Instrumentation: Viola Duration: 5 mins.
Program notes:
PARTITA E’ SEA YA – Julio Quinones
Taking my Puerto Rican heritage as a starting point, I decided to blend the idea of the solo instrumental partita tradition with traditional bomba rhythms. Puerto Rican bomba is a traditional dance/music developed by the slaves and their descendants that were imported to the island from the 17th and 18th century to the island. This kind of music served as a space for slaves and later afro-descendant communities to practice their usually syncretic faiths, escape from their slavery condition or the prejudice against them, plan slave rebellions, worship, among other things. Looking to expand on this idea, I took the melodic turns, rhythms and phrases from the classic bomba song: bambulae’ sea ya! Since the bomba drums are the principal instruments in this music, rhythm is an essential part of the genre, so an emphasis in rhythmic variation and abstraction was one of my goals with this piece.
There is a longer revision of this piece, available upon request to the composer.
Julio Elvin Quiñones | Composer 