Songs of Distant Rivers (Canciones de los Ríos Distantes) is a bilingual poetry and music project developed in collaboration with composer Ricardo Lorenz. It grew from Lorenz’s research into the habanera and contradanza as a kind of musical lingua franca of the Americas, a rhythmic language carried through ports, migration, trade, and diaspora that reappears in traditions as different as ragtime, blues, choro, tango, danzón, and reggaetón.
The poems trace an imagined journey between the Mississippi and the Río de la Plata through rivers, ports, commodities, memory, and shifting identities. The current book brings together eight poems in Spanish with English translations and lyrical adaptations conceived for musical performance.
The book is published as a bilingual edition while the larger musical cycle remains ongoing. Génesis is the first work from the cycle to be set to music.
poetry · music · bilingual
5.5 x 8.5 in · 86 pages
2019 (Second Edition, 2026)
ISBN 9798167182554