Tanacun, The Crocodile Man
My son, Jacob, recently turned me on to a couple of amazing guitarists from the region of Ixtapa, Mexico, who go by
Rodrigo y Gabriela. As I was totally blown away by their music, they will be happy to know that I have personally purchased at least ten of their CDs as gifts for friends.
Evidently in the early 90’s, Rodrigo and Gabriela played in a heavy metal band in Mexico City and later abandoned the band concept to just work with two acoustic guitars. They even do awesome covers of Zepplin’s Stairway to Heaven and Metallica’s Orion on this recording.
One of the first things that I noticed when I examined their CD is that their individual song album notes look like a blog for each song. As a result, you really start to get a sense of them as human beings. The human awareness and impact that each of us can raise in others, even through something as simple as communicating our thoughts and comments on our albums or our web pages, is phenomenal. The first song off of their self-titled album is Tanacun. So, I would just like to present you with their words, from their album notes of Tanacun.
Tanacun
In the South Pacific of Mexico, there is a town called Ixtapa, it’s in Zihuatanejo. This place had diverse and vast numbers of wild-life species in the early ’80s. Construction companies, along with the governnment of the State of Guerrero, contributed to destroy their natural habitat here. Like in many other parts of the country, the coastal slaughter of animals continues nowadays. There are just under 90 crocodiles left in the region, but one man, Erroberto Piza, AKA Tamacun, takes care of them as if they were his children and they love him like he was their croc father. The little reserve where they live sometimes collapses when heavy rain hits and they escape, scaring the shit out of a few tourists just for the laugh… (well, it’s not that bad).
But before long Tamacun is there to take them back home. The Mexican government doesn’t fund his work, and he makes little or no money. We promised him to tell people of his dedication and love for nature.
Pretty powerful stuff. All I can say is that I highly recommend Rodrigo & Gabriela’s CD for a variety of reasons, not the least of which is their sense of ethics and world citizenship. Yes, we can make a change.
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