Press release
An immersive poetic and musical passage, Alex E. Chávez’s debut album, Sonorous Present, extends sonic meditations on loss, migration, and mourning across America’s borderlands. What began as an improvised performance in 2019—inspired by the music and poetics of Chávez’s award-winning book Sounds of Crossing: Music, Migration, and the Aural Poetics of Huapango Arribeño (Duke 2017)—has been reimagined as a studio album in collaboration with Grammy Award-winning producer Quetzal Flores.
Along with today’s announcement, the album’s LEAD SINGLE “cómplices de luto” (accomplices in mourning) is NOW AVAILABLE on all digital music platforms along with a beautiful animated video directed by Estudio Pneuma in collaboration with Celestial Brizuela, which premieres today at FLOOD MAGAZINE.
The song features duet vocals by Chávez and Laura Cambrón—lauded son jarocho musician, activist, and veteran of the Los Angeles and Chicago Mexican folk music scenes. A paced huapango rhythm cradles the wistful voices of Cambrón and Chávez, ushered along by Matt Ulery’s whimsical string arrangements, all of which finally crescendos into a melancholic dirge reminiscent of mariachi laments in the tradition of western Mexico’s son de la tierra caliente.
