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Giuseppe Gallo-Balma
Los Huesos de Yayael (“The Bones of Yayael”)

Giuseppe Gallo-Balma

  • Born: 1994, Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic

 

Los Huesos de Yayael (“The Bones of Yayael”)

Giuseppe Gallo-Balma has been commissioned by the CSU Philharmonic, hornist Lucas Testin, the CSU Flute Choir and Percussion Ensemble, and bassoonist Traian Sturza. His music has been performed by JACK Quartet, Transient Canvas, Re(a)d Trio and newEar Contemporary Chamber Ensemble, and has been featured on the radio show Sound Currents (KCUR/NPR). As the son of Haitian and Italian immigrants raised in the Dominican Republic, Gallo-Balma seeks to bring an amalgamation of these three distinct cultures to the foreground of his music; he also takes special interest in the musical aspects of Indigenous and Afro-Caribbean communities.

Composer’s Note: The Bones of Yayael for Orchestra uses elements from Dominican and Haitian folklore, such as rhythms taken directly from the Afro-Latiné communities (mainly from Haitian voodoo drumming), combined with melodic lines that imitate the Taíno way of singing and playing.

In the Caribbean Taíno culture there is a tale that describes the formation of the seas. The tale talks about a man named Yaya, whose son, Yayael, plots to kill him. In order to avoid his demise at the hands of his son, Yaya kills Yayael instead. Yaya places the remains of his son in a gourd, where the bones turn into fish. One day, a zemi (a Taíno ancestral spirit) named Deminán and his three brothers walk into Yaya’s house with the intention of stealing and eating the fish. Deminán accidentally drops the gourd and breaks it. The water and the fish that come out of the gourd fill up the earth, leading to the creation of the seas.

This piece is a depiction of the moments right before, during and after the gourd breaks. Through a cumulative process using a set of numbers derived from a Fibonacci sequence, the ensemble gradually grows in intensity. It builds up to a climax right at the moment where the gourd is dropped and breaks, leading to a resolution of the piece that depicts the earth being filled with water and life.