“Cuentos del pantano” (Tales from the Swamp) is a programmatic work inspired by the legends of the Manchac swamp area in southern Louisiana. By taking advantage of the wide range of expressive and timbral resources available to the bassoon, and also by making use of extended techniques, such as multiphonics and microtones, the work describes, in each of its six movements, a different history attributed to the ancient traditions of the place.
A grotesque tune, which symbolizes the swamp itself, is used as an introduction and also as a “ritornello” to connect the different parts of the work, appearing again in the third movement and one more time just before the sixth. The second movement refers to “rougarau,” the mythical werewolf that terrorized the first French settlers who came to the area in the 17th century. The fourth movement references Julia Brown, who was an old sorceress who lived in the town of Freniere, a few miles away from the marsh. Julia used to sing gloomy songs accompanied on the guitar, and, according to the tradition, in one of these she predicted the destruction of the town by a hurricane in 1915, a fact that actually happened on the same day as her death, thus strengthening her legend.
The beautiful and terrible Marie LaVeau, better known during the 19th century as the Queen of Voodoo, is musically portrayed in the fifth movement through the use of a rhythmic tune of jazzy sonority. This same melody is also used in the previous movement to represent the song of Julia Brown, in this way; the work suggests an implicit connection between these two women. To conclude, in the final movement a slow and cantabile melody symbolizes the lotus flower, a mythical species that grows in the swamps and is considered sacred in oriental religions.
