“Don’t forget me, sing me.” Those were the words Chabuca Granda wrote on her deathbed more than twenty years ago in a letter to Susana Baca. For the Afro-Peruvian Chabuca’s plea is as powerful today as when she first read it.
Seis Poemas, her latest six-song EP is partly a tribute to Chabuca Granda, one of the great figures of Latin American song. Baca, who got her start spinning the poems of others into wistful melodies, also borrows from the verses of Federico Garcia Lorca, the Spanish avant-garde poet who was assassinated during his country’s Civil War, and in a nod to her ancestry she delves into Peru’s overlooked, yet rich African legacy.
Baca first met Granda as a university student in Lima around the time the singer/songwriter had begun exploring Afro-Peruvian rhythms and incorporating them in her music. Granda, who was born in the Peruvian Sierra to an upper-middle class family of European and Andean extraction, saw Baca as a link to a younger generation of artists and the black Peruvian sub-culture she was beginning to delve into.
It’s been said before that Baca’s voice is like a quiet storm. But it’s worth repeating. Like all storms in their myriad manifestations, Baca’s restrained tempest, transcends her hometown Chorrillos. It transcends her people’s history, Peru, her personal story, and even language.
On Seis Poemas Baca deftly melds the quotidian fabric of poetry and age-old songs passed down orally with a universal sound that enthralls the listener no matter where they’re from.