Story Behind The Song

I met Orlando Sanchez at an art walk when someone told me there was a Puerto Rican Man in the coffee shop who had played hand percussion with Stevie Wonder. I found a man with gold chains and started chatting with him in Spanish. We became friends and hung out together, going to jams and open mics and playing. Orlando asked me one day If I wanted to write a CD together, and, after thinking about, said "Yes, why not?" We would meet at my house two or three times a week, spend a couple of hours together writing melodies, joking and laughing and having a great time. In the end Orlando had to go back to Texas, and over the year 2019, he put together live musicians from the Disneyword area. (He was a music producer at Disney World for 13 years.) So the studio musicians were Orlando on congas, Jessie Carablallo on drums, Army Zerpa on bass, David Salas on native flute, Galo Rivera on lead guitar, Lisandro Codecido on keys, and Konstantin Dimitrov on violin. The process was that Orlando would set down the rhythm first, dictating it to me and I would transcribe the rhythms into Finale, then he and I would take turns writing the melodies. Orlando would hum his parts and I would transcribe both our ideas into Finale. On each song we would create melodies and counter-melodies and input the chord symbols. When we finished this, Orlando would give the sheet music to the musicians starting with bass, then drums then adding other parts where a lot of instrumentalists would improve solos as well as perform the written melodies. Then, I transcribed the final versions into sheet music. Then, I arranged the parts for the Eastern Washington University Big Jazz band for a concert that has been postponed many times due to the pandemic. It took us a year to get the CD made and distributed and now we're just sitting back waiting for our Grammies. Gary A. Edwards

Song Description

Watibirí Bird (Festejo, Celtic, Afro) - Watibirí in Taíno language means Kingbird. It represents the Brave Natives of the Caribbean Sea islands. These birds tend to defend their breeding territories aggressively, often chasing away much larger birds. A kingbird was photographed in 2009 defending its young by landing on and sinking its talons into the back of a red-tailed hawk and pecking its skull until the red-tailed hawk gave up and flew away.

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