Listen to Macondo Stew, Ricardo Lorenz’s wonderful and expansive orchestra, and you’ll hear tangos and boleros, charangas and sones — but not to dance to so much as to listen.
“The stereotype about Latin music is Carmen Miranda,” says Lorenz. “Latin music is supposed to be light, sabrosa, rhythmic, just to dance.”
But that’s only one side of the coin.
“We wanted to fill a vacuum in the Latin American field here in Chicago,” Lorenz says. “We wanted to play ballads, boleros, the kind of songs written, for example, by Cuban singer-songwriter Silvio Rodriguez. We want to do original music, using poetry by Chicago Latino poets. Americans don’t know much about the intellectual parts, the poetic and sensual parts of Latin music. Since I’ve been in the United States, I’ve had a need to educate North Americans about us — they know so little about us!’ “
Named after the legendary town in Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s classic “One Hundred Years of Solitude,” Lorenz’s group is a United Nations in and of itself: Players come from Venezuela, Chile, Puerto Rico, Brazil, Argentina and North America. The stew refers to their piquant mix of influences: lots of jazz, Nueva Trova, the graceful rhythms of Orquesta Aragon.
“For me, the music of the Caribbean, of Cuba, in the 1950s — that’s some of the best,” he explains.
And listening to Macondo Stew, with its vibrant violins, its tasteful touch of percussion and the crystalline voice of Claudia Perez at the helm, it’s easy to close your eyes and imagine the legendary Cachao on bass, Fajardo on flute, Pappo Lucca doing things to the piano.
Yet Macondo Stew is more serious than that, too.
“This adventure — the group — began around three years ago, as an experiment,” says Lorenz, who is a doctoral candidate in composition at the University of Chicago. “We gathered some musicians from Chicago together because we wanted to play some songs by Astor Piazzola. That was what we had in common.”
More Top Picks Best Sheets
The late Piazzola, an Argentine composer, brought the tango into the modern world. In Latin America, he is a virtual god.
“Piazzola was one of the first Latin American musicians who reached beyond a popular audience to an academic or intellectual audience,” Lorenz explains. “Piazzola’s tangos are classic tangos. In Latin America, it’s very difficult to draw a dividing line between classical and popular music. Piazzola is the best example of that.”
The group played its first gig at the now-defunct HotHouse. Although jobs were few at the beginning, word has quickly spread about Macondo Stew. “We play jazz venues,” says Lorenz, “not so many Latino clubs yet, but our audience is very varied: people who like jazz, Latino intellectuals, people who enjoy visual art and poetry.”
They’ve kept their promise to integrate local poets. Nell Haque (yes, Fareed’s mom), who is Peruvian, contributed a pair of poems that have become staples in the Macondo repertoire.
“We’re doing something different, I know, although maybe later, we’ll do more danceable things, like Orquesta Aragon,” Lorenz says. “I know when people come to hear us, it’s not what they expect from a Latin band: We’ve got violins, violas, cellos. But it is Latin American music, very much so.”
It’s probably one of the most compelling dramas on a Chicago stage at the moment, but you won’t find “Mad Joy” at a Halsted theater or in the Loop. Staged instead at Pulaski Park, this tense, uplifting story of Mecca, an inner-city woman whose life is viewed from death to birth, is joyful indeed. Written, directed, choreographed and performed by the adolescent talents of TeenStreet, the youth component of FreeStreet Theater, “Mad Joy” offers a dynamic bit of theater and a charged dose of hope. This is the show’s last weekend, so run, do not walk, to Pulaski Park and grab a seat in the old park district playhouse.
Female circumcision is the central trauma that propels the Bedouin woman whose life is portrayed in Ruby Porat Shoval’s one-person show, “Naomi.” But this is not the Middle Eastern version of Alice Walker’s stories on the same subject. Porat Shoval’s performance concerns choices women are faced with when traditions and the modern world collide.
An Israeli, Porat Shoval was a social worker attending a workshop when she met a Bedouin woman who introduced her to the nomadic life of her people in the desert.
“Naomi” will be performed twice in the area: Tuesday at the Harold Washington Library, and Wednesday at Beth Hillel Congregation in Wilmette.
The After Hours date book
Friday, 9 p.m., Macondo Stew, Casa de Arte y Cultura Calles y Suenos, 1900 S. Carpenter St., $8. 312-243-4243. Also May 5, 4 to 9 p.m., South Shore Cultural Center, 7506 S. South Shore Drive, free. Call 312-907-2189. The center is wheelchair accessible.
Friday, 7 p.m., Saturday, 2 p.m., “Mad Joy” by TeenStreet, Pulaski Park, 1419 W. Blackhawk St. $8, $4 students (more if you have it, less if you don’t). 312-772-7248.
Tuesday, 7:30 p.m., “Naomi” by Ruby Porat Shoval, Harold Washington Library, 400 S. State St., $15, and Wednesday, 7:30 p.m. at Beth Hillel Congregation, 3220 Big Tree Lane, Wilmette, $15. Call 312-565-3305 for information on either performance. Both venues are wheelchair accessible.