Yalil Guerra, with her soul in the island and in the royal palm

May 17, 2019

The Cuban musician based in Los Angeles dedicated the piece to José Martí and titled it La palma real. How much Cuba in a single score!

Regarding the premiere of the work, in 2018, the composer himself declared in an excellent interview with José Luis Estrada Betancourt: "It was vital that my first symphony be related to me and to my culture. Yalil Guerra is Cuban, the man of the palm tree, mambí, someone who always has his country present in his heart and in his thoughts."

Recently, Yalil has delivered to the Centro de Estudios Martianos one of the first copies of the album in which the Orquesta Sinfónica Nacional, under the direction of Maestro Enrique Pérez Mesa, performs this "musical poetry" in which, if we close our eyes, we can feel the pain of exile, the battle, death, and a bit more.

"Why did I title the fourth movement The Legacy? I said to myself: well, after Martí's exile, the Battle of Dos Ríos, then comes the Elegy, but what's going to happen next?, I couldn't leave the work by just putting a movement that would be something fast, that contrasts, and I thought automatically about the legacy that Martí has left. All of us who are here know what Martí means in the patriotic sense, in the national pride that we all have," Yalil expressed to the press.

For that ending he chose the fugue, a complex genre, but he feels himself a creature of challenges and, also, a proud son of the musicality of this island:

"For us Cubans it is very important that we have a cultural vision, which has been very successful for many years. Without having the atomic bomb we have managed to penetrate world culture with incredible rhythms, Cuban music is all over the world. Current pop is nothing more than the Cuban clave," affirms the renowned composer, guitarist, arranger and producer, who started this project as an exercise for his Doctorate in Composition at UCLA.

The album also includes the piece Intrata, by Aurelio de la Vega, which had never been heard in Cuba.

Yalil Guerra served for two years as a resident of the National Composers Association USA (Nacusa), alternates composition with teaching, has taught Spanish to his children, and is already planning that the Titán de Bronce will be the inspiration for his second symphony. He speaks like a Cuban who has never left, without accent and without pause, with his soul on the Island, in the palm.