condition (record/cover): NM / NM - Maurice Ohana resisted every school: not serialist, not spectralist, not minimalist, not anything with a label attached. Cantigas / Cris on Erato demonstrates his independence, music drawing on Spanish heritage (Ohana was born in Casablanca to Andalusian parents) without folkloristic quotation.

The "cantigas" reference medieval Iberian song, those poems to the Virgin Mary that Alfonso X collected in the thirteenth century. Ohana doesn't imitate; he remembers, filtering ancient practice through contemporary technique. "Cris" means cries, screams, vocal emissions that precede language. The coupling spans centuries while occupying a single aesthetic space. Erato's release positions Ohana alongside the French mainstream while acknowledging his perpetual outsider status.