cycle

Black amber, all painted, white foam…
The rain sings, summer is over.
White foam… May flower.

“Flor de Mayo”, Otilio Galíndez

The Chakana path,
It is up and down, inside and out…

Water is synonymous with life, and rain is perhaps the metaphor through which Mother Earth conveys the importance of preserving, nurturing, and multiplying life on this planet. For the peoples of the South, May is a turning point. It brings the rainfall, and thus abundance is renewed. The wet season begins in these torrid regions of exuberant contrasts and excessive beauty. Everything sprouts, blooms, and matures.

In May, the night sky in the South allows us to behold the zenith of a constellation that holds immense value in the ancestral worldview of our peoples: the Southern Cross. This fixed constellation consists of Alpha Crucis, Gamma Crucis, Beta Crucis, Delta Crucis, and a fifth star, Epsilon Crucis, which, although not part of the main points, serves to distinguish it from the “False Cross.” 

Our Andean ancestry, which exerts a deep influence on all the Indigenous peoples of Abya Yala, identifies this constellation by the name Chakana, which can be translated as a ladder or bridge between the earthly and spiritual worlds. It means complementarity, harmony, and purpose, as well as a path for returning to the core. The Chakana is the organizational center of the Andean world and its entire sphere of influence, which is why it is the focus of numerous and diverse rituals, ceremonies, offerings, and festivals throughout these territories. 

From the moment of their arrival, the Spanish conquistadors were struck by the symbolic power, veneration, and cultural identity of the peoples of Abya Yala with the Chakana. This is why they suppressed all traditional knowledge and ritual symbols, imposing their Eurocentric worldview in the clearest demonstration of colonial epistemicide. Temples, codices, and sages were demolished, burned, tortured, and martyred in the name of Christianity, which came to replace the Southern Cross, a symbol of knowledge and life, with the Catholic Cross, as a condensed symbol of pain, domination, sacrifice, death, and the promise of resurrection.

In Venezuela, a series of daytime and nighttime ritual activities persist, drawing young people and adults alike, in cities and rural areas alike. Afro-Venezuelan peoples especially cherish these traditions. The celebrations of the Cruz de Mayo, San Isidro, San Pascual Bailón, Corpus Christi, San Antonio, San Juan, and San Pedro, among others, escape the Catholic liturgical calendar that continues to try to assimilate them. They are celebrations framed within those exuberant contrasts of excessive beauty that cause everything to sprout, bloom, and mature. These are the days in which the Venezuelan people celebrate the cycle of life and for which they have created music, dances, drinks, foods, costumes, and poetry that have transcended both the Catholic Church and its Inquisition as well as civil and military power, in a testament to the most committed re-existence.

Lighting the altar candles

Wakes (“velorios”) are community gatherings organized to honor the deceased, a saint, the Virgin Mary, the Baby Jesus, or the Cross. These gatherings are held to fulfill a vow or out of devotion, and they feature prayers, drinks, food, poetry, singing, and dancing.

The velorio is a popular tradition that goes beyond the institutional framework of the Catholic Church. In fact, as early as the Synodal Constitutions of the Bishopric of Venezuela and Santiago de León de Caracas of 1687, published by Bishop Diego de Baños y Sotomayor, these activities, which “attract large crowds” and in which “many indecencies and offenses against God are committed,” were prohibited under penalty of “Major Excommunication.” Certainly, the Church seized on these practices of profane worship of the madero (the wood) to imbue them with Christian meaning.

At the center of the velorio dedicated to the Cruz de Mayo (“May Cross”) stands an altar with a main cross and two smaller ones. These are crosses without the image of Christ, “dressed” with cloth, paper, and multicolored flowers. The altar and its surroundings are also decorated in harmony with the crosses, and the offerings of candles, fruits, food, and drinks are arranged in such a way as to celebrate the abundance of a countryside that turns green again at this time of year.

The church’s calendar states that May 3 marks the celebration of “The Finding of the Cross.” Therefore, on the night of May 2, vigils begin in all the eastern states, as well as in Guárico, Lara, Cojedes, Aragua, Yaracuy, Carabobo, Barinas, Apure, Portuguesa, Miranda, Falcón, and in the city of Caracas. People give thanks for health and the fertility of the land. In the central coastal region, where Afro-Venezuelan communities are present, sirenas and fulías are sung. In the llanos, three-voice tonos are performed. In the east, the rhythms include galerones, malagueñas, fulías, jotas, and punto y llanto. The decimistas (poets) make offerings in a circular formation and vie for the spotlight as the musicians and singers perform.

Dancing up and down in a cross 

The Dancing Devils of Corpus Christi dance by forming a cross on the ground, to which they add new crosses with every turn, spiral, backward step, and leap. Each movement has a specific meaning and timing because the goal is to maintain order between the upper and lower realms, between complementary forces that must harmonize. Or, put more simply, to ensure that good prevails over evil.

The Incarnation of Christ in the Eucharist is a movable feast that occurs nine Thursdays after Holy Thursday. There are references to its celebration dating back to the third century in the Roman Empire. In 1350, it began to be celebrated in Barcelona with processions that reenacted the Devil’s defeat by the power of the Cross. In Venezuela –specifically in Ocumare de La Costa –there is evidence of Dancing Devils dating back to 1621, and although masked devils were present in many places, this practice survived only in the central region as a magical-religious ritual in the states of Aragua, Carabobo, Cojedes, Guárico, Miranda, and La Guaira.

The people, embodying the Devil, do not view the Evil One as a figure but as a concept. He is simply a force opposed to God. A revelrous, playful, and imperfect being. However, the promesero, dressed in colorful pants and a shirt, wearing masks of different sizes, shapes, and shades, which bear no resemblance to the European portrayal of the devil, protects himself with prayers, scapulars, bells, whips, and crosses that he carries as part of his attire. But his greatest protection is the insistent sign of the Cross he traces with the movements of his foot and the hand holding a maraca.

The cuatro or the caja (snare drum) are the instruments that accompany this celebration, depending on the community. Only in the town of Chuao are both used, though at different times. There is no singing, and the rhythms are performed with different beats that vary in intensity and speed. There are eleven Afro-Venezuelan lay brotherhoods or cofradías recognized as Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by UNESCO, and each has a distinct musical identity linked to its spiritual environment.

Beating the drums

Pipas, quitiplás, culos ‘e puya, minas, curbatas, cumacos, and maracas are the essential instruments with which the Venezuelan people celebrate the arrival of San Juan (John the Baptist), the most popular Catholic festival in seventeenth-century Spain that was brought over to preserve the identity of the conquistadors while simultaneously subjugating the Indigenous peoples and later the kidnapped and enslaved African peoples. Coinciding with the second cocoa harvest in these territories, the birth of John the Baptist, exactly six months after Jesus, became the figure of greatest devotion on the major slave-owning plantations along our country’s northern coast. 

San Juan is regarded by the people as a saint who charges for his miracles. He’s drinker of aguardiente, a dancer, and a reveler, which is why there is both a popular celebration and an institutional, Catholic one. It must be remembered that Black people were barred from entering the church until well into the nineteenth century. Today, depending on the town and the priest, drums may or may not be allowed inside the church. In any case, the popular celebration of San Juan involves dancing, singing, drumming, drinks, and food –all meant to reclaim a freedom that was historically limited to an extreme. For this reason, it was a celebration that was persecuted and punished with excommunication during the colonial period, as we saw in the above mentioned Synodal Constitutions.

The San Juan festival cycle begins on June 1 with the “Repique de San Juan.” Families, communities, and various organizations meet in advance to plan and assign responsibilities. It is a colorful celebration reflected in the participants’ attire, flags, and scarves. Women’s participation is essential, particularly in the singing that takes place during the sirenas, the sangueo, and the golpes. These songs accompany the individual dancing of those carrying the flags and the saint in the sangueo, which is part of a group dance, but also the dancing of individual couples and, to a lesser extent, of linked couples.

The songs to San Juan are, above all, responsorial, alternating between soloist and choir, often improvised. Each drum has its own “tonada” or way of singing it, and in each locality, even if the same drum is used, the way of playing it and the style of singing this or that beat may vary. They follow the African tradition of three-drum ensembles –interdependent and complementary –where polyrhythm is enhanced by the timbral qualities of each drum, with the lowest-pitched one taking the “lead,” providing the beats and embellishments. “The Saint is in the drum,” it is said, affirming the enduring relevance of the worldview of the Indigenous peoples of West Africa.

¡Arriba negro!

With this call, a singer signals to his partner that it is their turn to sing, because in the bella, the galerón, and the seis figureao, consecutive duets of singers in two different voices (a third apart) take turns. Meanwhile, in the yiyivamos, the juruminga, the perrendenga, and the poco a poco, one singer improvises verses and a chorus responds. The so-called Sones de Negros are made up of seven songs. However, it all begins with La Salve, a solemn song in which permission and a blessing are sought from the saint to begin the dance; once this is finished, the battle ensues, sung in two-part harmony and “danced” by two men with traditional stick-fighting. 

The dance in the bella and galerón consists of male-female couples who participate one after another in a free-form manner. The seis figureao features a choreographed dance by three couples performing intricate, intertwined movements and turns. In the yiyivamos, juruminga, perrendenga, and poco a poco, independent couples dance, executing figures and movements as directed by the singer. San Antonio presides over an altar beautifully adorned with flowers, fruits, candles, clubs, crosses, bread, and other foods. Musicians and singers stand facing the altar, and each time the dancers enter the circle, they bow to the saint as a sign of respect and gratitude.

The Baile de Negros or Sones de Negros may have originated in the vicinity of El Tocuyo, in the fertile valley irrigated by the Tocuyo river, where the sugarcane-producing slave plantations were located. Its characteristic sound comes from an ensemble of stringed instruments related to the Baroque and Renaissance guitar, known as the cinco, medio cinco, requinto, and cuatro. The master or most experienced player plays the cinco. The timbral variety of the instruments and the ornamentation of the requinto give this instrumental ensemble an unmistakable texture. 

In front of the saint stands the Tamunango or Tambor de Negro, a fundamental instrument constructed from a long, hollowed-out log, sized so that one musician can sit on it and play with their hands on its single head, while another strikes the wooden body with the drumsticks. The rest of the musicians are arranged around this instrument. A double-headed drum, a tambourine, and maracas complete this celebration, which is most popular in the states of Lara, Falcón, Yaracuy, and Portuguesa. Throughout June, with a focus on the 13th, these communities organize this traditional dance in homes, squares, streets, and fields -a celebration that cannot end without a sancocho (wood fire, community-prepared stew)  soup) and a glass of cocuy de penca (agave-derived drink).

Stomp on the boss!

The San Pedro festival is perhaps one of the most complex. Certainly, it is part of the cycle of life celebrations, featuring music, dance, food, and drink specially prepared as an offering to the saint. But as a kind of narrative that highlights Peter’s benevolence, there is the story of the enslaved María Ignacia, who, desperate over her daughter Rosa Ignacia’s illness, offered the deity an annual celebration. Once the miracle was fulfilled, María Ignacia danced until the last day of her life, and on her deathbed asked her husband to keep the promise. That is why a man in drag, carrying a rag doll in his arms, reenacts today the promise that María Ignacia’s husband made to his wife.

The cuatro and maracas are the accompanying instruments, and there may be many of them providing harmonic and rhythmic support to a soloist, which are answered by a chorus from the audience. The latter either joins in or simply watches this parranda as it winds its way through the streets of Guatire and Guarenas (outskirts of Caracas), starting from the church and making strategic stops at the homes of the revelers, the headquarters of the cofradías, and other points of interest.

Although there is no dramatized performance, during the procession there are characters in costume with carefully assigned roles, performing specific actions to convey the story of the miracle that was granted.

It is a distinctly joyful celebration. In the lyrics, music, and dance, there is a feeling of gratitude for favors received. This festive nature does not mean a loss of conscience. The Parranda de San Pedro carries a very powerful symbolic weight that recalls the use of irony and theatrics as a tool of clandestine insurgency, allowing people to denounce oppression and express their own identity as human dignity. When they sing: “With the cotiza [sandal], stomp the earth / turn it to dust without mercy…” and suddenly switch earth (“terrón”) for “boss” (“patrón”), it becomes perfectly clear what they are talking about.

The candles remain lit in the collective memory altar and the music continues to sound. After following the path of the Southern Cross and the beats of existence, the Chakana route has another stop. In the upcoming delivery of this column, we will go deep into the heart of these festivities in their wonderful displays of cyclicity, complementarity, and interconnectedness.

Fabiola José is a Venezuelan singer. She has performed in countries across South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. Her singles and albums are available on all digital platforms. She hosted and produced “Cantante y Sonante” for Radio Nacional de Venezuela. In 2018–2019, she created a series of videos for social media, published on her YouTube channel #HechoEnCasa. She holds a bachelor’s degree in Music from IUDEM, Caracas (2005); specialized under Maestro Tom Krause in Spain (2007); and an M.A. in Arts and Cultures of the South from UNEARTE, Venezuela (2020).

Fidel Barbarito is a Venezuelan musician and researcher, with a bachelor’s and master’s degrees in music and history, respectively. He teaches in the undergraduate and graduate programs at the National Experimental University of the Arts (UNEARTE). Together with Fabiola José, he promotes several musical projects aimed at disseminating traditional folk repertoires, integrating them with contemporary compositions inspired by these sounds. Joropo llanero. Parranda de reexistencia is one of his published essays.

The views expressed in this article are the authors’ own and do not necessarily reflect those of the Venezuelanalysis editorial staff.

On the second weekend of May, Gustavo Dudamel gave the New York Philharmonic a salsa shock. He gleefully brought the startled players together with the Spanish Harlem Orchestra, an uptown salsa and jazz band, for concerts at Lincoln Center and Washington Heights. The city‘s classical music fans treated it as a cultural breakthrough; Dudamel is expected to transform the orchestra as a cultural institution when he returns in the fall as its music and artistic director.

A day later he was back in Los Angeles to begin rehearsals at a Walt Disney Concert Hall that had been fantastically transformed by Frank Gehry for the Los Angeles Philharmonic’s staging of “Die Walküre.” Transformation — be it cultural, orchestral, personal — has marked Dudamel’s 17 years as music (and more recently artistic) director of the L.A. Phil, which is now coming to an end with his three weeks of concerts in Disney to close the season June 7, followed by a celebratory weekend at the Hollywood Bowl in late August.

But meeting with Dudamel in his dressing room after a “Walküre” rehearsal (the opera begins Tuesday night at Disney and runs for six nights, an act a night, the full opera performed twice) , he says as he has said before, he does not think of this as a culmination, merely the beginning of a new adventure. He’s apartment shopping in New York. But he is keeping his house in Los Angeles.

He’s also departing with two very long new titles as “Die Walküre” premieres: the Diane and M. David Paul Artistic Cultural Laureate of the L.A. Phil and Jane and Michael Eisner Founding Director and Conductor Laureate of Youth Orchestra Los Angeles (YOLA).

Gustavo Dudamel conducts the Los Angeles Philharmonic in a performance of Beethoven’s Missa Solemnis at the Walt Disney Concert Hall on Feb. 22.

(David Butow / For The Times)

“We are talking about projects,” he says. “Look, I’m coming back for two weeks in December,” when he will lead Beethoven programs. He returns in the spring. The Bowl will always be a second home.

“I’m living here and I’m not living here,” he explains. “The connection will always be here.”

The energy in New York is, he continues, “super exciting.” And what excites him the most is how comfortable he feels with the very real differences between L.A. and New York.

“As a Latino from Venezuela,” he says, “I have an immediate connection with the New York that is home of salsa. When I was in the womb I was hearing salsa.” His father, Oscar Dudamel, is a trombonist and salsa musician.

But he adds that mariachi, ubiquitous in Mexico and L.A., is also an integral part of Venezuelan culture. “What I have to say is that I am blessed. I’m blessed that both cities are now part of my life.”

Bringing ‘crazy’ ideas to Los Angeles

L.A., of course, has been the major part of his adult life. At 24, an unknown, he made his dazzling U.S. debut in 2005 leading the L.A. Phil at the Hollywood Bowl. Four years later, he became the orchestra’s music director and caught the world’s attention.

There is no doubt that Dudamel’s extraordinary talents would have meant a major career wherever he landed. But, here, he inherited the world’s most culturally open major orchestra, where fresh thinking and new music thrive. Disney Hall allowed him the extraordinary freedom to dream. Being back at Disney, Dudamel admits, is very emotional, especially conducting “Walküre” with Gehry’s sets of billowy, sumptuous clouds and fanciful white papery horses.

“Frank is here with us,” Dudamel exclaims about the architect, who died in December and with whom he had become close. Conducting Wagner’s opera, in many ways, sums up Dudamel’s ambitions, the way he has connected with more sides of L.A.’s cultural landscape than possibly any other artist.

In L.A., Dudamel grew as an artist and a person, he says, through his relationship with an orchestra that is uniquely flexible and a welcoming community. This allowed Dudamel to be what he likes to call “crazy.”

“I remember the first time I came here. I didn’t have a chance to do or see anything,” he says of his Bowl debut. “So, I remember driving from the airport to Sunset Boulevard, where my hotel was, and I didn’t understand anything. But immediately it was the connection with the orchestra.”

Frank Gehry designed the sets for a Jan. 18, 2024, performance of Wagner’s opera, “Das Rheingold,” with Gustavo Dudamel leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic at Walt Disney Concert Hall.

(Allen J. Schaben / Los Angeles Times)

Flash forward 20 years from 2005 to 2025. In what seemed like a truly crazy idea, he brought the L.A. Phil to the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival, where he led a varied set of classical favorites and appearances with pop stars, for 150,000 people shouting “L.A. Phil! L.A Phil.” Among the highlights was “Ride of the Valkyries,” the English title of “Walküre.”

The symbolism of doing “Walküre” is, for Dudamel, unmistakable. Wagner’s four-part “Ring” cycle, of which “Die Walküre” is the second opera, strongly influenced the “Star Wars” films Dudamel grew up with. The saga’s composer John Williams is another L.A. legend who became for Dudamel like family. Williams has, in fact, written a fanfare, “Bravo Gustavo!” that Dudamel will premiere on June 4 in a concert in which he celebrates the musicians of the L.A. Phil.

The “Walküre” production, moreover, further expresses his desire to remain connected with L.A. When asked whether he still plans to complete the “Ring” cycle with the L.A. Phil, which he began two seasons ago with “Das Rheingold,” he says, “completely.”

It’s a radical notion, to say nothing of an extraordinarily expensive and time-consuming challenge for any orchestra given to a former music director, but Dudamel has never been one to take no for an answer. “At my last conversation with Frank,” he recalls, “I said I was coming to talk about ‘Siegfried’ [the next opera in the cycle], and he said, ‘You are crazy.’”

“That was Frank. He freaked out about the operas every time I talked to him about them. And then he came up with fabulous ideas.

“You know I never dreamed about coming to the L.A. Phil. I was happy in Venezuela and guest conducting elsewhere. But when I met Frank and John [Williams], I knew I had come to the right place.”

One reason Dudamel was happy in Venezuela was his position as music director of the Simón Bolívar Youth Orchestra, part of El Sistema, the country’s famed music education program. He brought a version of that to Los Angeles with YOLA, which offers free musical education to students. Bringing young people together to learn — and not just to play music but to listen to each other — has grown increasingly essential to him.

Gustavo Dudamel has fun with John Williams at the Hollywood Bowl as he conducts the L.A. Phil during “Maestro of the Movies: John Williams with the LA Phil” on July 9, 2023.

(Emil Ravelo / For The Times)

On Thursday evening, USC awarded Dudamel an honorary doctorate during its graduation ceremonies at the Coliseum, where Dudamel also gave the commencement speech.

“I will never tire of repeating this: music, art and beauty are universal rights,” he told the graduates, urging them to go out into the world listening to others, seeing others, paying attention to everything. These are the practices he has long championed as the essential need for youth orchestras.

This was, in fact, almost precisely what he said when he first arrived in L.A. “I was very young, but I grew up with these ideas,” he told me.

“You have to say to the students, ‘Stop! Let’s pause. Just listen.’”

“It’s a way to really connect with what surrounds you, but also connect with yourself. That’s the beauty of all the layers of listening we do as musicians. I now think that is our main tool. In the end it’s not listening only to sounds. It’s listening as connecting with others.”

Practicing what he preaches

As Dudamel plans for his next chapter, he indicates that the advice he gives students is what he is also saying to himself.

YOLA students perform on stage during a “Gracias Gustavo Community Block Party” at the Judith and Thomas L. Beckmen YOLA Center in Inglewood on Oct. 11, 2025.

(Etienne Laurent / For The Times)

What L.A. gave him, he concludes, is a greater depth of his own listening. There was the guidance of Deborah Borda, who, as the orchestra’s president and CEO, hired and mentored him. There were the opera productions with Peter Sellars, who made him look deeply inside himself. There were the communities to discover and with which to collaborate.

New York, he insists, will be a further continuation of this process. “There are a lot of things to do. As I did here, that will be not only conducting but spending a big amount of time doing other things. I will have to listen to the community. Every place is different.”

And every place needs to be, for Dudamel, connected. He began his last season in Disney in the fall with the world premiere of Ellen Reid’s “Earth Between Oceans,” a bicoastal co-commission between the L.A. Phil and the New York Philharmonic, sonically evoking the environmental difference between L.A. and New York. He recently repeated it with his new orchestra in David Geffen Hall in New York.

In L.A., Reid’s score felt like a vast, moving, spiritual soundscape of our fires’ fury as well as our coastal fancy. At Geffen, it became a gripping showpiece, like attempting to zoom in a Ferrari through Manhattan streets, were they ever empty — the thrill of taking it all in.

Dudamel says his favorite place in New York so far is the orchestra’s archives. Becoming absorbed in the history of America’s oldest orchestra gives him new ideas. He wants simultaneously the old, the new and the many.

He also insists on ever more connections. ”We are making, many, many projects together,” he says of the L.A. Phil and the New York Philharmonic. That includes bringing the two orchestras together in a further experiment in listening.

“That‘s very important to me, one of my dreams. And it’s not difficult,” he says. “We have plans and it’s beautiful. We have to do that.”

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