The Zarabanda Variations Perform with Edgar Garcia

On November 14th, the night after giving his talk “Migrant Glyphs” at Rose Hill’s Walsh Library, Professor Edgar Garcia (University of Chicago) joined Zarabanda Variations, a group of composers, improvisers, and musical artists, for a performance at the Lincoln Center campus’s 12th floor Lounge. Along with his scholarly work, Garcia is also a published poet. Zarabanda Variations is inspired by “musical histories of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century New Spain, or present-day Mexico and the United States,” a complex weaving of historical influence and archival gaps reflected in the term zarabanda, a style of European Baroque courtly dance with an unclear origin of possibly Spanish, pre-Columbian American, Arab roots and an etymological link to the Bantu nsala-banda.

With performers on a flute (with finger bells), electric guitar, double bass, violin, and a singer building an eerie and largely improvised soundscape of string glissandos and lamenting vocals, punctured by the high, bright flute and bell’s chimes, Garcia began to recite his poetry in a gravelly tone. Throughout several poems, he spoke of journeys to the underworld, the world’s green dominion and what the plough did to it, dreams of Levi-Strauss, the continuance of war and, in contrast, those with conscientious objectives, in a tone he described with a wry smile as “perpetually surly”. The musicians circled around the audience while performing their distressed and unnerving accompaniment, leading to unexpected pockets of sound appearing behind the audience’s heads while they sat looking forward at the stage. The second half of the performance, true to the name of the group, varied with a fuller, bluesy sound and pulsing beats along with passionate singing of love and loss, in melodies familiar but distinct.

Keir GoGwilt, the originator and violinist of Zarabanda Variations, discussed how the group had come across the poetry of Garcia a few years into their project and were struck by their similar interests in considering the interlacing of music, history, culture, and literature from Europe, the pre-Columbian and contemporary Americas, which is what led to their collaboration. The group, along with Garcia, previously performed together at the Lincoln Center David Rubinstein Atrium in July, 2025. Garcia spoke briefly about how his current translation and poetry project of the Nahuatl-language Cantares Mexicanos made him consider how the original musical context of these texts was often erased in favor of their use for anthropological study, but his work with Zarabanda Variations had allowed him to bring performance and music back in contact with the written word. The innovative and experimental drive of all the performers involved created a daring and intriguing cross-disciplinary performance, which provided a new layer to understanding Professor Garcia’s scholarship, and showcased the possibilities of joining literary research with contemporary music.