A PIANIST AMONG THE TARAHUMARA
Musician finds new friends, inspiration in remote canyon.
By Anthony DePalma
New York Times, December 25, 1995.
CREEL, México.
Romayne Wheeler has performed on the piano in many of the
great concert halls of Europe and America. He has studied at conservatories
in Salzburg and Viena, and had a full schedule of performances in as many
cities as he could travel to. It hasn´t been enough.
"After a time I had played in all the
concert halls I wanted to play in an perform all the concerts I wanted
to performed," said the 53-year-old U.S. born musician. "I came full circle
and felt I was repeating myself. I knew there had to be more, or else I
was just becoming a musical robot."
This impulse to get away from it all is
what brought Wheeler, and eventualy his grand piano, to the cliffside dwelling
in a remote canyon, 80 miles from the nearest real town, that he now calls
home. It also brought him to the indians he now calls family.
It was en 1980, between concert seasons
that Wheeler came to Batopilas Canyon, in the mexican state of Chihuahua.
He came with a map that included a glossary of a few words in the language
of the local Tarahumaran indians, who are among the most traditional peoples
of North America, never conquered by the Spaniards, never modernized by
television.
Their main contact with the outside world
has lately been through the international drug trade, which finds this
remote area usefull for growing opium, poppies and marijuana. Drug money
pays a few Tarahumara and has killed a few others.
One day hiking through the canyons, Wheeler
ran into a local family that had come down from the mountains to buy supplies.
"Cuira," Wheeler said, using the Tarahumara word for "hello".
That was the beginning of a rare relationship.
"We had killed a pig and we are cooking pork rinds, and all of a sudden
he came out of nowhere", said Luciano, an ageless Tarahumara patriarch
whose views of the world Wheeler describes in a small book he published
in 1993 called "Life through the eyes of the Tarahumara" : "We told him
to eat, to fill himself, and he did."
The Tarahumara are traditionally secretive
people who misstrust the outside world. They still reffer to non-indians
as chabochi -men with spider webs on their faces- as if the bearded spanish
conquistators had arrived last year instead of nearly 500 years ago.
It was Wheeler´s music that broke
the ice. One year he came back to the Tarahumaras carrying a solar-powered
electric piano, which he set up on a rock ledge overlooking Batopilas Canyon.
He stayed in the cave formed by the ledge for two months.
One day the keyboard broke down, so he
started to write, remembering the recommendation of the Rev. Luis Verplancken,
a Jesuit who has run a clinic in the area for 30 years.
"I told hime to just write down the things
that come up in daily life," Verplancken said. "He had made a good acquaintance
with the indinas, and that´s not easy."
Wheeler wrote of how Luciano and the others were perplexed
by how he knew "which buttons to smash" on the piano. They told him how
they believed not in good and evil but in a more basic concept of the world
in which there is only that which is usefull, and that which is not.
When he extolled the fiery sunset that
raged across the western sky, the Tarahumara told him there was nothing
beautifull about it because it meant there would be no rain.
One year Luciano found Wheeler a place
at the edge of the cliff where he built a house of stone. Last January
Wheeler hired a dump truck, lined it with 15 mattresses and innumerable
potato sacks and slowly howled out and 1917 Stainway & Sons concert grand piano. It took 17 hours to go the 80 miles from
Creel, the nearest town. Miraculously, there was not a scratch on the piano.
The Tarahumaras at first kept away from
the huge black Stainway, treating it like a misterious creature. But as
soon as Wheeler began to play, they came around to listen to his "water
music," so named, they said, because it sounded like water, which is the
most dear to them of all elements.
They wanted him to play and play. Wheeler
asked Luciano and the others to play their own violins so he could learn
their songs, which strangely sound like scottish jigs.
He composed new music based on Tarahumaran
rhythms. The indians now call the hill where his house and piano sit pianchi
-place of the piano-.
Each year Wheeler still gives a handfull
of concerts in Mexico and abroad, and he donates 75% of the receipts to
father Verplancken´s Santa Teresita Clinic in Creel. The money is
sorely needed. Last year, a severe drought limited the corn harvest.
Newspapers all over the world reported
that 34 indian children had died of malnutrition in just a few months.
This year the drought continued. And though
no reporters showed up at father Verplancken´s doors, 43 children
have died.
On a recent night, Wheeler performed a
full Chopin programm in Creel for a group of businessman who had payed
the equivalent of about $750 to sponsor the concert. Wheeler gave all but
$150 to the clinic.
