Somehow, it’s becoming a recent recurring theme of mine to highlight outside the box music creators. Some of my favorite albums are those by artists whose first creative outlet isn’t exactly music per se. On Poema A Dos Voces we’re treated to such a spectacular vision by Basque poet, sculptor, psychologist and singer-songwriter, Ana Benegas Haddad. Joined by members of totemic Spanish New Age groups like Esclarecidos, Musica Sporadica, Orquesta De Las Nubes, and from like-minded labels like Grabacciones Accidentales, they collaborate together to create something that joins the Iberian tradition of sung poetry with touchstones from far-flung places Spanish tongues have reached, creating a fourth world aching of languid romanticism.
Ana Benegas Haddad, a native of San Sebastian, Spain, began her artistic career in that hometown, primarily as a lyricist and interpreter of Spanish folkloric song. In the late ‘60s through the early ‘70s she won countless regional poetry and lyrical competitions. However, with time, that early love of music would find Ana trying to translate it into another vocation.
Seeking to expand her psychology studies she moved to Bordeaux, France and discovered sculpture as another means to express herself. Through sculpture she also realized how this practice can be used in tandem with therapy, poetry, and music to further flesh out another art form.
When Ana returned to Spain, she struck up a friendship with one Miguel Herrero, a leading guiding light for independent Spanish record label Grabaciones Accidentales, and who just so happened to buy one of the clay sculptures she was selling in San Sebastian. Interest to actually create an album that tied everything together — the poetry, the sculpture, and the artwork of post-modern Spanish painter Igor Issacovitch — spurred them to work together under the mid-label Spanish record imprint Producciones Twin (home to Hombres G, of all bands!) to present this musical piece that did so.
From Miguel’s own musical circle, he enlisted the help of Javier Paixariño, Luis Paniagua, Dino Del Monte Nahor, and Pedro Estevan, some of the same musicians who had helped create offshoot Spanish fourth world group Musica Esporadica and would join Miguel for his equally fascinating debut. Seeing all those names on paper would make one think that the album would be full of out there, experimental cuts. It’s a marvel of good taste, that this is not what we end up hearing. What you hear in Poema A Dos Voces is a more worthy blend of elegance, restraint, and immediacy.
You hear in “Y Aunque Seamos Muchos” the dream-like ambience conjured by Luis Paniagua’s sitar and Víctor Ambroa’s violin moving in ways that ties Ana’s wonderful speak-singing to musical binds that Arabia and Old Europe had ages ago. If you can picture the sculpture’s specially made for the songs themselves (and shown in the album’s liner notes), you can picture the sinewy, smooth, deep something this sounds like. At two minutes “En El Vendaval De Mi Alma” touches on the watery imagery that seems to inhabit this album’s headspace. Windswept barely there, ambient balladry carries you forward through music showing that special Iberian musical ambience being touched in that era.
I’m struggling to find ways to think of simpatico places you’ve heard this kind of music before. Joni’s work with Pastorius, in some ways come to mind, meeting the same idea of “grown woman” shows “grown human philosophy” through music but that wouldn’t be quite right. For Joni, roads and manicured lawns sprung music evoking some not quite so alien, deeply humanistic, emotional terrain. Gabriela once drew on the arid vistas of Argentina’s high plains. Here, Ana takes the seashore of her native San Sebastian, as the fertile ground her chosen musicians should evoke to soundtrack her lyrical explorations. “Las Olas” moves sonorously for that simple reason, for example.
Miguel’s special talent highlights the movement in “Cuando Llegue la Mañana”. On it, we get an intriguing mix of Nuevo Flamenco stylings with all sorts of minimal dance motifs. Ana’s vocals here serving a powerful pull that makes Orquesta De La Nubes’ Pedro Estevan vibes adapt its fandango heart to something equally new to you.
Even in its quite noisy state — blame years of mine being stored in some far flung Balearic island (“Los Siglos Matan”, as Ana would state here) — you can hear something special in this ensemble and in this album. Even in its exceedingly rare real-life appearance, Poema A Dos Voces, in more than just music, is something to behold as more than just mere art project. High-minded art should be more inviting, as it is here. So, here’s hoping someone, in the future, can share a better proximity of its construction than me — anyway, time to look past those splashing waves…