Victor Pablo
Photo credit: Krystal Pagán (@krystalconye)
TELL US ABOUT YOUR WORK.
My name is Victor Pablo García Gaetán, or Victor Pablo for short. I’ve been making music since I have recollection. I’m a percussionist by trade, and artist at heart. I was raised on salsa, bomba, and plena, and trained in the classical ways. My career has taken me to perform with symphony orchestras, contemporary chamber groups, Broadway musicals, jazz legends, salsa stars, bombazos, plenazos, park rumbas, composing and producing music for theater , as well as solo and chamber works.
It is very important to me that my original work draws and pays homage to those who came before me; to take our musical language, elevate the conversations, and bring it up in dialogue in unexpected places with unexpected people. It’s also essential for me for it to reflect our times, as Ms. Nina Simone said.
Lately I’m working on my own music with People of Earth, and my own endeavors, as well as sideman to a couple recordings by other artists like Kali Rodríguez-Peña, Gina D’Soto, and Flaco Navaja, and producing the music to an experimental play by Puerto Rican teatrera Nirvania Quesada. I take pride in being part of the Puerto Rican diaspora, and artistically contribute to my generation and community here in NYC with other like-minded artists from all over - especially the Caribbean.
WHAT INSPIRES YOU?
Artists and practitioners that stick to their guns with reason, that choose to do what they do how they do it despite others pressuring or expecting compliance out of them. When you have a reason to do what you do, and you respect that - that’s what’s up. Shostakovich, Pau Casals, Rafael Cortijo, Prince, Calle 13, Billie Eilish, Pedrito Martínez, La Tribu de Abrante, Bad Bunny, and many others - they all share that characteristic to varying extents, in my opinion. I admire them for pushing through, ignoring the noise, going against the grain, making great things, and changing the world.
WHAT DOES COMMUNITY MEAN TO YOU?
A chosen family with diverse members and a shared cause, that helps one another grow.
FAVORITE FILM
As of right now, Arrival comes to mind. The concept of having to wrap our heads around a language that doesn’t address reality the way we do, and the language barrier that forms because of these fundamental differences - that’s what gets me. I find it analogous with music. EVERY peoples on this earth have their music, just like language. We can’t expect to translate all aspects of it literally to our reality. Much like language, in order to truly learn, see, appreciate, and understand different music, it’s best to rid ourselves of our preconceptions and notions about music we may have internalized from the industry and/or academia, or sometimes from our own insular experiences. Take in that 'unfamiliar music making' for what it is without trying to impose our own biases from other musical worlds. Then the magic happens.
FAVORITE SONG
There’s so many, but I love the music and poetry in Gema & Pavel’s Al Borde de la Locura from their album Desnudos, Vol. 1. It’s a short, but heavy song in all departments. Having said that...nothing compares to a live bombazo.
FAVORITE PLACE
Space is the place.