Who Was Jorge Reyes?

Jorge Reyes was Mexican musician. He is most well known for including cultural influences in his work, such as using traditional “pre-Hispanic” instruments to create unique sounds.

Jorge Reyes was born in 1952 in the town of Uruapan, in the state of Michoacan. He studied flute at the National School of Music. After this, he traveled around the world learning various types of music, such as German techno and traditional Hindustani sounds.

Reyes worked on ambient music with electronic aspects. He is also known for his progressive rock and folk albums. His work has been described as “shamanistic” and “tribal,” but ambient music critics say there is more to his work than that of most artists who fall under the “world music” banner.

Those who collaborated with Reyes said there was something primal about him. In his music, there is a sense of connection to pre-colonial Mexico. Reyes himself was not a Mexican aboriginal but had access to their music and culture in the village where he was born. Rather than appropriating this culture for his own commercial gain, Reyes seems to be reached a spiritual connection with its roots.

Discography

Reyes created dozens of albums. His earliest works in 1980-1983 were collaborations with the artist Chac Mool, but then in 1983, he began producing solo albums. The very first was “Ek-Tunkúl.” He continued producing solo albums throughout the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s at a rate of nearly one per year.

His complete discography shows this impressive rate of musical creation and the variety of Jorge Reyes’ collaborative efforts. Despite being in his 50s, Reyes continued to produce new albums in the 2000s.

In 1998, he produced music for the feature film “The Other Conquest.” The film is set in 1520 and is a dramatic re-telling of the conquest of the Aztecs by the Spanish explorers. Critics find it to be one of the most compelling stories of colonization ever created. Given Reyes’ propensity for the creation of pre-Hispanic music in modern form, it seems very fitting that he be the one to write the movie’s soundtrack.

In addition to the solo and one-time collaborative albums, he worked with the duo of Steve Roach and Suso Saiz under the name of Suspended Memories for a few years. He created two albums with them in the early 1990s: “Forgotten Gods” in 1993 and “Earth Island” in 1994. He was also featured with them on a variety album named “Twilight Earth” in 1995.

Jorge Reyes invented a new type of musical form that he named “tloque nahuaque.” In this type of music, he used his own body as a musical instrument while simultaneously calling out with harmonic chants. Interestingly, the phrase “Tloque Nahuaque” and variations thereof is one of the names of the Aztec god Tezcatlipoca. It is unclear whether there is any real connection between the two, however.

His methods also included live digital sampling to create continuous musical streams while using electronica influences. He combined traditional sounds and instruments with cutting-edge musical technology.

Fans of his work said that Mexican contemporary music lost a star in February 2007. Jorge Reyes suffered a heart attack while working in his music studio. He was only 56 years old at the time of his death.

Reyes left behind three children with two partners. He and Ursula Kipp had a son named Ridwan and a daughter named Citlalli. With Ariane Pellicer, he had a daughter named Erendira.

Reyes’ music was not mainstream nor hugely popular, but he made valuable contributions to the Mexican music scene through his innovative and original work. His unfortunate young death meant that he was removed from the music world before he was done creating new pieces.