"By the hand of the father" is, if I recall rightly from what Alejandro said
when he played Toronto last (with Peter Case and the overrated Freedy Johnston),
a song cycle-cum-theatre-piece based on the history of his family, which he said
he'd received an NEA grant to develop. He played a series of songs from it in
the show - not his strongest work, I thought, but with a certain cumulative
power when played together. Definitely a worthwhile addition to the canon of
immigration and border music, and I suspect it would be more so in its
theatricalized form - I thought the songs could use some sort of narrative
links, some storytelling and history between them, for instance. I'd be
interested to hear what it was like.
Carl W.
