Ana Patan makes a very welcome return to the world of recorded music with “Frida Kahlo – Viva La Vida, The Music to the Theatre Play”, which, as the title infers, is a soundtrack to a new play about the life of Mexican painter, Frida Kahlo.
As part of my usual research to writing a review, I looked at Kahlo’s life, and she was a fascinating character. Born in 1907, a bout of polio left her with a slight limp, and a bus accident at the age of eighteen gave her horrendous injuries, and she taught herself to paint during the tortuous recovery. She was best known for her uncompromising self-portraits, and I have shown below her The Two Fridas, which carries with it a very interesting story.
Kahlo had married fellow artist Diego Rivera in 1926. The marriage was not a faithful one. She had numerous affairs across both sexes, and Rivera, amongst his dalliances, bedded Kahlo’s younger sister (as you do). They divorced in 1939 (although reconciled the following year) and the picture you see below shows twin figures holding hands, each figure representing an opposing side of Kahlo. The figure to the left, dressed in a European-style wedding dress, is the side that Rivera purportedly rejected, and the figure to the right, dressed in Tehuana attire, is the side Rivera loved best. The full heart of the indigenous Kahlo is on display, and from it an artery leads to a miniature portrait of Rivera that she holds in her left hand. Another artery connects to the heart of the other Kahlo, which is fully exposed and reveals the anatomy within. The end of the artery is cut, and the European Kahlo holds a surgical instrument seemingly to stem the flow of blood that drips onto her white dress.
After ill health and alcohol and drug abuse, she died from a pulmonary embolism at the tragically young age of 47. As with many talented people in the art world, her reputation and interest in her work & life increased steadily after her passing, and Ana has been commissioned to write and perform the soundtrack to this play, Frida Kahlo – Viva La Vida (Long Live Life) directed by Ruxandra Balasu which premiered in December 2024. I, for one, would be very eager to see it one day.
There are ten tracks here in a work which needs to be considered as a whole and placed in the context of a life, but Patan has pulled off a very difficult feat here, in that she has produced a visual musical soundscape which brings a subject to life without you necessarily having to see it on the stage. Not many artists are capable of this.
We open with La Mañanitas – A Capella, Ana and her voice entrancing, the moon in my mind. The theatre play starts with Frida lying on the bed, in the morning of the Day of the Dead. She has her back to the audience and quietly sings to herself (Ana taking that part) Las Mañanitas, the song traditionally sang in Mexico on all celebrations, holidays and birthday parties. Her day and her story begins.
Accoutre accompanies the moments in the play when Frida is getting ready for the party that she's hosting, to which all her friends and enemies, alive and dead, are invited, including Death, Patan’s trademark guitar surrounds your mind from the off, an entrancing set of beats and noises inviting us to join the mood but underpinning it the darker side of our nature in a song of light and dark contrasts, the closing long notes quite stark in their intensity.
Diego is, of course, the husband entering the stage, at the time one of the greatest painters alive, a mighty revolutionary and a believer in the God Picasso. Frida and Diego have a complex relationship of deep love and great falling apart, with passion, frustration and disappointment. However sad or happy though, they almost always dance. This is embedded below for you, the dextrous guitar work entrancing, the beats inviting you to tap or stamp, to join in the dance of life and love. There is a psychedelic jazz quality to this track, minimalistic, but always full of sound, the couple circling each other with passionate intent.
Collision was one of the two pieces I played on my recent radio show where Ana kindly offered a couple of free downloads in a competition. Here we have the story of her accident: a slow, dumb collision between a tram and the bus that she was travelling in, which had her impaled through the abdomen and spine when she was only 17. The fragment starts and ends with the dance of Death played by a life-size skeleton puppet, which, just as Diego - also a puppet - is being animated by Ion Tudorache, who also plays the male personality of Frida Kahlo. Therefore, Frida tells us the story of her life through a dialogue with her male self, the one who knows and finishes her thoughts. The bass and discordant guitar notes serve to provide the drama of a lifechanging event, and you can see the tram and bus on which she was a passenger hurtling towards each other, but in slow motion, a dramatic buildup to a severe happening, the watcher and listener wanting a disengagement, but the panting voice drawing you in, the urgency of the notes building to the inevitable conclusion, the screams and the hit itself disturbing and passionate in a dystopian manner.
Silly Saw Show is a great title. A very short piece, this is one of Frida's amusing imagined moments, in which she would have her wish granted to get rid of her painful injured leg. Her bizarre friend The Death would arrive and saw the leg off afterwards declaring with satisfaction "How I love a job well done!" In moments such as this, you can see why Kahlo is associated with the Surrealist movement personified by Dali. The noises created are funny and excruciating at the same time, the relentless beat taking one back to those halcyon days of cinematic theatre.
Paintings is the second track from the album I played on my show. A painting called "Self Portrait with Cropped Hair" in which she has portrayed herself with short hair, wearing a man's suit, sitting on a chair with a pair of scissors in her hand and her long plaits cut off and all over the floor. When this was painted, Frida found herself in difficult and confusing times, of searching for a new self, for her own identity after separating from Diego (who had once declared he only loved her for her hair). The opening notes are pastoral and pretty, the sighs those of satisfaction, the notes in the background bright and breezy, but as we progress it takes on a darker hue, the brighter notes replaced by discordant ones. It is embedded below.
Accident Diego is fascinating, recounting the two accidents in Frida’s life. First the tram/bus collision, and then her husband! On stage, the pair of them dance whilst recounting the two major themes explored earlier on a wonderful reprise of dramatic musical themes, those strong chords thumping into your consciousness again.
Dance with Death. The castanets entrance and invite you into her love of dancing, the guitar pulling you around and around, but then coming to an abrupt halt. STOP!
Heart is the penultimate piece, and it accompanies the scene just before the end, in which Frida brings out a symbolic heart and ties everyone present with the ribbons from it, as if she wants to encompass/embrace the whole universe with her love of life and passion for painting. The heart beats and beats, with an intensity which belies the fate we know awaits this brave woman. There are some beautiful passages in this piece embedded below, a song which utterly transfixes one into the urgency and joy of life, the need to survive and drink in its glory every last moment, and the experimentation in this track captures that perfectly.
We close with La Mañanitas – Viva la Vida. The play starts with a Las Mañanitas sang alone by Frida and ends with a rich instrumental and multi-voiced version of the same song, which has now reached its celebratory form. For the grand finale, everyone comes together with an optimistic "Viva la Vida!". The playing is rich and full of warmth, the expression of life inherent, a celebration of not merely a very talented individual, but us as a collective in our warmest moments, something I feel the world could do with a lot more of now, those talented and, yes, quirky, people who add to our sense of humanity and bring us so much joy in their craft through individuality, the warmth of Ana’s voice perfectly conveying this with her playing as we close.
I started this website to highlight in my own small way artists who are overlooked by the mainstream corporates, they who would crush our individuality and appreciation of the true art which frees our minds and expands our imagination. Essentially, to write about artists such as Ana Patan, who, in turn, has written a rich soundtrack for a play written about an artist whose talent and passion for life shine through.
If someone could bring this play and its music to West Wales, I would be grateful. You can get the album by visiting the Bandcamp page at https://anapatan.bandcamp.com/album/frida-kahlo-viva-la-vida-the-music-to-the-theatre-play