Mexican composer, conductor and violinist Silvestre Revueltas began his musical career as violinist, studying and working both in the United States and Mexico. As a composer, however, he was mostly self-taught, using Mexican street music as his model. In his early works he incorporated the traditional music of indigenous populations and popular folk tunes into loosely structured, highly rhythmic compositions. Later, he adopted a more dissonant style, experimenting with serialism and atonality, earning him a reputation as a “Mexican Charles Ives.” Throughout most of the twentieth century his music was little known outside his own country, but today it is experiencing a resurgence, particularly the folkloric Sensemayá and Redes

In 1929 Revueltas became assistant conductor for Carlos Chávez’s Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional de Mexico. Chávez was revolutionizing the reactionary Conservatory in Mexico City with atonality and promoting Mexico’s indigenous music, eventually becoming the country’s most important composer. In 1934, Chávez invited photographer and cinematographer Paul Strand to collaborate with him on a film, Pescados (Fish). When Chávez fell out of favor with the new Mexican director of fine arts, Revueltas took over the commission with a new title, Redes.

Redes was the first of seven scores Revueltas composed for Mexican films. The quasi-documentary presented the plight of fishermen in their struggle against corrupt politicians and businessmen whose technique of divide and conquer kept the fishermen fighting among themselves. Only after the their leader is killed, do the fishermen unite and triumph. Although the film itself was initially unsuccessful, Revueltas’s extracted a suite from the score. Redes, the film, is now regarded as a masterpiece in its wedding of cinematography and music.

The film’s theme of a workers’ struggle against the capitalistic oppression reflects and promotes the idealistic communism of the 1930s. It stands as the musical counterpart to the murals of Revueltas’ countryman, Diego Rivera.

The Suite is drawn from the score accompanying five scenes:

1. The Fishermen: A trumpet fanfare introduces a subdued march over a plodding ostinato representing the drudgery, resignation and unfair pay

2. The Child’s Funeral: The boss refuses to help a fisherman get medical aid for his dying child. An ostinato pulse in the lower strings accompanies a monotonous motive suggesting the numbness of fresh grief. In the film, the music accompanies the child’s funeral cortege.

3. Setting Out to Fish: This music accompanies scenes of the fishermen trawling with huge nets (redes), displaying great skill, strength and teamwork to bring in the catch. The melodies for this section draw on indigenous Mexican folk music and reflect the fishermen’s joy in their actual work.

4. The Fight: Two factions of the village, one led by the bereaved father, the other by a sleazy city politician, engage in a fruitless fight that yields the community nothing but

the death of the father and leader. An ominous introduction in the cellos and basses precedes the intensely syncopated fight. Suddenly, the dirge motive blares out in the brass, signaling another senseless death.

5. The Return of the Fishermen with Their Dead Friend: A snarling, but barely audible, ostinato accompanies the funeral march with solo trumpet playing a variation of the opening fanfare. The volume increases gradually as the scene morphs into a flotilla of small boats gathering and approaching the pay station in a solid phalanx. The ostinato matches exactly the rhythm of each stroke of the oars as they hit the water in perfect unison.

In 1937 Revueltas joined the Republican foreign brigades of the liberal and leftwing faction in the Spanish Civil War as the general secretary of the League of Writers and Artists. He returned from Spain in 1938 to settle in Mexico City and died there two years later of alcoholism and pneumonia – literally in a gutter.