The title of this work for chamber orchestra can mean “indigenous,” describing a native inhabitant of a place, or “an indigenous woman”; more particularly, in Latin American Spanish it refers to the Indians native to the continent. In all these meanings it captures the sense of place and Latin cultural heritage that is a central element in León’s expressive world.

The music requires thirteen players on conventional instruments — five strings, four woodwinds, two brass, piano, and percussion. From these forces León conjures a musical depiction of a Latin American Carnival celebration — like a parade at Mardi Gras in Rio de Janeiro. The effect is of joyous cacophony, with individual outcries and hints of organized drumming in complex, overlapping rhythms called polyrhythms (see page 397). At the beginning, free, fanciful solos for wind instruments contrast with moments of more regular rhythms in piano and percussion. Clear beat and meter are asserted and maintained for a time, only to collapse; and León interjects a quiet passage, perhaps evoking the nighttime humming and buzzing of insects.

Finally — announced by surprising, repeated G-major chords in the strings — we seem to hear the approach of a Carnival band and dancers, wandering the streets in costumes and masks. Such groups are called comparsas. In their music, León has said, “there’s always a winner, and the king of the comparsas is the trumpeter. . . . You hear the trumpet from a great distance, and then you hear the polyrhythms getting closer and closer.”

In this piece the trumpet wins out, eloquently taking over about halfway through and playing smooth, jazzy tunes as well as jagged modernist melodies. The other instruments, individuals before, step in line with their leader, and ultimately the trumpet guides them in a famous Carnival melody, “La Jardinera.” This quoted melody emerges in bits and pieces. It is offered by the trumpet and answered by the other instruments, then played by the whole band, and finally sounded once more by the trumpet. Its fragmentary appearances are exactly analogous to the emergence of the hymn tune in Ives’s “The Rockstrewn Hills” (see page 331), and they show a continuity of modernist technique from one end of the twentieth century to the other.

At the end, the music of the comparsa dies away — perhaps it has moved off to another part of town — and we hear again the quiet hum of the night.