Arturo Márquez

• Born: December 20, 1950, Álamos, Sonora, Mexico

Danzón No. 2

• Composed: 1994
  
• Premiere: March 1994 in Mexico City by the Orchestra Filarmonica de la UNAM conducted by Francisco Savín
  
• Duration: approx. 10 minutes

The idea of writing the Danzón No. 2 originated in 1993 during a trip to Malinalco with the painter Andrés Fonseca and the dancer Irene Martínez, both of whom are experts in salon dances; they also share a special passion for the danzón, which they transmitted to me on that trip and also during later trips to Veracruz and visits to the Colonia Salon in Mexico City. From these experiences onward, I started to learn the danzón’s rhythms, its form, its melodic outline, and to listen to the old recordings by Acerina and his Danzonera Orchestra. I was fascinated and I started to understand that the apparent lightness of the danzón is only a visiting card for a type of music full of sensuality and qualitative seriousness, a genre that old Mexican people continue to dance to with a touch of nostalgia and a jubilant escape into their own emotional world—something we can fortunately still see in the embrace between music and dance that occurs in the state of Veracruz and in the dance parlors of Mexico City.

The Danzón No. 2 is a tribute to the environment that nourishes the genre. It endeavors to get as close as possible to the dance, to its nostalgic melodies, to its wild rhythms; and, although it violates its intimacy, its form and its harmonic language, it is a very personal way of paying my respects and expressing my emotions toward truly popular music. Danzón No. 2 was written on commission from the Department of Musical Activities at Mexico’s National Autonomous University and is dedicated to my daughter, Lily.

—Arturo Márquez