Melinda Martinez Becker, Nicolas Benavides, and Friction Quartet came together in December 2023 to record an album of Benavides' music, produced by Innova Recordings, with support from New Music USA, the American Composers Forum and the Alice M. Ditson Fund.
Commissioned by New Moon Duo in 2019, Canto Caló is a song cycle by composer Nicolas Lell Benavides that takes inspiration from the New Mexican heritage shared by mezzo soprano Melinda Martinez Becker and Benavides through the lens of their grandparents’ life experiences. Canto Caló celebrates the distinctively American dialect that was popular among Southwestern and Californian individuals that were part of the Pachuco movement. Caló is a Spanglish-style slang based on a specifically New Mexican dialect of Spanish, English, and indigenous languages that formed the basis of identity for an entire generation of Hispanic and Latino youth in the mid-20th century. Through the creation of Canto Caló, and the telling of stories about what life was like in that time, we will be able to transport audiences to a popular, yet not mainstream, culture that still pulses through the American West today where its influence is very present.
Commissioned by New Moon Duo in 2019, Canto Caló is a song cycle by composer Nicolas Lell Benavides that takes inspiration from the New Mexican heritage shared by mezzo soprano Melinda Martinez Becker and Benavides through the lens of their grandparents’ life experiences. Canto Caló celebrates the distinctively American dialect that was popular among Southwestern and Californian individuals that were part of the Pachuco movement. Caló is a Spanglish-style slang based on a specifically New Mexican dialect of Spanish, English, and indigenous languages that formed the basis of identity for an entire generation of Hispanic and Latino youth in the mid-20th century. Through the creation of Canto Caló, and the telling of stories about what life was like in that time, we will be able to transport audiences to a popular, yet not mainstream, culture that still pulses through the American West today where its influence is very present.