ESCARBA EN MI ALMA
Escarba en mi alma emerged from a songwriting collaboration that reaches across borders. Inspired by the Peruvian guitar and dance style, form the Tondero, this song features Nadine Altounji on guitar and vocals. The music was written in collaboration with Pedro Diaz, a Montreal-based, Peruvian singer-songwriter. Peruvian poet and dancer Marcia Castro Gamarra, who Nadine met and bonded with while doing research for the project in Cusco, Peru, wrote the words. The Spanish lyrics poetically explore the deep and intimate longing to reclaim cultural knowledge, kinship and the roots that had been unearthed and hidden by the ravages of conquest, colonialism and time.
The video for Escarba en mi alma, which features Marcia Castro Gamarra’s dancing, was filmed by Peruvian filmmaker Johan Carrasco in Cusco, Peru (with additional footage of Nadine shot in Montreal by Victorine Sentilhes). The first flower of this fertile cross-pollination, the visuals capture a deep and resonant longing embodying the juxtaposition of joy and pain that is inherent to the human condition, exposing the fine filaments of emotion that connect our hearts across time, space and culture.