The CD Egungun: Percussion Sextets by Cuban composer Louis Franz
Aguirre is one of the most radical and visionary proposals in the contemporary percussion repertoire. Performed by the SoXXI Percussion Group (Borja Donet, Andreu Queralt, Miguel Ángel Real, Sergi Dauder, Josep Furió, and Joan Soriano), the album brings together five sextets composed between 2006 and 2022, forming a corpus of almost 70 minutes of ritual intensity, sonic excess, and overflowing spirituality.
From the monumental opening with Egungun: Ará Orun, Aguirre establishes the aesthetic and symbolic territory that articulates the entire album: the profound imbrication between musical creation and Afro-Cuban worldview. The invocation of the Egguns and Yemayá is not a superficial or folkloric gesture, but rather the ontological foundation of the work. Here, percussion becomes a vehicle for trance, possession, and ancestral memory. Dense textures, reverberating metals, and extreme rhythmic writing create a liminal experience where the performer is drawn into an instrumental monodrama of absolute physical and spiritual demand.
Toque a Eggun condenses volcanic energy into a mere 3’30”, articulating symphonic bass drums and cowbells in a rhythmic fabric of constant tension. In Bembé, the instrumental reduction doesn’t imply restraint, but rather a purification that enhances structural clarity and ceremonial frenzy. The insistent pulse and repetitive patterns connect with the festive dimension of the Yoruba ritual, but filtered through a compositional language of enormous technical complexity.
The extensive Oriki y Bembé a Eshu (Kyrie eleison) constitutes the dramatic axis of the album. Aguirre intertwines Afro-Cuban prayers and Christian formulas in a psalmodic and responsorial discourse. The immense instrumental display produces sonic masses that evoke both architectural brutality and an almost spectral timbral refinement.
The closing piece, Wemilere a Eleggua y Oggún (Liturgia de la Presencia Divina), is a colossal construction dominated by brass instruments. Tires, tam-tams, gongs, springs, drums, and electric percussion devices create a kind of industrial cathedral of sound. The “horror vacui” and dynamic saturation transform into a collective catharsis, where performers and listeners are swept away into an extreme experience that culminates in the cry of “Maferefún!”
The SoXXI Percussion Group’s performance is simply extraordinary: precision, physical stamina, and a profound understanding of the composer’s symbolic universe converge in a committed and visceral interpretation. The meticulously crafted recording clearly captures the timbral richness and dynamic range of scores that demand both technical rigor and expressive abandon.
This album is not for complacent listening. It is a challenge. In contrast to the clichés of “Afro-Cuban” music, Aguirre proposes an aesthetic of excess, trance, and confrontation, where beauty is revealed as something unsettling.