Happy Birthday, Feliz Aniversario, Furaha Ya Kuzaliwa

Dan Carillo - guitars, percussion
Jason Rigby - soprano saxophone
John Patitucci - basses

Temple Music is a composition that unfolds over a relatively long time scale.  The composed portion of the music is played up to a point of departure for collective improvisation.  After each improvisation, the written material is played again from the beginning to a further point which serves as a point of departure for the next improvisation.  Miniatures composed for bass choir separate the end of the improvised sections from the next successive thematic statement.  A reprise of the fully composed piece, in a duet setting for acoustic guitar and bass, is played as a single continuity to close the piece.

First and foremost, Temple Music is conceived as a piece of collective improvisational music and the performance is offered as an artistic expression in the purest sense of the term.  However, the title is also a reference to the meditative, contemplative, prayerful nature of the piece, and to the influences of worship practices of many cultures.  Whether one chooses to worship God, Yahweh, Allah, the Creator, the Higher Power, the Universe, Krisha, etc., or chooses to worship in a Gothic cathedral, an Eastern Orthodox church, a mosque, a Buddhist meditation center, the courtyard of a Hindu temple, a store front neighborhood church, a synagogue, a megachurch campus, or in the great expanse of nature, Temple Music will encourage a state of peace and tranquility, and open pathways for contemplative prayer and meditation. 

Recorded at Solid Sounds Studio, Cornwall NY
Recording engineers - Lucas Carillo, Dan Carillo
Mixed by Lou Holtzman at East Side Sound Studio, NYC

Temple Music

"Ve David yefe enaim" is a Jewish song about KIng David.  I first heard the song played by Yamma Ensemble.  This is an instrumental version of the song that features sections for solo and group improvisation and exploration.  

Jason Rigby - soprano saxophone
Daniel Carillo - guitars
John Patitucci - acoustic and electric bass
Glen Velez - riq, tar, bodhran
Bob Weiner - drums and percussion

Recorded at Log Lane by Lucas Carillo and Dan Carillo
Mixed at East Side Sound by Lou Holtzman

Ve David yefe enaim

This is my solo version of the Negro spiritual "Oh Freedom."  It's played on the resonator guitar.  It will be included in my soon to be released album "Liminal Space."I upload it now in celebration of Juneteenth.

Oh Freedom

A solo guitar imagining of the contemporary hymn by Mark Giacobbe.

My Goal Is God Himself

Composed, arranged and performed by Daniel Carillo
Mixed by Lucas Carillo at Solid Sounds Studio Port Jervis, NY
Mastered by Shayne O'Neill at West West Studio Cornwall, NY

"Canción para el Padre Gustavo Gutiérrez is my first recording since moving to Texas in January.  Father Gutiérrez, born in Lima, Peru, as a mestizo with both Hispanic and Quechua Indian heritage, is considered the Father of Latin American Liberation Theology.  

In his Roman Catholic training, Gutiérrez was taught that poverty was a virtue to be accepted, but this isn’t what he experienced in the barrios of Lima where he witnessed poverty as a destructive reality.  He learned that poverty isn’t the result of bad luck or laziness.  Rather, he realized systems of oppression were in place and political decisions were made to keep the poor in horrible living conditions to the benefit of the wealthy and powerful.   

Father Gutiérrez found deep images at the center of many Biblical stories that spoke directly to the conditions of the poor and marginalized in Latin America.  

Gutiérrez and other Latin American theologians worked through a wide network of base communities, small groups that worked in the barrios and rural villages.  The Exodus imagery, the concept of God taking on human form, the suffering of Jesus on the cross, and the hope of resurrection were interpreted within the setting of peasants being driven off their land, of the poor going hungry, and of dissidents being imprisoned, tortured or killed.  Father Gutiérrez’s prophetic voice rose from a deep Christian spirituality and spoke directly from his understanding of how faith, hope, and love are rooted in the love of God and the love of the poor.

To be expected, the wealthy and powerful elites, rulers in both the church and the governments, pushed back against the movement labeling liberation theology as Marxist.  The church has always been a dominant institution supporting the status quo, and those who held positions of high power worked tirelessly to silence the voices of liberation and end the movement.  But, as Gutiérrez believed, the theology of liberation is a project of “the people” who apply their faith and the teachings of the Bible to the historical context in which they live.  “The people” were not to be denied.  The revolutions, both violent and nonviolent, that shook Latin America and eventually replaced many military dictatorships with democracies would not have succeeded without liberation theology.

Does any of this sound familiar?  Does it feel eerily familiar to you?  It should.  In this time and in this place, early 21st century North America, we are experiencing many of the same ideological and theological struggles as thousands of migrants who are fleeing violence and poverty in Central America hoping for relief, protection, and a better quality of life.  They come with faith and hope.  We must receive them with love.  Not legal loopholes, not cruel and punitive policies, not fear and loathing.  Love, plain and simple.  For as another great theologian wrote in the 1st century, “And now these three remain: faith, hope and love.  But the greatest of these is love.”

As an artist, I believe I am tasked to reflect the world around me, the joys and the strife, the cultures and the politics, and filter these through my particular creative process.  Living in Texas, the struggles of asylum seeking migrants and undocumented residents are magnified.  I wonder how many individuals I connect with through the normal course of daily life are living in fear of deportation.  I wonder how many have already been separated from their families and loved ones.  I wonder if they are being properly compensated for the jobs they perform.  I wonder what access they have to quality health care and education.  I wonder if they are hungry.  “Canción para el Padre Gustavo Gutiérrez” represents the ways in which I am processing all of this through my creative activities.

Daniel Carillo 1

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