Mid-Week Intermission Artist Edition: Javier Jara, Singer-Songwriter & Composer
At the LC, it’s one of our favorite pastimes to be on the lookout for projects, events, and art that build community through creative expression. Believe it or not, there’s no shortage of that in this town! But enter Javier Jara’s unique project Our Rhythms, Our Voices. Performing in Dell Hall on September 8 with Austin Unconducted, we just had to dig deeper to see how this singer-songwriter & composer is celebrating Latin American immigrants by turning their stories into song.
Javier Jara + "Our Rhythms, Our Voices"
Long Center: Welcome to Mid-Week Intermission!
We usually ask people for a song to go with their interview — does anything come to mind?
Javier Jara: Any song or one of my songs? El Necio by Silvio Rodriguez, because it talks about resilience in times of hardship. It touches upon how people keep up with their principals and ideals in spite of overwhelming adversity and general apathy.
If I’m thinking about one of my songs, I would say Alicia, because the song talks about how people sacrifice themselves to help other people. People put their lives on the line for love — love of their family and their community.
LC: First, could you tell us a little about yourself and how you came to be creating and composing in Austin?
Javier: I’ve been singing my whole life, playing the guitar since I was 15, and always playing music that went beyond trivial issues. I studied music at Southwestern University and got my master’s degree from University of Texas in Music and Human Learning. I collaborated with many musicians in Austin with different backgrounds including jazz, folk, Latin American, world, and classical music. I honed my skills in many different styles of Latin American music and produced concerts of music from different Latin American regions including Brazil, Argentina, Peru, Venezuela, the Caribbean, Mexico, and the Andes.
Austin has been a fantastic place to have a career in music. City organizations and nonprofits like the Cultural Arts Division, the ESB-MACC, Texas Humanities, and the Institute for Diversity and Civic Life have all been very supportive and helpful in developing my career. The musicians are amazing in this city as well.
LC: “12 Latin American immigrant stories turned into 12 songs” — this is the premise of your project and upcoming performance with Austin Unconducted. Can you tell us more about the project and who’s involved?
Javier: We noticed the media coverage of Latin American immigrants did not always show the great diversity of cultures and stories existent in Latin Americans living in the United States. I wanted to use my own skills and love of Latin music to show just how incredible the music and stories are from different regions in Latin America.
I became friends with a truly gifted lyricist, poet, and musician from Mexico, Yahir Durán, who listened to all the interviews and wrote the lyrics. Then, I composed the music mostly using a rhythm from the person’s homeland for guitar, voice, violins, percussion, and double bass.
Some of the musicians who played with this ensemble were members of the orchestra, Austin Unconducted. They invited me to be a guest composer and translated three of the songs to be played with the orchestra last spring. That orchestra has some of the finest string players in Austin, Texas, and as the title indicates, they don’t have a conductor. We wanted to present the entire project with the orchestra, so we decided to collaborate again. I co-arranged the songs for orchestra with different members of Austin Unconducted.
Alejandro Moreno-Alanis is a fantastic local photographer, originally from Mexico, who took all the portraits of the people we interviewed.
LC: How does one even embark on a project like this? What was it like to gather these stories and then turn them into a shared musical experience?
Javier: We really wanted to shine a positive light on the Latin American immigrant population in the United States, and we wanted to shift the narrative to people’s individual stories and the various reasons people leave their homelands. We also wanted to interview people with diverse experiences and professions from different regions in Latin America, while making sure to present as many different styles of Latin music as possible.
While we aimed to mostly use rhythms from the person’s homeland, sometimes the people we interviewed requested that their story be set to a different rhythm or style of music, so we changed it. It was a really powerful experience to gather all of the stories, then collaborate with local musicians, and hear the audience’s own stories and experiences after we toured the project.
LC: Now that you’re on the other side of this composing journey, what has it meant for you to go through the process and share these stories in an unexpected way?
Javier: You’re never on the other side of talking about these issues. It’s like you’re on a mountain, and there’s another one to climb. When we traveled with this concert, people have really connected with the music and lyrics. Some people have shared their stories. Others have cried. It has been a very powerful concert in terms of connecting with the audience.
LC: I know a lot of us at the LC are really looking forward to the event on September 8. What would you like people to feel as they walk away from this performance?
Javier: I would like people to have great compassion and empathy for people regardless of their country of origin. I would like people to appreciate the various cultures and experiences of people from Latin America.
LC: Any other projects you’d like to shoutout to our readers? How can they follow your work after Our Rhythms, Our Voices is over?
Javier: I recently was accepted into the Touring Roster program with the Texas Commission on the Arts. I hope to take the Our Rhythms, Our Voices project to other cities in Texas. It would have to be at a smaller scale (like a string quartet rather than a full orchestra) than what we are doing at the Long Center, but I think these people that we interviewed are very impressive, and we would really like to share their storeis with as many people as possible. We have both a website and an Instagram where we will post any updates.
Thanks, Javier!
The Long Center is super honored to have Javier, Austin Unconducted, and the Our Rhythms, Our Voices project in the house on September 8. Enjoy this teaser and we’ll see you there!
