Flor Nocturna

“Flor Nocturna” is dedicated to Topferova mother, and is steeped in bitter-sweet yearning. Clearly, the singer has a brooding yet passionate approach to music and, perhaps, life at large. In the liner notes, the New York based composer quotes Herman Hesse and insists that her music “has a lot to do with affinity, freedom and transcendence.” These are lofty ambitions indeed, and they point to a musician who has not taken the simple route to her artform. “Often,” she writes, “I am haunted by this awareness: how many sacrifices have been made for us to be able to have this moment, to live our dreams.”

Well, how does one convert such soul-searching and existentialist musing into music? The Czech American says she simply looks around her and the songs flow. Topferova opens the album with a bleak look at her New York neighbourhood and lets the melancholy flow through her dusky voice and the Venezualian cuarto she plucks so languorously. “Dia Lluvioso” then evokes another rainswept day that is a distant echo of the song by Chilean Victor Jara “Te recuerdo, Amanda”. Follows one of two songs borrowed from the poetry of Atahualpa Yupanqui, the legendary poet from Argentina. Topferova says she wanted to bring Yupanqui to the attention of a Western public unaware of the grandeur of this composer who died in 1992. “Los Hermanos” and “Tu que Puedes, Vuélvete” are fine examples of the Argentinians sweeping prose: “I have so many brothers,” he writes in the former, “that I cannot even count them / And a very beautiful sister/ That is called liberty.”

Topferova’s freedom in exploring the poetry and music of Latin America remains consistent from beginning to end of the ten tracks that make up “Flor Nocturna”. She has focussed on the sounds and rhythms from Venezuela, Argentina, Colombia and the Chile that first opened the doors to this variegated continent. Yet there is room in the closing song “Mar Amargo” to show there is far more than the Andean-based melodies to her cords. Here, she accompanies her aching voice with an orchestration led by clarinet, viola and cello. It leaves listeners with a tear-jerking finale that hints of new horizons to come.

Topferova’s previous album “La Marea” had given us a glimpse of the precocious talents of this sweet and sad sounding vocalist. In this “Nocturnal Flower”, she has foregone the vibrant harp and put her cuarto and the acoustic bass of Pedro Giraudo at the heart of her work. “I envisioned this as a “wooden” record,” she told the World Music Central website, “Even the flute (played by Yulia Musayelyan) has a warm, organic sound.” Some listeners might regret the homogeneity of her album and its brevity (46 minutes). It is also perhaps a little early to compare her to Mercedes Sosa, Amalia Rodrigues and Cesaria Evora, as her record label does. But it is hard not to admire the young singer’s growing maturity and original explorations of a complicated new world somewhere in between the Big Apple’s jazz traditions and the riches of the Andean heritage.

January 2007

Daniel Brown

Artist website