CHARCA hereby presents "El velorio”, an EP consisting of two songs following a deep and prolonged meditation of Puerto Rican painter Francisco Oller y Cestero's 1893 masterpiece of the same name.

The painting depicts the chaotic scene inside a traditional home in the island countryside, where the funeral for an infant, a rite also known by its Afro-Caribbean name as a "Baquiné", is taking place. According to tradition most prevalent during the 19th Century, the soul of the baptized child that died before the age of 7 was free of all sin, and would thus ascend to reside among the host of God's angels in Heaven. Therefore the funeral, far from a somber occasion, would become one of celebrations with delirious song and dance from dusk 'til dawn, wherein tears were forbidden, as they were believed to soak the wings of the child's soul, hindering its ascension.

This 8'10" by 13'6" tapestry is writhe with customary objects, archetypes, and symbolism—for the Devil, as always, lives in the details. A harvest of corn and plantains hung to dry. A rosary, a cross with blessed palm branches atop the doorway, machetes throughout. Spilled bowls of rice and broken bottles scattered across the floor beside children and pets. The background, farmers tending their fields, depicted with the brush-strokes characteristic of what would become known as the Impressionist movement. In the foreground, the vast majority of subjects, including a cat perched on a ceiling beam, tend their gaze towards a roasted pork held aloft on a skewer which, upon being visually set in front of the building's corner bracket, suggests the shape of a cross. Only the Afro-Caribbean elder, modeled by a liberated slave known to Francisco Oller as San Pablo, reflects solemnly upon the pale corpse of the child. The mother, standing beside the priest and the sacristan, looks toward the viewer with an absent smile, feigning happiness in the face of her infant's demise.

The absorption of this discordant array of images and symbols resulted directly in the elaboration of the following:

1) An ambient piece, "Velorio", that brings forth all of the miasma flowing beneath the surface of white cloths, holy songs, and absent faces. Sorrow, [drunken] madness, prayers unanswered, the utmost potential that represents the life of a child put to a sudden end. Dejection is met with debauchery dressed in white, and Death wears its raptured prize as a jewel upon its crown.
2) A cover of Deathspell Omega's "Blessed Are the Dead Whiche Dye in the Lorde". The reasons for including this song as part of the act of contemplation are as follows: first and foremost are the parallels one can draw between the song's title, its lyrics (which also reveal, in fragments here and there, the worldview that drives CHARCA), and the painting's subject matter. Secondly, it would have been much easier to cite the original song as an inspiration within this written exposition, but in all likelihood few would've duly searched it out for themselves to fully contextualize their experience of the painting in tandem with the music. This was simply an unacceptable proposition. Hence it was deemed necessary that the cover be done not just as a practical matter, nor simply as an homage whose seeds were planted some 15 years prior, but as a process of absorbing every last particle of detail comprising the song's totality, including its sonic character through the learning and recording thereof, into one's self.