RVLXNS is a cycle of three symphonic poems that together form a symphony in three movements. Each poem reflects on a different aspect of the Taínos, the Arawak people who inhabited the Caribbean, most prominently the islands of Borikén (Puerto Rico) and Kiskeya (Dominican Republic and Haiti), as well as their neighbors, the Caribs, during the 15th century at the time of European arrival.
According to accounts by Bartolomé de las Casas, the Dominican friar who accompanied one of the early Spanish expeditions in the 16th century, Taíno society was largely peaceful and flourishing. Their way of life was centered on agriculture, trade, craftsmanship, art, music, sport, and communal rituals, rather than on warfare. The arrival of the conquistadors inflicted devastating consequences: the Taínos were forced into grueling labor and slavery, many women were taken as concubines, and any resistance was brutally suppressed. Epidemics such as smallpox, carried by the Europeans, accelerated their collapse.
By the mid-16th century, Taíno society had nearly disappeared. What remains are fragments: small enclaves of descendants who survived in exile, scattered archeological sites, a handful of words that entered Caribbean Spanish, and the traces of a genetic legacy preserved over centuries, often through the women who were seized by the conquistadors.
RVLXNS was conceived as a tribute to the Taíno people, to their culture, their beliefs, their hopes and fears.
The three symphonic poems that make up RVLXNS are all palindromes, each lasting exactly 10 minutes (600 seconds), with their midpoints located precisely at the 5-minute (300-second) mark. The first and last poems serve as mirror reflections of each other, while the central poem functions as a plateau, creating an overarching palindrome across the three works.
In composing the symphony, I used common time exclusively but relied on quick tempos and large-scale thematic structures to create hypermeters, with shifting beat groupings at the macroscopic level and, at times, logarithmic sequences of hyperbeats.
I made a conscious effort to avoid rhythmic or stylistic clichés that might imitate a Taíno musical style. Instead, any use of nontraditional instruments, such as wooden wind chimes or a seashell, is intended only to represent a particular Taíno story or character.
RVLXNS was written between 2016 and 2018.
-Dan Román
Juracán Juracán
Anacaona Anacaona
Revolución Revoluciones
The word "hurricane" derives from Juracán (Hurakán), known to the Taínos as a force of cyclonic destruction serving the goddess of chaos, Guabancex.
Rather than simply recreating the sound of a storm, I aimed to evoke the awe and terror the Taínos may have felt during such phenomena.
Having lived through Hurricane Hugo in 1989, I vividly recall the sounds of the wind: like a jetliner taking off, a freight train speeding past, or the deep growls of a monstrous presence in the sky. In the absence of meteorological knowledge, it is understandable that such forces would have been seen as supernatural.
The palindromic structure of this piece mirrors the spiral form of a hurricane, with bands of winds radiating from the center and a clearly defined eye offering a moment of eerie calm. Two climactic peaks represent Juracán’s rage at full force and the terrifying voice of the storm from above.
Wind, rain, and flowing water serve as unifying motifs across the entire symphony, represented musically here and in the two following poems.
This work was composed in the fall of 2016, one year before the devastation of Hurricane María.
Anacaona, a Taíno chieftain and composer of songs called areytos, rebelled against the conquistadors in the early 16th century in response to the oppression of her people. She was eventually captured and given an ultimatum: become the concubine of a Spanish officer or face execution. She chose death, joining her fellow Taíno insurgents in defiance.
This composition weaves together various popular songs that have paid tribute to Anacaona, merging them into a single motif. That motif expands to fill the first half of the piece (120 measures) and returns in retrograde in the second half. Simultaneously, it ascends gradually from octave to octave, symbolizing Anacaona’s spiritual journey. Twice, her ascent is interrupted by moments of brutal injustice, yet the music ultimately rises into the realms of air and stars, where a distant call of her name can be heard, perhaps from her ancestral spirits, perhaps from future generations.
The piece was composed in the fall of 2017, just before San Juan’s mayor, Carmen Yulín Cruz, echoed Anacaona’s defiance by publicly denouncing the US federal government’s inadequate response to Hurricane María.
The traditional story of Diego Salcedo’s drowning by the Taínos in 1511 is often presented as a test of whether the conquistadors were divine. This interpretation, however, presumes that the Taínos were more naive than the evidence suggests. It is possible instead that the drowning was intended as a political act, a rejection of forced Christian conversion, which at that time was carried out through baptism by affusion or immersion.
This composition draws inspiration from the uprisings of the Taínos and Caribs against the conquistadors in the late 15th and early 16th centuries, with the drowning of Salcedo serving as a pivotal episode.
Although these rebellions ultimately failed, largely due to the technological advantage of European soldiers, they left behind enduring accounts of daring raids launched from the Caribbean’s jungles and forests. As the music builds toward its conclusion, it seeks to carry forward that sense of momentum and defiance.
The piece was composed between spring and fall of 2018, shortly before mass public protests in Puerto Rico forced Governor Ricardo Rosselló to resign in August 2019 after a scandal involving crude and demeaning remarks about political adversaries, including Carmen Yulín Cruz, who had advocated for the victims of Hurricane María.
