Composer/Pianist Elio Villafranca - Cinque

WPKN Community Radio

My next guest is Elio Villafranca. Elio has graced our airwaves twice before on this show, and he's back on the occasion of the release of his new double CD entitled Cinquue, described as a magnificent sweeping work. Cinque is a five movement suite inspired by the story of Joseph Cinque, who in 1839 led a successful revolt aboard the slave ship La Amistad, days after being sold and transported to a sugar plantation in Cuba. Elio Villafranca's most ambitious project today, showcases the cultural diversity of the five Caribbean islands of Cuba, Puerto Rico, Haiti, The Dominican Republic, and Jamaica; while simultaneously highlighting the Congolese musical heritage woven into the fabric of each of these diverse nations, and yet unified via the forced migration of Africans to the Americas. Cinque is a body of work that encompasses narration, original composition and selections of Elio's own field recordings of different forms of rooted Congolese rhythms in the Caribbean, especially the traditions of Tambor Yuka, only practiced today in the region of Pinar Del Ri?o, where Elio was born, and Ganga?, a rare culture that came from Sierra Leon, Cinque's place of birth, to the region of Matanzas, Cuba. Both traditions are near to extinction today.