I’m sitting backstage at the Culture Room in Ft. Lauderdale, the sounds of Os Mutantes bouncing off the walls. I think I mentioned in a previous post how grateful and excited we are to be touring with a band whose music we cherish so dearly. Well the feeling lingers. I would never have the gall to compare us to Mutantes, but the gracious comparison has come up more than once in reviews of DeLeon so I’ve been trying to figure out what it is that people are hearing. I think the answer may lie in the word “mutant” itself.
Very early on in DeLeon’s timel ine a prominent Sephardic music scholar asked me if I thought our music was authentic. I told him that he’s the scholar so I’ll leave such classifications for him to sort out. We play these traditional songs with the utmost sincerity and respect but authenticity is a more nuanced term. Well, having seen Os Mutantes a dozen times this month and having time to talk to Sergio and the other members about their music and inspirations I’ve come to realize that on this tour we are all mutants. We come from a place, and we love the place that we come from, but at some point we started changing. Our chromosomal makeup mutated as a result of our environments and fighting such an organic evolution would be unnatural.
In a way this fundamental commonality has created an air of brotherhood backstage and after hours on this tour. Whether romping in the pool after our show in Tampa (patio furniture in tow…ssh..) with our tour mates or trading banjo licks for flamenco strums with Mutantes member Vitor there has been a mutual mutant affection and understanding.
A couple days ago Sergio was telling me what a strange and wonderful trip this has been and how he is already nostalgic about it. That means a lot coming from a man who has been a part of so much, and we just feel lucky to be here. Well folks, it ain’t over yet. We got a week to go and we’re going to enjoy every minute of it. Hope to see you out there…