The Musical Poet of Panama
An Interview with Rómulo Castro
By Robin Davies
posted on April 28, 2002

In the fury of today's political eyre and rage I find myself seeking the comfort of music as a means to subside the corrosion of my mind's eye dream of peace. I haven't sought the lofty techno wah-wah's of popular music or phantasmic pleadings of romantica, nor have I dialed into the hard core rapping mantras shouting, "F@#k the establishment!!" Instead, my senses have yearned for tonally infused culture-driven tones that offer poetic lyrics and fulfilling arrangements. Of late, my ears have been consuming music that echoes the inclusive values and ethical morals I know will lead me to my higher self.

An artist that has helped me elevate to this plateau is Rómulo Castro. If you have never heard of him, let me list some of his credits -he is a musician, accomplished songwriter, singer, good husband and father and true patriot to his homeland Panama. His prolific and insightful poetic proses spurred a national healing when he composed "La Rosa de Los Vientos" after the 1989 U.S. invasion of Panama, a song that became a national anthem of sorts restoring a sense of heritage and pride. In 1997, musical legend and fellow countrymen Rubén Blades then re-recorded Castro's song along with another of his compositions for his Grammy winning CD entitled the same. Castro as well has three solo CDs -my favorite "Herencia."

"Herencia" is an epic musical journey that explores the many musical genres directly connected to Panama and the historical quest of the Castillian, West Indian and Native Indian peoples that comprise the country today. Throughout "Herencia," Castro's writings flow like Tuira, the largest river in Panama (his band is named the same), with a tropical ebb and spiritual edge that is uncompromising, tender and dutiful, sending a consistent outpouring message of pride. His artistry is steady filled with exotic qualities like character, kinship and a truthful voice of life in Latin America.

Castro's clever use of musical styles and languages lifts the soul/listener to higher grounds during times of unspeakable social chaos and moral demise. A stealthy artistic warrior his songs speak to the common man's collective consciousness, calling him to fear not the self-appointed bullies who rise to power using force-fed, hate-filled rhetoric that snuffs out the spirited and backslaps their feeble androidic followers. Instead Castro's poetic use of words are like a brightly lit beacon filled with free will for those who dare to think as individuals and seek a narrative pathway to stand tall and own your ground.

The saga-like format of "Herencia" serves not solely as a gage for waving one's native flag in a patriotic fashion but also as a musical internal journey that strikes the anvil of questioning and in that, you will see real beauty.

While on assignment in Panama I had the chance to meet and interview Sr. Castro, I hope that as I found him, you will also find him to be a man who is doing exactly what he has been placed on earth to do-write the poetry that life has to offer, set it to music and give it to the world.

Robin: How would define yourself musically?

Castro: Basically, what I am is a composer and interpreter of song. I think the base of all my compositions is in the fusing of different forms, because here in Panama we are a land where people from all over the world pass, and we as a country and people have become a result of the mixing (or fusion) of these different cultures. So when composing, like any intellectual or creative exercise, I consider that as my foundation. I believe a musical composition, much like lyrical content, departs from that premise. Fusion, it is the bridge of what is known and imprinted within my creative visions.

Robin: So you see yourself as, let's say, a fusionist composer?

Castro: You could say that for me, fusion is the vehicle, the form, the true foundation of all music. Let's say that I see the world that surrounds me and I conceptualize it and translate it into song. For each and every song there is always a vital story. I cannot compose if asked. The precise niche of my whole process of composing is in the observation of everything that surrounds me, then making a commentary about what I see and rationalize.

It is two-fold; finishing the idea is a premise that is valid for the production of a piece and the art is the message housed within the composition. If, for example, I am going to write a song about a Panamanian farmer, I first like to study how the farmer makes his music, how he articulates his poetry, and what are the instruments he uses. If I am going to comment about the buhoneros (the people that sell merchandise at the stop lights) I study the music that they listen to -- the styles that identify their culture, like popular salsa, reggae, traditional Caribbean music, and calypso.

If in contrast the reason of the song is something existential, more internal or rational, the musical vehicle can become a ballad with a son, bolero, rock, jazz or even classical theme. I manage (fuse) these genres like an influence, not so much like a style. If I were to classify the music that Tuira makes, my group, we couldn't say that it's a rock group or jazz or salsa, but it would be a mixture of all of that. Fusion permits us to manage a style all our own, but it makes it difficult to commercialize the work. But I prefer to keep making the music that I like and not the ones that the advertisers ask me to do.

Robin: Perhaps your most famous song to date is "La Rosa De Los Vientos," from your "Herencia" CD, and then re-recorded by Rubén Blades in 1997, where the CD entitled the same won a Grammy. First off, congratulations. What a great achievement.

Castro: Gracias.

Robin: I found the song to be haunting in its use of ancient language and mystic sounds with popular musical sensibilities. The piece is a classic example of your song writing style of cultural fusion. What were your historical points of references and creative visions used when writing and recording this record?

Castro: "La Rosa de Los Vientos" was a song I wrote a few months after the North American invasion in Panama. It's a song that I composed with the thought of inspiring hope. I wanted to write a song that a lot of people in Panama could identify with, so I utilized all of the musical elements and poetic ambiance directly connected to us, which expressed our internal land's soul.

When writing and recording I started with the pre-Columbian original element Kuna. I think it is our most ancient historic reference. The Kuna culture may not be the most ancient of the pre-Columbian or Pan-American cultures, but it is the most articulated nationally.

I like a lot of Kuna concepts; for example, Kunayala signifies space and Adeayala is everybody that surrounds it. So the song starts off using Kuna chanting and drumming, then departs into forms familiar to modern day Panama. I have an excellent Kuna friend, a painter whom I call on from time to time for musical references and who has taught me a lot about how to see life from the Kuna perspective. Additionally, in "La Rosa De Los Vientos," I added the voices of children, an influence akin to the musical genres of the Afro-Caribbean cultures and Afro-Panamanian. I think it's in my songwriting my fusion concepts have worked best.

Robin: It's true. I think the other element that you have a wonderful gift for is poetry; your lyrics are balanced and insightful. What is your methodology when it comes to writing?

Castro: In my songs it is not only the musical fusion that is important but [also] the fusion of poetic influences. I have dedicated myself to studying the Hispanic-American poetry, studying intellectual Cuban poet Jose Marti of the latter part of the nineteenth century and the Spaniards of that generation, the poetry of Machado, Unamuno, Azorin. I simultaneously study the twentieth century poetry of Latin America, like Peru's Cesar Vallejos and El Salvador's Roque Dalton. In Panama there are a lot of great poets, like Pedro Rivera, director of a university experimental theater group, Manuel Nieto, a very important modern poet, and the intellectual scientific poet who is Panamanian and Nicaraguan, he has pasted away, Jose de Jesus Marti, known as "Chuchu" Marti.

What I believe is [that] it is important not only what you say but also how you say it. The result is artful. My music may not be commercial, but it is the music I like to make. It is the type of music Tuira likes as well.

Fortunately, our work has reached artists like Rubén Blades, who has opened doors for us to record and for our music to become recognized outside of Panama.

Currently, we're working on introducing our music to other markets outside of Panama, like Spain, Mexico, Venezuela, Argentina and Brazil. I just finished hosting a musical workshop with other Central American artists in Madison, Wis., and Chicago, Ill. In September, the same group of Central-American artists have been invited to a series of concerts hosted by Sony Music in Washington, DC at the Smithsonian. Next spring, we will tour North American universities with Rubén Blades and his new group, Editus.

Robin: When did you start playing music? Is your family musically inclined?

Castro: I started to compose music in 1977. My father's family has no musical ear (laughing). My father confuses tango with polka. Even though he has a doctorate in art history, you would think that theoretically he should know everything about music, but no.

The music comes from the maternal side of my family, from Spain. My grandmother Henrietta was a singer and a dancer of Flamenco. My mother is a great Spanish and Latin American singer. I definitely inherited music from my mother's family.

At a very young age my mother's family escaped Franco's civil war in Spain and settled in Mexico. My father is Panamanian. He left Panama to study in Mexico like thousands of other Panamanians. He met my mother, they married and I was born in Ciudad de Mexico, Mexico.

I came to live in Panama when I was eighteen years old but feel like I've always lived here. As a child my father would describe the beauty of the sky in Panama, its trees and music, foods, people, traditions and folkloric tales. He sort of willed me here. Our family in Mexico celebrated everything Panamanian-we used to dance tamborito (a traditional dance of Panama).

Robin: Do you have any siblings involved in music?

Castro: No, not really. I have two younger sisters. I sing, my sister (the middle child) dances and has a Ph.D., and my youngest sister (chuckling) follows in my father's musical footsteps, but she too has a Ph.D. in human genetics. My family are professionals with an intellectual background.

Robin: When did you decide to become a professional musician? Did your parents support that decision?

Castro: When I finished high school I wanted to study at the conservatory of music in Mexico City, but my father didn't allow me. He always said, "All musicians are crazy" and "All the artists worried less, but they also have less." He wanted me to, as he said, "study something else and play music on the side." (Rómulo pauses, then smiles.)

Growing up, my parents gave us lots of love and support, both intellectually and artistically. They made sure we had total access to all kinds of literature, poetry, and historical books. This is why I developed a strong interest in philosophy and history, later earning my master's degree due to their enthusiasm and openness with learning.

Robin: What was your first instrument? When did you start playing?

Castro: The guitar was my first instrument. A friend of my father taught me a little bit about Spanish guitar. I mean it really was a little bit. I am pretty much self-taught. Throughout my career the guitar has been something more than just an instrument to play-it's a tool for composing.

When I perform with the group I don't play the guitar, I just sing. I am left-handed by nature, but I play the guitar right-handed. I'm an O.K. player, but as a tool I have composed over one hundred songs.

Robin: Let's talk some more about your composing evolution.

Castro: [In] the first part of my songwriting, the songs are practically impossible to sing. Because the subject matter had a lot to do with the reality of what was happening in Panama in the late 70s and early 80s. I like to divide my composing career like this because back then, I identified myself a lot with the Torrijos regime in 1981.

Let's say that from 1977 to 1981 I sang and composed songs about the positive things that I thought were happening in Panama, and after the death of Torrijos I was left with no reason to sing. I think when Noriega and his people killed Torrijos, he closed the doors in Panama for social reform that Torrijos was trying to bring about and what followed was a hard core violent dictatorship.

For me there was nothing good to say. It was a period that changed my form of composing. Initially I started as a descriptive composer singing about the positive things happening.

Robin: What was your life like as an artist during Noriega's rein?

Castro: Because of what was happening in Panama I felt an incredible despair and major depression. The situation was grave not only politically but [also] culturally. Panama was in a state of imploding crisis and economic ruin. Things were terrible; the people in power I didn't like, and the alternatives were no better. I decided I had to leave.

I left in '84 to study music in Cuba, returning in November of '89, one month before the U.S. invaded Panama. When I came back everybody was foretelling the situation was going to end in an invasion. You see, Panama is a country that is strategically important, important enough -Whether we liked it or not, the U.S. was going to intervene. At the time the question was not if they were going to invade, but when.

Prior to my return my writing changed. It became introspective, I was singing about what I thought rather than witnessed. I also began to dedicate myself to studying symbolism and how it fills in the spiritual blanks.

Robin: So you had a kind of cathartic change-the rose-colored glasses were removed?

Castro: Yeah, that's right. What I learned about music technically in Cuba it helped me articulate more of what I wanted to do musically. A song is something more than just words and music; more than the melody is the harmony; more than the harmony is the arrangement used to interpret the music and its musical format, which when put together conveys your message be it positive or negative.

Robin: Why did you come back knowing what was coming an invasion and economic despair? I mean, most people would have stayed out, waited until the coast was clear.

Castro: I came back to confront the invasion to survive it, to stay and try to work for a different Panama after the invasion.

In the month I was home I was brutality assaulted and beaten by the "Battalion of Dignity." These were armed pseudo-peace-keeping civilians given status by Noriega's regime. One would assume that these people and I should have some level of affinity, but no way! They saw me leaving an upper-middle class neighborhood in a new car and came after me. They surrounded me with about three cars and put an M-16 to my head, then four people started kicking me. The four guys were beating me as one woman said, "Kill that irreverent son of a bitch!" The irony is what saved my life was a U.S. American helicopter patrolling the area. When it landed, they fled, leaving me lying in the street.

The "Battalion of Dignity" were racist given power. They were against the U.S., educated people, artists, anyone who they felt threatened by. That night, I almost died because of hate. That experience served me with a new clarity. I made a decision that everything that will happen in Panama after the invasion should be absolutely new.

I decided that neither Torrijos, Noriega, nor the traditional political parties should come into power. The only way to fix things was we had to come with a fresh new vision based on mutual respect and acceptance.

Robin: And after the invasion?

Castro: After the invasion my friends and I carried out the first signs of cultural resistance against the military control because there was a curfew that started from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m.

You see, the North American troops had captured Noriega and all his forces, but they didn't go into the city. In fact, they meticulously calculated that the city would break into a chaos in the hands of plunderers and other criminal elements.

Our cultural rebellion was we started to do "plenas." We'd spread the word that in a certain bar we were going to do plenas from 8 p.m. to 8 a.m. Most times it took place in the Via Argentina district of the city. About fifty to two hundred people would come.

That's when I composed and released "Budu Man" and "La Rosa de Los Vientos." The songs became sort of anthems -a form of therapy for people. Our country's dignity was at an all-time low. The plena sessions bought together the people in favor of Noriega and the ones against. It gathered democrats, Christians, Jews, rebels, rich, poor, educated and uneducated. Everybody came together with one purpose -to reclaim our dignity. It was a very beautiful and important period of time, a time when I witnessed the beauty of Panama and the peacefulness we as a people possess.

The plena sessions are where the group Tuira was born and the seeds were planted for the political party "Papa Egoró" that supported Rubén Blades' bid for president.

Robin: What was your role in Papa Egoró?

Castro: My last active political experience was Papa Egoró, and the last one. I was apart from the group that organized the party, but when I realized that that party was going to end up like all the rest, I resigned.

Before I quit, that's when I met Rubén Blades. He, for me, like practically for all Panamanians, was like a hero, an icon, so meeting him was almost like the second coming of God.

I developed a personal relationship with him and discovered his musical genius. But politically things were crazy. Rubén had good intentions for a better Panama, but the people that surrounded him ate him up. There was a moment when I told him, "Rubén, let's just collaborate in music and forget about politics." Then shortly after I resigned from Papa Egoró.

Robin: I know you currently have three CDs out, but the one I find most intriguing is your first CD, "Herencia." I love this CD, it's so rich lyrically and textured with many genres telling the journey of the Spaniards and other cultures that make up Panama. Tell me about its creation.

Castro: Many people believe Panama means "land abundant with fish," but the real meaning is "more over." So when the Spaniards arrived in search of gold the people would say "Panama," or "more over," pointing the way to south.

Many people have passed through Panama but few who have actually stayed. The ones who stayed are the ones who created the Panamanian nationality. We are a melding where our cultural tradition is our diversity. Being Panamanian is being Kuna, Chinese, North American, Greek, African, Arabic, European and Spaniard.

From this fusion of these cultures is where I tell the story of our heritage in a manner that is musically Panamanian. It's rooted in the traditions of the land in Darien, the ancient drumming, choruses and sensual dances to the Congo, rhythmic drumming of the African Colón providence, Bocas del Toro's West Indian calypso and reggae influences, and Spaniard-Moroccan musical forms mixed with tamborito and cumbia. All songs are balanced with what is in Panama maybe the most important instrument -the drum. It's the fusion of white and black cultures and the foundation of Panamanian folklore.

Of all of my work since I started in the seventies, my intention has been telling Panamanians' stories our strength and the cultural heritage necessary to the reconstruction of our own future. In "Herencia," by using poetry and music I am attempting to convey this message.

Robin: And were you able to convey this message on your last tour of the U.S.?

Castro: Yes, the last trip I made to the United States was to Madison, Wis., and Chicago, Ill. It changed my perception of the United States because not only is it a consumer giant, but I met people just like me -Latinos, blacks and whites, and I shared a feeling of community.

In Chicago, I had the opportunity to lead a Panamanian percussion clinic for an institute dedicated to the artistic education of young people called LOCAL 237. The kids attending are young people considered borderline delinquents. The workshops offered are a process of resocialization of these kids through culture.

At the center they make plaster works of art, and a store is there to sell their work. The kids participate in various academies, like dance and percussion, etc. The percussion clinic was their music students; the majority of students were black. Now I am not a percussionist, but I had the chance to present the kids with the various percussion rhythms of Panamanian percussion.

I sat with the kids and we played with the instruments that they had and would play them as if they were Panamanian instruments. I would have them palm them and I would sing with them. The chemistry, the communication was great and they would say to me, "Hey, how can you do that? That sounds like our music. I didn't know that was from Panama!" Is that what music is like in Panama?" It was magical and again reaffirmed music is the language anyone can understand.

For CD purchases e-mail en español preferred: rcastro@cableonda.net

Related links: Festival de las Artes (in Spanish)