Story Behind The Song

I met Orlando Sanchez at an art walk when someone told me there was a Puerto Rican Man in the coffee shop who had played hand percussion with Stevie Wonder. I found a man with gold chains and started chatting with him in Spanish. We became friends and hung out together, going to jams and open mics and playing. Orlando asked me one day If I wanted to write a CD together, and, after thinking about, said "Yes, why not?" We would meet at my house two or three times a week, spend a couple of hours together writing melodies, joking and laughing and having a great time. In the end Orlando had to go back to Texas, and over the year 2019, he put together live musicians from the Disneyword area. (He was a music producer at Disney World for 13 years.) So the studio musicians were Orlando on congas, Jessie Carablallo on drums, Army Zerpa on bass, David Salas on native flute, Galo Rivera on lead guitar, Lisandro Codecido on keys, and Konstantin Dimitrov on violin. The process was that Orlando would set down the rhythm first, dictating it to me and I would transcribe the rhythms into Finale, then he and I would take turns writing the melodies. Orlando would hum his parts and I would transcribe both our ideas into Finale. On each song we would create melodies and counter-melodies and input the chord symbols. When we finished this, Orlando would give the sheet music to the musicians starting with bass, then drums then adding other parts where a lot of instrumentalists would improve solos as well as perform the written melodies. Then, I transcribed the final versions into sheet music. Then, I arranged the parts for the Eastern Washington University Big Jazz band for a concert that has been postponed many times due to the pandemic. It took us a year to get the CD made and distributed and now we're just sitting back waiting for our Grammies.

Song Description

Caona Country (Native, Country, Disco) - In the Taíno language, Caona means Gold. This is inspired by the California Gold Rush of 1848-1855 that was particularly catastrophic to the indigenous population and their tribal lands -- it was estimated that some 300,000 foreigners poured into California during this seven-year period -- 150,000 were said to have come to California by land, and 150,000 more immigrants came by sea -- can you imagine what it must have been like to be a Native Californian and witness this bloody, armed invasion of your homelands?