New Food Order: A musical gift from podcast composer Rodrigo Barberá

The tinkling of piano keys and instrumental music zig zags back and forth like children running as the sound crescendos into a captivating melody: the opening theme music to New Food Order podcast.

It is stunningly beautiful. Many podcast listeners have noticed.

Last year while in Mexico, Danielle Gould, the founder and CEO of Food+Tech Connect and co-host of the New Food Order podcast, met composer and musician Rodrigo Barberá.

“Immediately, I knew he was the person who was going to develop a sound for this podcast, which really helps to take you on this emotional journey,” Gould says. “Which is so important for us because our goal is to create a movement of Earth Guardians with this podcast, to bring you all with us on this learning and unlearning journey to hopefully open your hearts and minds.”

Gould and journalist Louisa Burwood-Taylor, who co-hosts the New Food Order podcast, shared that vision with Barberá, who quickly started composing.

“I was super happy to do it because it resonated a lot with my heart,” says Barberá, a Mexico City-based pianist, musician and composer who has been composing music for film, television, and advertising for the past 30 years.

Barberá says he imagined a community walking up a field of herbs, flowers and crops.

“When I created that image, I opened my heart and try to feel it very powerfully,” he says. “Then suddenly the music just came out.”

Trying to explain it is like trying to explain how one breathes, sees or touches something, Barberá says.

“It’s hard to explain,” Barberá says. “It’s life, it’s just how you are and you have to speak.”

While composing, Barberá thought about the song Glósóli, by the Icelandic post-rock band Sigur Rós. In the music video, a large group of kids run up a hill, and when they reach the end of the hill with the ocean in front of them, they don’t fall into the water but suddenly start flying.

“They were freely doing whatever they wanted,” Barberá says. “I think that’s the feeling of the music. You have to go there, jump and start flying. Feel the earth, feel the ocean, feel life. That’s what I imagined.”

Listen and subscribe to the podcast here.

Read about previous episodes of New Food Order: