With New Mexico’s abundance of sun, heat, and wind, and its scarcity of water, agriculture here challenges even the most experienced farmers. They need all the help they can get. With her single “Tlalok San Ysidro” (available here), songwriter Raquel Z Rivera (vocals) offers a musical incantation for rain, with help from Fidel González (stringed concha, percussion, and vocals) and Arnaldo Acosta (percussion). This weekend, the song will be sung at the annual San Ysidro Day celebration, which blesses the acequias and invokes the help of San Ysidro Labrador, the patron saint of farmers, and his wife, Maria de la Cabeza, and the saint’s Mexica/Aztec counterpart, Tlalok, the spiritual energy that brings rain, and his wife, Chalchiuhtlicue.
