Timba of The Caribbean Alligator)
It is said that Cuba is shaped like a huge alligator. The alligator lives in the wetlands and mangroves of the Caribbean, much like its cousin, the crocodile. Alligators are predatory animals. During the day, they are a bit lazy, they like to sunbathe all day. At night, they are very active and go hunting to satisfy their hunger. Timba is a genre of Cuban son, derived from songo, salsa, and other traditional popular genres. A distinctive element in timba is the placement of the snare drum in the rhythm timeline, which resembles the grooves of funk music. In this son-timba, Los Tres Músicos take us to Havana, and Daiyen’s flute playfully accompanies metaphors and wordplay related to Cuban culture and geography.

2) Candombe de la Sirena (The Candombe of the Mermaid)
Fishers say that, on the banks of the Río de la Plata (River Plate), the chocolate-coloured watercourse that runs between Uruguay and Argentina, they have often heard a mermaid singing. Mermaids are aquatic beings that have inhabited the imaginary of hundreds of cultures through the centuries. In Latin-American popular music, this mythical being, half fish, half woman, has been a constant theme in sailors' songs. Candombe is a tradition of African origin that emerged in Montevideo, Uruguay. The Afro-Uruguayan population has practiced this form of collective music and dance as a way of giving continuity to the memory of their ancestors. Candomberos perform in clusters of three drums, called piano, chico, and repique, with dancers following in procession. At night, or at dawn, the drummers gather around the fire. The heat warms the musicians’ hearts while tuning the skins of their drums. Los Tres Músicos composed this candombe as a tribute to a well-known character of the Danish writer Hans Christian Andersen, to the petenera, a genre of Hispanic music that sings about mermaids, and to the little sirena swimming immersed in the River Plate waters.

3) La Mulita de Bartolo (Bartolo's Little Mule)
In southern Peru, the dry, desert landscape is drawn with the contours of enormous sand dunes. Then, in the middle of that rugged terrain, like an oasis, there is a fertile region where everything is green. Unfortunately, the fertility of the land is not always synonymous with happiness. During colonial times, thousands of enslaved Africans were taken there and forced to work the sugar cane fields. Their legacy is a rich Afro-Peruvian cultural and musical heritage, which tells stories about their own history. One of the most popular genres of this type of music is called festejo, which is played with instruments that reflect the humble origins of its creators: the wooden cajón, the cajita (little box), the guitar, and a very singular instrument, the quijada de mula (mule's jaw). Los Tres Músicos in this festejo tell the story of Bartolo's mule, which, while crossing the Andes heading toward the Peruvian coast, stumbled, and died. Many years later, Los Tres Músicos found the jawbone, and when they use it to enrich the groove of the festejo rhythm, the little mule comes back to life in the form of music. Carlos, from Cuzco, guides us with his flute through the narrow trails of the Andes.

4) Huele A... (Smells of...)
Who can resist the aroma of freshly brewed chocolate? Chocolate is originally from Mexico and was a sacred drink during pre-Hispanic times. It was a beverage that only the Aztec emperor and the Mayan kings were allowed to drink on ritual occasions as an offering to their gods. The word chocolate derives from the Nahua words xoco, which means bitter, and acatl, which means water. The first man to bring cocoa beans to Europe was the Spanish conquistador Hernán Cortés. Today, chocolate is one of the most popular foods around the world. Los Tres Músicos dedicate a yambú to this culinary delicacy. Yambú is one of the fundamental subgenres of traditional Cuban rumba. Los Tres Músicos use a group of three double-headed drums of Yoruba origin, called tambores batá. These drums are traditionally associated with the Lucumí ceremonies of the Afro-Cuban religion. Ole plays the Iyá, (the lowest and biggest drum), Alejandro plays the Itótele (the mid-sized drum), and Hades the Okónkolo (the smallest and highest pitched of the batá drums)

5) El Cascabel (The Bell/The Rattlesnake)
On the eastern coast of Mexico, facing the Caribbean, in the thick of the sugar cane fields, a rattlesnake enjoys the heat while hiding in a hollow tree. For the inhabitants of this region, the noisy rattle of its tail is synonymous with danger. However, in pre-Hispanic mythology, the snake was a symbol of water and the flow of time and life, rebirth and renewal, and a connection between Heaven and Earth. In colonial times, vassal peasants paid the landowner an amount of gold per year called cascabel, in exchange for being allowed to grow food for themselves. Los Tres Músicos performs a three-hundred-year-old son jarocho called El Cascabel. The lyrics of this song play with the ambiguity of the word cascabel with the frightening rattlesnake and the unpopular colonial tax. The son jarocho is an Afro-Mexican genre that emerged on the coast of Veracruz. It is associated with other Caribbean genres such as the Venezuelan joropo and Cuban Punto Cubano. The basis of son jarocho’s instrumentation is a pair of guitars called jarana (stumble) and requinto (pick up style) respectively, both derived from the Spanish baroque guitar. A fundamental element of the son jarocho is the zapateado, the intense groovy footwork played with very precise foot strikes on a wooden platform called tarima. Erika, hand in hand with Tomasz's violin, shows us in this Cascabel how footwork can be as masterful and intricate as the strikes of hands on a drum.

6) Plena de la Vaquita Pinta (The Plena of the Flecked Cow)
Cattle is a common sight on the grasslands of Puerto Rico. Always calm, with their big, carefree eyes and wagging tails, shooing flies away. Cows and bulls have been an essential element of folklore throughout the Americas. The figure of the brave man in cowboy movies is nothing more than the North American version of the equestrians who herded cattle on Spanish American haciendas since colonial times. Plena is a traditional style of music from Ponce, Puerto Rico. It is a narrative genre, and Puerto Ricans consider the plena to be a musical newspaper. The plena is played with three hand drums called llamador, seguidor, and requinto. The melodic pattern is marked by the string instrument cuatro puertorriqueño. Los Tres Músicos composed this plena, and Heine plays his accordion with its black and white keys, like the spots on the vaquita.

7). Guaguancó del Fårikål.
A simple stew called fårikål, made of lamb, pepper, cabbage, salt, and water, is widely popular in Norway. The fårikål is part of Norway's national-romantic imagination. Recipes for fårikål are found in old Norwegian cookbooks from the mid-19th century. In 1972, it was declared the national dish of Norway. Los Tres Músicos wanted to pay homage to this culinary gem with another gem, a Cuban musical form called Guaguancó. This style is a subgenre of Cuban rumba, originally associated with Afro-Cuban religion, otherwise known as Santería. Rumba emerged in the regions of Havana, Guanabacoa, and Matanzas. It is a narrative and dancing genre, which represents the relationship between male and female deities in Afro-Cuban mythology. In this Guaguancó, Hades expresses, with the touch of his hands, the strength of the complex polyrhythm of this tradition, emphasizing the improvisation of the main drum called quinto, while Ole and Alejandro try to keep stable the beat of the wooden instruments, the clave and the catá or guagua while answering the choral refrain to Hades´ calls and vocal improvisations.

8) Cangrejo Moro (The Moorish Crab)
In Cuba, the beaches are full of animals of all kinds. One of them is the Moorish Crab (Caribbean stone crab) which peeks its small eyes up from the sand at dusk and nimbly walks back and forth as if dancing a Cuban changüí. The Changüí is a genre of traditional Cuban son from Baracoa, in Guantánamo, on the eastern coast of the Island. Los Tres Músicos play this changüí with bongo, maracas, the iconic double-three paired strings Cuban instrument called tres cubano, and Daiyen’s cubanísima flute.

09) Cumbia de Los Tres Músicos (Cumbia of Los Tres Músicos)
People of Indigenous, European and African ancestry have for centuries navigated the one thousand five hundred kilometres long Magdalena River, in Colombia. This majestic river, that springs from the Andes and flows into the Caribbean, has the shape of a backbone that unites and articulates. This is the landscape where cumbia comes from. The waters of the Magdalena River irrigate not only its fertile riverside, but also the musical imagination of the inhabitants of this beautiful basin. And from the Magdalena to the world: cumbia has found fertile land all over Latin America and has absorbed the sounds of every nation it has touched on its passage throughout the continent. Los Tres Músicos composed a cumbia that talks about undertaking an imaginary journey, navigating that great Magdalena River, playing in pure Colombian style with their three cumbia drums: tambora, alegre and llamador. On board their piragua (canoe) they've added some regional cumbiambero condiments, such as the psychedelic guitar of the Peruvian cumbia-chicha, the bajo sexto of the Mexican cumbia norteña, and the newborn cumbia noruega, deliciously seasoned by Heine's accordion.

10) La Bamba
In 1683, the Port of Veracruz, New Spain, woke up surrounded by Spanish warships aiming to the houses of the city centre. The inhabitants wondered how it was possible that vessels of their own navy were about to destroy the city. The reason was not so obvious: the sailors of those ships of the Spanish Armada were not Spanish, but Dutch pirates who had captured the defense ships of the port, had finished off the Spanish soldiers, had used their clothes to disguise themselves, and were about to loot the Port of Veracruz. As there were too few defending soldiers in Veracruz, the poor and brave people of the village tried to stop the invasion. Everything was a bamba, that is, a mess, a disorder, a lost cause. The pirates, armed to the teeth, grabbed what they could, including some young porteñas (local women). It was thus, that sometime later, an anonymous composer told this story in the form of sarcastic verses. Therefore, La Bamba, even with all its cheerful, Caribbean, syncopated rhythm, is not really a happy song, but the sung testimony of the heroic popular resistance to a pirate invasion. Today La Bamba is one of the most popular songs throughout the world. Los Tres Musicos play this Bamba with traditional jarocho instrumentation: jarana, requinto, harp and a huge baritone requinto called leona. In this version, the Tres Músicos have the joy of playing along with Erika’s zapateado and Tomasz´s violin.