Drums for a Lost Song by Jorge Velasco Mackenzie

Check out my latest project: a translation of Drums for a Lost Song by Jorge Velasco Mackenzie of Ecuador

Drums for a Lost Song by Jorge Velasco Mackenzie

I spent the past three years translating this work from Spanish, and it’s now available from Hanging Loose Press. The book is a magical realistic historical fiction, about a runaway slave from Ecuador’s colonial period.

From the Hanging Loose web site:

Drums for a Lost Song (Tambores para una canción perdida), Jorge Velasco Mackenzie’s tale of José Margarito,”the Singer,” escaping from slavery in nineteenth-century Ecuador, combines elements of Ecuadorean history, magic realism, and the African Yoru pursued through the landscape and the towns of coastal Ecuador by his master, Captain Manda, with an entourage of servants and slaves that includes Margarito’s lover, Pan de los Pobres; Lupina, a witch; Ochumare, the deity of the rainbow, god and goddess in one, whom Manda has also enslaved; and a notorious criminal from nineteenth century Ecuadorean history.

The narrative ranges through an array of adventures historical and otherwise: from the 16th century shipwreck that established a settlement of runaway slaves, to an escape via submarine, Ecuador’s civil wars, the tale of the goddess Iris-female manifestation of the rainbow deity (who may or may not be the Singer’s mother); meetings with the gods; a great banquet of Indians, soldiers, gentlemen and beggars; and the return of Halley’s Comet. In Drums for a Lost Song we encounter the cruelty of slavery, the exhilaration of adventure, dialogue that makes characters come to life, and the possibility that Margarito’s song—embodied in his story—may not be lost forever.

Get your copy anywhere online, but I recommend supporting Small Press Distribution and buying it here. Thank you for your continued support!