Kuauhkiauhtzintli. Thirteen years of Lluvia de Palos

On November 18, 2023, the Carlos Chávez Hall at the University Cultural Center was the stage for an extraordinary show: the experimental use of percussions by the Lluvia de Palos quartet (Kuauhkiauhtzintli in Nahuatl; Rain of Sticks in English). The group adopts every kind of pre-Hispanic and traditional Mesoamerican musical instruments—particularly percussions but also wind instruments made of varied matgerials—and adapts them, from the academic point of view, into a scheme close to that of chamber music. At the same time, Lluvia de Palos follows jazz improvisation (a genre performed by some of the group members) as well as the European free improvisation avant-garde of the end of the 20^th century.

The name of the group—as the reader might have noticed from the English translation—symbolizes one of the instruments included in their extensive sound infrastructure: the rainstick, an instrument made of reeds or trunks pierced with thin sticks and filled with small river pebbles that, when falling by gravity as the instrument is turned over, seem to sing like water flowing among stones. Huehuetls of different sizes are also part of the group’s collection (with an enormous and thunderous one, the great drum or huehyi huehuetl). These instruments, made of hollowed tree trunks and covered with a skin membrane, are usually played with the hands or with big drumsticks, but Lluvia de Palos has reinvented their playing by using wooden bows and ropes (tlahuitolli) to obtain a more versatile and dynamic sound. Along these instruments, we can also find teponastles made of different kinds of wood and in different sizes—some of the them are incredibly large, like the Amazonian slit drum, manguaré—portable double-membrane drums like those used in Rarámuri music (kampore), clay pots (komitl; sometimes filled with water, akomitl), clay flutes (sokitlapitzalli), instruments similar to the Caribbean güiro made either of wood or bones (kuauhchihchikoni and omichihchikoni, respectively), turtle shells (ayotapalcatl) and a vast collection of conches (teksistli), shells, stones (tetl), bones, hooves, and seeds (ayacachtli).

The significant variety of the instruments played by Lluvia de Palos fully corresponds to the richness of the music produced. Almost ten years ago, in 2014, their first album was released, Tlatecuinilistli (to beat on the ground with the feet, to attack someone with noise, to incite uprising), a careful live recording that synthesized the previous work, of many years, of its members, who at that time were José Navarro, Luis Miguel Costero, Manuel Andrade and Samir Pascual, all of them virtuosistic percussionists with important careers. After ten years of work since the release of their first album and thirteen years since the creation of the ensemble, Osvaldo Yvain Peñaloza replaced Samir Pascual.

José Navarro, the ensembles conductor and leading composer, obtained his MD from UNAM’s Faculty of Music (FaM) with a thesis on the origin and expressiveness of teponastles. He is a fulltime professor at the National School of Film Arts, and was a founder of the legendary Banda Elástica, the most important Mexican band in the Rock In Oposition and free improv movments. Luis Miguel Costero, a distinguished drummer, also part of Banda Elástica, has played with the country’ s leading jazz performers, playing his peculiar minor percussion set in various initiatives with Iraida Noriega, Alain Derbez and other musicians in the national jazz and blues scene. As a specialist in Indian classical music, he has studied tabla and carries out activities to spread this rich musical tradition among us. Manuel Andrade, after studying piano, composition and drums at the former DIM Music School, follows Composition grade studies at FaM. Osvaldo Ivain Peñaloza studied percussions and has been member of several initiatives in contemporary music, fusion, Mexican traditional music and Latin American music.

The concert on November 18 in a crowded Carlos Chávez Hall marked a new beginning for Lluvia de Palos since the works that will make up the ensemble’s second album—soon to be released—were premiered. Their music is surprising because, unlike other percussion ensembles that use the Mesoamerican instrumental tradition, Lluvia de Palos does not want to discover what the music of our ancestors would have been like in order to reproduce it in terms of an improbable authenticity; instead, these musicians experiment with this material legacy without denying everything they know about other musical traditions, including the European tradition and, especially, improvisation. In other words, they try to extract, from the remnants of a kind of music that is impossible to know, as many sonorities as required by their expression In atmospheres that range from the utmost restraint, almost silence, to the storm unleashed by the powerful huehuetls; with drumming surfaces that generate a wide range of colors derived from that vibrant universe. A serious performative rituality also shows the honesty of their endeavors and the archeological commitment to rescuing the use of these instruments. Lluvia de Palos can transport us to some uchrony where we can imagine how far the expression of sound went in cultures that sing no more.

And the stage of Carlos Chávez Hall, intimate and cozy, made this experience something unique. Hopefully, it will not stay this way. Let’s wait to feel many times again this impressive rain of sticks brought by Lluvia de Palos over us.

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