The composition Perroquets d'azur owes its existence to the oboist François Leleux who issued the commission in 1993 and gave the first performance of the work. In adherence to a compositional tradition which attempts to transfer a polyphonic structure to a monodic instrument and simultaneously inspired by the folkloristic music I heard on my first journeys to Cuba and Mexico, it was my intention to communicate an impression of the multifaceted complex rhythmic polyphony characterising Afro-Cuban music. The piece exploits all registers of the oboe and additionally incorporates the brief incipit of a Yoruban chant in praise of the god Changó. The music develops in an atmosphere of increasing effervescence, culminating in an intensification of the rhythmic nucleus of Afro-Cuban music: the clave.