I spent the second week of February in the venezuelan city of Barquisimeto, interviewing several important composers and trying to get more music for my book. I was able to accomplish a lot and took advantage to spend time with some friends I hadn't seen in a long time. On the way there I stopped in Maracay to visit my good friend, composer Henry Martínez.
I first contacted composer and mandolinist Ricardo Mendoza and set a time to meet so he could give me the few compositions he had actually written down on paper. The rest are played by memory. We spent the afternoon at his house where he played some of his songs for us and I took advantage to take some photos. The written music never arrived that week and I had to come back to Caracas empty handed.
I also met composer Adelis Freites (composer of the merengue "Acidito") and we spoke of his many compositions. He gave me several CDs from which I'll be transcribing soon. It was wonderful to finally meet this veteran musician of Lara. I gave him the CD I recorded with Beatriz López and he immediately played it on his radio program that was broadcast over speakers in the plaza where I was sitting after our meeting.
I then met with the hard working and knowledgeable composer Pablo Camacaro ("Patatín Patatán", "Sr JOU"). We spent three days working on his music, reviewing my transcriptions, finding new material, and he showed me the music he was working on at that moment. These were my most productive visits. Pablo is tireless and is completely passionate and meticulous about his music. He is probably the most well organized of the composers I have met. He has transcribed a good part of his music and has it on his computer. That was a great help for me.
We took advantage of the forced vacation days he had because of the coming elections and were able to spend many hours together in full musical concentration. This is very much appreciated and also quite rare here in Venezuela! He also gave me a book of the history of his group "Raices de Venezuela" with a CD that has many of the popular compositions performed by that group and also transcriptions in PDF.
Seeing that he has so many compositions and that only a handful are commonly performed, I offered to organize his music for publication and he enthusiastically agreed. Several days later we spoke again and he had decided that he should be the one to arrange his music for publication but that the idea was very necessary and really appreciated the motivation I had provided. He is now hard at work and hopefully the outcome will be a complete publication of his work.
