Valentina
Issue #34
La Valentina (Verdigris)
By Jina Hassan
Published: December 1st, 2007 | 12:00am
More Americans than ever are tuning into Latin crossover artists, from Shakira and Marc Antony to Maná and Carlos Santana. But Valentina González has none of Santana’s sonic guitar riffs — just stellar, soaring vocals and pretty, dreamlike lyrics. In her quiet, glacially paced debut, La Valentina, she paints a stark image of her hopes and fears with eerie, minor-keyed melodies and her own rootsy, reverberating voice.
In this balanced collection, González’s songs melt seamlessly together, interconnecting Mexican folkloric elements with jazz and gospel. Instrumental interludes featuring folk guitar, drum, and marimba — “Lullaby for my Demons I,” “Lullaby for my Demons II,” and “Medusas II” — inject world music into her jazzier vocal repertoire. The effect casts a wistful tone to this entrancing dance between tradition and avant-garde. On “Diamela 6,” González crystallizes her regret over love lost, breathing “a never-ending sigh / That gets out of sight / So out of reach but so reachable.”
Although the Spanish-English lyrics in La Valentina offer more generalized musings and post-pubescent blues than explicit insight, frequent references to nature and the cosmos allude to her ambitious message: organic elements unite us. “One” clearly reflects this praise of common humanity: “On a half moon night / Whispering mammals / Remind us we are one.”
More than her poetry, González’s intriguing vocal background casts her apart. Trained in Mexico, California, and Spain in voice drumming and jazz, gospel, Persian and flamenco vocals, González incorporates all the genres into her work, to mixed success. It’s still unclear whether her downbeat album will awaken listeners to an earthly new global style, or simply lull them to sleep.
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