La Chacana

To bring his animated film project Pachamama to life, a project that began almost 15 years ago, Argentine Juan Antin teamed up with French producer Didier Brunner (Kirikou, Azur et Azmar, Ernest et Célestine, Le grand Méchant Renard, etc.).

For the music of his film, Juan Antin wanted something powerful and present, as rich and distinctive as the graphics and colors of his drawings, rich in symbols and cultural roots combining the pre-Columbian and Andean worlds and the sound of Renaissance instruments that existed at the time of the Conquista.

He was about to give up on his musical dream, which seemed increasingly utopian in Europe and even more so in the world of film conventions, when he met Pierre Hamon, an “extraordinary” musician, a specialist in early music, but also passionate about pre-Columbian instruments and the world of Native American civilizations and cultures. An improviser, but with no real experience in composition, let alone film music, Hamon agreed to take up the challenge, and the two immediately hit it off: Juan was enthusiastic about the melodies and aesthetic directions proposed by Pierre and managed to convince the production team to take a chance on this adventure. The result of this long and fruitful collaboration is a magnificent animated film, Pachamama, in which music plays a fundamental and original role.

The idea behind this small ensemble program is obviously not to recreate the original soundtrack, but to evoke the roots of the “wonderful and enchanting” sound universe of Pachamama, combining historical music from the period or preceding the Conquista, music that was a source of inspiration, sometimes obvious, such as the cantus firmus theme “La Spagna,” sometimes only spiritual and distant, the “magical” universe of pre-Columbian instruments, the first sources of syncretic colonial music (Father Martinez Companion's Trujillo codex), the first collections of traditional Andean music, and finally a small suite adapted and improvised from themes from the original Pachamama music.

The natural voice and percussive fervor of Ananda Brandao, who was the revelation of the recording of the film's theme song, brings a freshness derived from contemporary music and jazz (drums, percussion, vocals) will join the lutes, guitars, and Renaissance harp of the wonderful musicians Bor Zuljan (“the lute incarnate”, as a recent France-Musique program dedicated to him was titled) and Louis Capeille, with the magnificent voice and musicality of Clémence Niclas and the breath of Pierre Hamon.

La Chacana
Pierre Hamon, Renaissance, Andean, and pre-Columbian flutes & conductor
Ananda Brandaõ, vocals and percussion
Clémence Niclas, vocals and flutes
Bor Zuljan, Spanish Renaissance lute and Renaissance guitar
Louis Capeille, Renaissance and traditional South American harp