Tucson COVID Tales No. 10: Path to the River, by John Convertino and Naïm Amor

August 31, 2020 | Community Submission

Gabriel Naim Amor · 03 Path To The River

At the beginning of these exceptional and uncharted times, I felt immediately forced into some existential questions. What could be my answer as a musician to this new situation in which a global pandemic shook the world ? How to turn the isolation and the potential anxiety into something nurturing, something validating my existence as a musician? Correspondents is an album that John, who lives in El Paso, and I soon realized was going to defy the distance between us. It generated a daily correspondence of audio files and annotations during the course of about two months. Just like any good correspondence, we responded to all the content we were sending to each other. No picking, no ruling out or ignoring any propositions here, but instead, making a point in considering and answering all of each other’s ideas. Openness from both of us more than anything and listening to where the project was leading us, provided me with joy and a great feeling of freedom during this COVID year of 2020.

—Gabriel Naïm Amor

As the reality of the pandemic settled in and the lockdown was secured, I knew that everything was going to change. Clearing and creating new spaces for work, school, and music had to happen, and not without some serious urgency. It was about that time the text from Naïm came wanting to know if I would like to exchange files for some new music created in this troubled time. I said yes, and within a few days I sent him a drum track. I had changed my setup, added an extra rack tom, several other cymbals. I set up the vibes and marimba and had everything ready to go. This first track is a sort of familiar bolero beat that I’ve been known to play often with brushes. I played with a kind of form in my head, not a melody, but a feeling within a form. I listened once back and sent it off to Naïm. The next day he had composed a melody to the form I had established with the drum line, and that was the beginning of our correspondence. As we became correspondents to the music, channeling the immediate moments of our predicaments to become the producers of what has become a storyline of song, to be able to create something when everything else had come to a stop. I could see it as another discovered layer of what love can do, even in the midst of the most troubling times.

—John Convertino