Arturo O’Farrill & The Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra - Fandango at the Wall: A Soundtrack for the United States, Mexico and Beyond (2018)

That’s what makes an artist like Arturo O’Farrill such an important voice for these times. As a pianist, composer, bandleader, educator, activist, and founder of the Afro Latin Jazz Alliance, O’Farrill has dedicated his life to not only crossing artificial borders but to erasing them in his wake. With his latest project, Fandango at the Wall, O’Farrill has created a stunningly ambitious and profoundly moving work that showcases the rich fruits that can grow from common ground.

Fandango at the Wall, due out September 28 via Resilience Music Alliance, is the brainchild of O’Farrill and his longtime collaborator and GRAMMY® Award-winning producer, Kabir Sehgal. The project brings together brilliant voices from a variety of cultural and musical traditions to tear down a variety of walls that isolate us — physical, musical, or cultural. The piece was inspired by Jorge Francisco Castillo, a musician and retired librarian who has organized the Fandango Fronterizo Festival for the past decade. The annual event gathers son jarocho musicians on both sides of the border wall between Tijuana and San Diego for a celebratory jam session.

“I found that idea so touching and elegant in its activism,” O’Farrill recalls. “I held it inside my soul and spoke to everyone I could about my hope to join the Fandango Fronterizo and record at the border, bringing special guests and making it a true collaboration.”

O’Farrill’s esteemed Afro Latin Jazz Orchestra and Castillo’s son jarocho musicians came together at the border, joined by a more than 60 gifted musicians representing both sides of that divide as well as several of the countries targeted by President Trump’s travel ban: Broadway singer-actress Mandy Gonzalez (Hamilton, In the Heights); jazz greats Regina Carter (violin), Akua Dixon (cello), and Antonio Sanchez (drums); multi-talented Mexican violin trio The Villalobos Brothers; son jarocho greats Patricio Hidalgo, Ramón Gutiérrez Hernández, and Tacho Utréra; French-Chilean rapper-singer Ana Tijoux; Iraqi-American oud master Rahim AlHaj and his trio; Iranian sitar virtuoso Sahba Motallebi; and many others.

“Thinking about this awful, awful moment in history — not just American history but world history — I wanted to confront the darkness that has overcome all our lives,” O’Farrill says. “Faced with such stupidity and mediocrity, why not at least try to do something valuable? My first thought was to bring not just great artists but also people from marginalized nations. We understand that humanity and community are so much stronger than cultural constructs, physical walls, or geo-political borders. We saw this in action: we saw our people fall in love with their people and become one people.”