Loteria Jarocha: Linoleum Prints

Description:

In the mid-1990s, artist and musician Alec Dempster returned to Mexico, the place of his birth, and discovered son jarocho. A genre of folk music from the Veracruz region of Mexico, son jarocho originated in the 17^th century with the confluence of Indigenous, African and European peoples. In Veracruz today, musicians can still be heard singing these traditional sones, passed down orally through the generations as themes or tropes, rather than songs with set lyrics. As Dempster immersed himself in the tradition, speaking and playing with rural musicians, his exploration of the culture resulted in a series of linoleum prints, each depicting a traditional son. Dempster's imagery, playful and enigmatic, provides a window into a culture virtually unknown outside Mexico. In this stunning collection, Dempster lends his own voice to the prints for the first time, illustrating their genesis and origin in clear, unassuming prose. With Dempster as guide, Lotería Jarocha draws its reader into an infectious culture of music, laughter and dance.

Brief description:

Alec Dempster was born in Mexico City in 1971 but moved to Toronto as a child. In 1995 he moved back to Mexico and settled in Xalapa, Veracruz, where his relief prints eventually became infused with the local tradition of son jarocho music. Alec's conversations with rural musicians, presented along with thirty linoleum portraits, have been published recently as Faces and Voices of Son Jarocho. He has produced six CDs of son jarocho recorded in the field but is perhaps best known

Review Quotes:

Dempster's linocut illustrations based on Mexican folk music are imaginative and fun, with writing that only adds to the enjoyment.

During his time in Veracruz, Mexico, musician and artist Alec Dempster began to create illustrations of various son jarocho, musical pieces in a folk style popular in the region. Dempster's book Lotería Jarocha: Linoleum Prints combines sixty of his linocut illustrations--each based on a specific son--with artist's notes about each. The result is an impressive collection art fans will appreciate.

Dempster has recorded multiple albums of son jarocho himself, and his linocuts have been used on multiple game boards for lotería--a bingo-like game that uses illustrations rather than numbers. He clearly loves the material, and that resonates in his artwork. His pieces have a whimsical quality that works for decorating lotería game boards, while also celebrating the music that inspired him.

Each of the drawings appears on a right-hand page, and Dempster supplements his artwork with just the right amount of text on the left-hand side. Depending on the print, he writes about the lyrics of the son that inspired it, the history of a particular piece of music or dance, or the personal experiences in Veracruz he evokes in his art. The book is beautifully produced, printed on a textured paper stock that helps the black-and-white images pop on the page, and gives the project a timeless appearance and tactile feel.

His anecdotes are brief and interesting, enhancing the reader's understanding of each piece without becoming indulgent or repetitive. For a piece called La Iguana, Dempster created a dancing man holding the titular lizard by the tale, and text describes the experience of watching the dance that accompanies this piece of music. El Conejo depicts an enormous rabbit leaping over a city, and is accompanied by the story of how rabbits became associated with the town of Santiago Tuxtla in Veracruz. In the case of El Huerfanito, Dempster includes the lyrics of a son usually played at funerals, to accompany his plaintive portrait of a child kneeling in mournful prayer.

Dempster's linocuts convey equally the sorrow of El Huerfanito, the joy of the dance-based prints, the gentle absurdity of an absent-minded mole with a cane (La Tuza), and a pig using its snout to cook (La Tarasca). Dempster's artwork is imaginative and fun to experience, and his writing only adds to the enjoyment.