tamborileñas

Tamborileñas is a collection of six songs rooted in Tamboril — a town that still exists, though nothing I lived there does anymore. Not my family, not my innocence, not the passion fruit trees I once thought I discovered.

Each piece bends memory, sound, and storytelling into something just a little off—familiar but uncanny. It’s not about nostalgia, but what memory does when left alone: how it loops, mutates, skips, insists. Voices return in fragments, ghosts show up in sandals, and everyday life spills into dream logic. Nothing is linear, but everything is connected.

This is a dark, sad, twisted, and yet strangely fresh story told through craziness and aching vulnerability. The work serves as a demo for a larger-scale opera, Whenever we Are.

I. Whenever We Are

A TikTok video on an eternal loop. Two young lovers trapped in a loop try to rewrite

their fate from inside the frame. One keeps editing the past; the other sings to him,

gently reminding him that what's done is done—and that maybe, in some strange way, it

was love.

II. The Omen Marchanta

A street vendor sells birthday candles: five for a birth, six for a funeral.

III. Champola Champán

Mamama runs a backyard restaurant where guanábanas ferment into champagne and revenge

is served cold. When her husband brings his affair to her table, she prepares them

something special — just a poisoned slice.

IV. Popi Viralata

A breakup ballad interrupted by a toothbrush ad. The brother sings to his sister,

half in mourning, half in satire, imagining a future where even their damnation is

commercialized. He pictures them in hell, selling toothpaste with aching smiles.

V. VHS del cumple en Pala Pizza

A mother and son watch the VHS of his fifth birthday. She narrates the chaos: the

food, the cousins, the grandma dancing, the dad half-present with his other life.

It’s funny, noisy, full of sabor—but under her singing is a quiet question: Will he

be there next year? A fast, rhythmic collage where memory, joy, and absence all blur

together on tape.

IX. Pablín(es)

A note found on the fridge after Papapa’s passing.