A song to ring in the 100th year
Five months into Texas A&M University-Kingsville’s (TAMUK) centennial celebration and Javelinas have already seen photo recreations, mariachi concerts and much more, and now it’s not a centennial event to celebrate, it’s a centennial song.
“El Futuro del Pasado,” or “The Future of the Past,” will be the sound that will ring for the Javelinas this year.
Twenty-five years ago, Dr. Greg Sanders, the coordinator of Music Theory and Composition at TAMUK, was tasked to compose a song to commemorate the Javelinas’ 75th year. That song was “Caballos Corriendo.”
Fast forward to the 100th year and Sanders was tapped to create a new tune to celebrate an even bigger event.
The centennial song integrates TAMUK’s fight song “Jalisco” much like how the 75th anniversary song incorporated the alma mater “Hail AMK.”
“‘Caballos Corriendo’ actually is based on the Alma Mater. It’s a process that I use that’s not used by a lot of people called deconstructionism. And I like to turn the tunes and flip them inside out and move them around and interpolate notes. That one for the 75th is based on the Alma Mater. This one is based on ‘Jalisco.’ So, all the melodies and everything is reworking of ‘Jalisco,’ and you can hear at the end where I do bring in a brass choir with the rewriting of the ‘Jalisco’ just at the end of the piece,” Sanders said.
‘El Futuro del Pasado’ was made specifically for TAMUK’s Wind Symphony which is led by Dr. Scott Jones, associate professor and director of bands.
However, the Wind Symphony wasn’t the only one involved when the song premiered on Sunday, April 27.
Multiple music groups from TAMUK participated in the concert.
With a complex song like this with a lot of moving parts revisions were constantly being made to fully include a 100th year celebration.
“He’s worked on this for about six months, so he really wrote this very quickly. And when you write a piece of music like this, he comes up with the ideas and he got them on paper and then we’ve been working a lot. So, he’ll come to the rehearsals, and we’ll play a little bit and he’ll be like, ‘okay, let’s tweak that.’ And so, we’ve been revising it as we go. So, it’ll probably get revised again and again,” Jones said.
The song isn’t just meant to be played once. ‘El Futuro del Pasado’ will be played throughout the year at all the celebratory centennial events.
“What I hope people hear from it is that it’s a fun piece, that it has the ‘Jalisco’ coming in full blast at the end. So, people can kind of catch on to that. It’s also designed where you can play the last part. And then at the end, you go straight into ‘Jalisco.’ And you can just continue from there,” Sanders said.