Electroacusticinmexico

7/29/2019 Electroacusticinmexico

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The First Retrospective of Mexican Electroacustic Music

Manuel Rocha Iturbide

National School of Music, UNAM

[email protected]

Abstract

The first retrospective of Mexicanelectroacustic music was held in March 2003.

I undertook the organization of this event, aswell as an important research work thathadn't been done before. I rescued old worksthat were lost, and reconstructed the difficultbeginning of the history of this field in Mexico.This paper goes through the origins anddevelopment of music related to technologyin my country, trying to make a global recountfor the first time, and making use of a criticalanalysis in order to make up with the past,understand our present and foreseen the

future.

1 Introduction

In 2002 the director of thecontemporary music festival Radarin Mexicoasked me if I would do a retrospective ofMexican electroacustic music for his venue in2003. This idea seemed to me very valuablebecause such an event had never beenorganized in my country. I started then to doa research and to take it further away, tryingto gather more information in order to searchfor a continuity in the history of Mexicanelectroacustic music. Also, I aimed to providea critical personal view of what happenedhere on the foundation days of this domain

and explain the problems and difficulties of itsdevelopment.

This research resulted quite difficultbecause there was little bibliography and allotof fieldwork needed to be done. It wasspecially hard to find information about theworks produced in the 60's and 70's, becausethere wasnt a center for the experimentation,production, diffusion and conservation ofelectronic works, functioning in anappropriate and continuos way through thefour and a half decades of history of thismusic specialty in our nation.

2 The origins

Carlos Chavez is perhaps the firstMexican composer that became interested inthe possibilities of technology in relation tomusic. In 1932 he travels to the RCA Victorand the Bell Telephone studios in the USA,and writes two articles that will become partof the book Toward a new music; music andelectricity published later in 1937. Here,

Chavez foresees the institutional obstaclesthat composers and artists interested in thenew audio media

1confront everyday. He

considered that the day when these artists

1 These new media were for Chavez: electric

photography, sound photography, and electricinstruments that hadnt been invented yet.


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would be able to get involved with thesemedia without the help of technicalintermediaries, a new path would be open forthe creation of new forms of art. However,Chavez did not maintain this early interest

and left the good intentions to the newgenerations.It wasnt until the decade of the 60s

that there was a significant development ofcontemporary music in Mexico, owing to thecreation of the Taller de composicindirected by this same composer. From thisworkshop, composers like Mario Lavista,Francisco Nuez, Hctor Quintanar and JulioEstrada emerged, who assimilated thenewest serial techniques imported from

Europe, the aleatory music techniques, andwho acquired increasing interest to the newsonorous languages emerging from technicaldevelopment (Moreno, 1994).

Some of them, and elder generationsof composers like Carlos Jimnez Mabarak,Manuel Enrquez, Manuel de Elas and AliciaUrreta, tried their hands on the electronic andconcrete music fields, thanks to their contactin and out of Mexico with some of thepioneers of this genre (Europeans and North

Americans)2. Yet, it was until the end of thesixties when the engineer Ral Pavn (b.1927)

3together with the composer Hctor

Quintanar (b. 1936) created the firstlaboratory of electronic music in Mexico, atthe grounds of the National ConservatoryofMexico City (and with the support of CarlosChvez). Moreover, this project did notexperience a fruitful life.

2 Particularly with Jean Etienne Marie in Paris,and with the composers members of theelectronic music studio at Columbia-PrincetonUniversity (Milton Babbit and VladimirUssachevsky).3An electronic engineer passionate for music and

technology since 1958, inventor of varioussynthesizers and writer of a book on electronicmusic and multimedia in 1980.

New musical technologies (likesynthesizers and the tape machine) and theirpossibilities to create music through newideas and ways to work with sounds,attracted the generation of Mabarak4,

Enriquez and Urreta, as well as youngercomposers like Mario Lavista (b. 1942) wholater wrote various articles about how thecomposer could work directly with soundmatter, and about the necessity to create newtypes of musical representation for electronicmusic, (Lavista, 1974) and to regard newconceptions starting from the sound-noiseparadigm

5(Lavista, 1984).

3 Development of the first epoch

The seventies saw the emergence ofthe experimental group Quanta

6, which

incorporated in some of their music liveelectroacustic manipulations. Furthermore,Hctor Quintanar was interested incomposing by way of performing andmanipulating synthesizers alive (Pulido,1971). He also organized a seminar centeredin electronic music with the participation ofnational and international composers at the

University of Mexico (UNAM) in 1974. Thatsame year, composer Julio Estrada (b. 1942)in collaboration with the mathematician JorgeGil researched around computer assisted

4 Composer from an elder generation (1916-1994) who wrote the first electroacustic piece inMexico ("Paradise of the drowned, for tape andballet, 1957), and also creator of the first concretemusic concert in our country that same year.Seems paradoxical that this composer and

pioneer, who produced concerts regarding thismusical language, only wrote 2 pieces for tape.5 Lavista presented this paper in a symposium

called "The identity of Latin American music" inCasa de las Americas Havana Cuba in 1977.6 Created by Mario Lavista and integrated by

An tero Chvez , V cto r Medel es , JuanCuahutemoc Herrejn and Fernando NicolsEcheverra.


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compositions7. At the same time, Ral Pavn

imparts the class of electronic music at theNational Conservatory of Mexico City, andthanks to this, new composers like JuanCuahutemoc Herrejn start experimenting in

this area. Also, the young composer andelectrical engineer Antonio Russek (b. 1955)creates the first private Laboratory for theproduction and broadcasting of electronicmusic at his home (1975). Nevertheless,regardless of these positive factors thatcontributed to the development of electronicmusic, the fact is that there was littlecontinuity, a lack of research, forums,concerts and conferences. Also, there werehardly forty pieces of electroacustic music

created through the first two decades ofproduction in our country (many of them thathave been lost or not recovered). We willhave to wait until the beginning of the 80swhen a new generation of composers,bearers of mayor passion for this languagewill emerge.

I think that besides the bureaucraticproblems that made difficult the lack ofdevelopment of the electroacustic field inMexico

8, the main problem was the little

interest that those generations showed forthis genre. The reason is that many of themthought synthesizers were simply newinstruments with fresh sound colors thatbecame supplementary to the ones alreadyexisting in the orchestra. This is why thesecomposers were unable to go deeper into thetechnical-esthetical specificity's of this newlanguage. On the other side, the creation ofelecrtoacustic music demanded a through fullstudy of the acoustic sciences, and this factorprevented many composers from investingthe time and effort involved in having

7Julio Estrada is the pioneer in Mexico in using a

computer and producing information set-aside forthe creation of an instrumental composition.8Due to the lack of support from the cultural

public institutions in Mexico to renovate theequipment of the laboratory and keep it working.

successful results9. Finally, there was also an

obstacle created from traditional academiathat was not interested in the specialization ofelectronic music in the music schools, and infact this is still up to this date a problem we

have in our country. We should try to analyzewhy in a Latin American country analogous toMexico like Argentina there was an electronicmusic laboratory since 1958

10, which is still

working up to this date, while in Mexico thissituation never became possible.

4 The true pioneers

My personal view is that the real originof electroacustic music in Mexico happens in

the eighties, particularly outside the culturalinstitutions of the government, and thanks tocomposers like Antonio Russek, Vicente Rojo(b. 1960), Arturo Marquez (b. 1960) andRoberto Morales (b. 1955), who gave it animportant impulse through the creation ofworks and interdisciplinary concerts

11. Also,

9At those times only the engineer Ral Pavn

understood the true possibilities of this newmusical language. Its too bad that he was never

considered by his colleges as a "serious"composer (he doesnt appear in any of thedictionaries of Mexican composers, although JulioEstrada speaks of him benevolently in the book"La msica en Mxico"). Pavn developed animportant research and composed multi mediaelectroacustic works in the early eighties and thenhe suddenly disappeared from our country in theearly nineties. On the other hand, from thesegenerations only Manuel Enriquez and FranciscoNuez maintained an interest in electroacusticmusic and created new forums and spaces for its

production and diffusion.10Founded by Francisco Krpfl. This laboratory is

located now in the "Centro Cultural Recoleta" inBuenos Aires.11 In the eighties there were various

interdisciplinary collectives that presentedelectroacustic works such asAtentamente a ladireccin , Msica de Cmara, La SonoraIndustrial, El Alacrn del Cntaro, etc.


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Russek created the Independent center ofmusical research and multimedia (CIIM),studio in which there were courses andwhere composers like Eduardo Soto Millan,Semir Menaceri, etc, produced various

compositions. Nevertheless, we cant denythat the interest of the elder composerManuel Enriquez (1926-1994) forelectroacustic music as well as the creationof a new festival of contemporary music byhim - Foro de Msica Nueva, a festivalsupported by the INBA government institutethat lasted from 1979 until 1994 - were alsoimportant factors for the diffusion of thismusic at those times.

5 The first composers withspecialization degrees.

Other composers that decided toescape the academic stasis in Mexico by wayof undertaking electroacustic music studies inforeign countries soon joined the indisputablepioneers of electroacustic music in Mexico.This is the case of Javier Alvarez (b. 1955)12,and a couple years later Manuel RochaIturbide (b. 1963), Antonio Fernandez Ros (b.

1961), Guillermo Galindo (b. 1960) andothers that are part of the first generationsthat received an academic education in thefield of computer music13.

Notwithstanding the efforts made bythe composers brought up at this stage in

12 Who since 1982 starts his studies on

electroacustic music in England, and by themiddle eighties wins international prizes and

awards for his works.13 Like the realization of masters and doctors in

computer music, although there were also othercomposers that undertook less specializedstudies in foreign countries like Salvador Torre (inthe middle eighties) and Gonzalo Macas (in theearly nineties) both who studied electroacusticmusic in the conservatory of Boulogne in Paris forexample.

order to generate new spaces and to teachand spread this music, at present times westill don't have a bachelor or specializationcourse of electroacustic music in our country,making difficult then a further development. It

is then understandable that the newgenerations of composers born in theseventies and eighties are still immigrating toforeign countries in order to develop better inthis area

14. Nevertheless, some of them have

been able to evolve in our country thanks tothe isolated courses taught by somecomposers. Roberto Morales tried to found acomputer music bachelor in the University ofGuanajuato, and during five years or more,he collaborated to bring a new generation of

young composers

15

. Unhappily, theconservative and bureaucratic character ofthis institution has prevented the creation ofthis program. On the other hand, Javier

Alvarez (A Mexican composer living inEngland) has come to Mexico almost everyyear to teach courses of electroacustic musicat the National Center for the Arts in MexicoCity, and from these courses new composershave come up front in the Mexican scene.Finally, I undertook a few years ago a younggroup of composers and created a workshopthat is working up to this date16.

14This is the case of Rodrigo Sigal and Pablo

Garca Valenzuela that undertook doctoralstudies in computer music in City UniversityinLondon England, or the case of Rogelio Sosa thatstudied a year at IRCAM and who is currentlydoing his doctor in the University of Paris VIII inFrance.15

From these young composers, Victor ManuelDvalos and Mauricio Valdez stand out.16 This workshop generated the collective

Machintosco integrated by Miguel HernandezMontero, Guillermo Acevedo, Victor Romero,Jose Manuel Mondragn and SalvadorRodriguez. They received the first prize in theBourges festival in France in the category ofelectroacustic music with video in 2001.


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6 New generations, spaces andforums.

There are today in Mexico manycomposers interested in the electroacustic

music field, and even though many of themhaven't still specialized in this discipline, theyhave yet produced some interesting works17.On the other side, in the last decade newforums and spaces have appeared and havehelped the difficult development of this music.

Also, this last decade has seen theappearance of numerous spaces and forumsthat support the expression and diffusion ofthis music, thanks to festivals like Theinternational Radio Biennial

18, "Festival del

callejn del ruido"19

, The International SoundArt Festival20 and recently Radar. Otherfactors that have helped increase the interestfor this music in Mexico are the technologicaldevelopments of computer programming inrecent years.

Through the nineties, the emergingcultural institutions played an important rolein the promotion of electronic art like theMultimedia center, the Centro de la Imagen,the Ex-Teresa Arte Actual museum, the

Laboratorio arte alameda museum, and so17This is the case of composers like Ignacio Baca

Lobera, Carlos Sandoval, Gabriela Ortiz, etc.18 Biennial organized by Radio Educacin whosefirst edition was in 1996. Thanks to the enterpriseof the director of this institution (Lidia Camacho),in this forum they have encouraged thedevelopment of the Radio Artgenre that belongsto the electroacustic art field.19 Founded by Roberto Morales Manzanares in1994 in Guanajuato.20 Founded by Guillermo Santamarina andManuel Rocha Iturbide in 1999. This festival hascontributed with the expansion of sound art inMexico, under its wing an important number ofMexican sound artists have emerged. Apart fromstaging countless electroacoustic music concertsfor tape, live electronics and with instruments, ithas also opened a space for experimentalelectronic music.

on. Nevertheless its a pity that as for todaywe cant count on a computer music center, aproject similar to the Multimedia Centerwhere advanced courses on music andtechnology can be imparted, as well as

postgraduate studies. Unfortunately, theacademic musical scene remains in a halt. Asfor now, we have been unable to launchpostgraduate musical studies in Mexico,except for the University of Jalapa Veracruz,where they impart the only masters onmusicology and instrumental composition inthe country. However, the University ofMexico will start soon a series of masterdegrees in music (after ten years of astagnant bureaucratic hold), one of them

related with music and technology.In spite of the academic delay ourcountry is undergoing, it has profited from theincredible development of Pop electronicmusic, which is danceable all around theglobe. This boom has helped the popularity ofDJ's and collectives of experimental groups

21,

as well as sound artists that are producingalternative music, without necessarily owing itto an academic musical background

22.

21 Its obvious that the most part of POPelectronic music in Mexico is commercial and iscentered in repetitive beats that evolve into styleslike the "Drum and Base", "Trance", "House", etc.But Alvaro Ruiz, DJ Linga and some other youngcomposers like Mario de Vega, have been

exploring other areas of experimental electronicmusic. On the other hand, we have collectiveslike Nor tec in Tijuana, and Nopal Beat inGuadalajara that have done interesting proposalsthat kind of move away from the commercialscene.22 An example is the artist from Monterrey DanielLara, or the sound artist Luz Mara Snchez fromGuadalajara.


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7 Conclusions.

Electroacustic music is a language asserious and sophisticated as contemporaryinstrumental music. I believe that this

retrospective has emphasized the fact thatMexico today has a vast spectrum ofcomposers, those with relevant trajectories inthe field, younger composers who havealready made a name for themselves, andnewer talented rising generations with needsof development.

Finally, it was impossible to reflectobjectively the most relevant aspects of thehistory of electroacustic music in Mexico inonly two concerts, so I felt obliged to

implement four hearing posts that presentedthe composers by decades23

. On the otherhand, it was difficult to include all of thecomposers who have done somethingrelevant in the field, because some of theirpieces (mostly the ones who have alreadydied) have been lost or not recovered, andthe effort to trace them with theirdescendants will need a lot of work. It isimportant to mention that not all of thecomposers that I contacted sent me their

pieces, even though the most prolific did.This investigation came into beingthanks to the original idea of Jos Wolfer, tothe enormous interest of all the composers ofthe trade who kindly sent me their works, andto the valuable help of the CENIDIMmusicalresearch center in regard to the discoveriesof pioneer works (as Tlalocan of JimnezMabarak, Prehistoric Mass by Enrquez, andthe Electronic Studies by Juan CuahutemocHerrejn). Essential was the support received

from the composer Antonio Russek, becausehe zealously saved and recovered manypieces of the sixties that we had thought lost(like Contrapunto by Mario Lavista, and NonNova Sed Novo by Manuel de Elas). Antonio

23 Composers born in the10s, 20's, 30's y 40's,the ones born on the 50's, the ones born on the60's and the ones born on the 70's.

helped me to reconstruct the primordial factsof the early history of electroacoustic music inour country. I am also obliged to AlejandraOdgers for having executed an extensivedocumentation of electroacustic Mexican

works for her bachelor degree thesis(Odgers, 2000). This register helped me setthe basis to carry out my inquiry

24, and to

Gonzalo Macas for his interest in theretrospective, since he is currentlyinvestigating the development of the Mexicanelectroacustic music with instruments for hisPhD thesis in France.

If the creation of a new laboratory ofcomputer music is not possible, where piecescould be produced and advanced workshops

and programs be imparted (at graduate andpostgraduate levels), it would be at leastdesirable the existence of a small MediaCenter whos tasks would include theaccumulation of information and theharboring of electroacoustic pieces producedin Mexico. This place could also host thequarters of a Mexican electroacoustic musicassociation in charge of the dissemination ofour music nationally and internationally

25, As

for now, the efforts have been individual andmany times have remained diluted. I hopethat the interested composers of the musicaltrade become receptive to these ideas inorder to carry out this task.

24 I hope Alejandra will review this valuable work,so she can include the composers born in theseventies, many of them who have already

shined out internationally. On the other hand itwould be useful if she indicates which pieceshave been awarded, and in which studios theywhere carried out in order to understand what arethe more relevant works in our history.25

As well as publishing records of MexicanElectroacoustic music (like CD's and books) withthe support of government institutions, becausethis area hasn't been exposed.


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msica del IVACEM. Valencia.Moreno Rivas Yolanda. La composicin enmxico en el siglo XX. Conaculta. MexicoDF. 1994.Odgers Alejandra. La ms icaelectroacstica en Mxico. Thesis to obtainthe title of bachelor in composition at theENM of UNAM. Mexico DF. 2000.Pavn Ral. La electrnica en la msicayen el arte. INBA-SEP-CENIDIM, Mexico,1981.

Pulido Esperanza. Conversacin conHctor Quintanar. Director del laboratorio demsica electrnica del conservatorio. InHeterofona, musical magazine. Year IVNumber 18. May June 1971. Mexico D.F.Rocha Iturbide Manuel. Santo, BlueDemon and Co, true pioneers ofelectroacoustic in Mexico?. Presented in thesymposium El futuro Ms Ac. The history ofMexican science fiction films. Mexico, 2003.Rojo Vicente. Nuevas perspectivaslatinoamericanas. In Pauta, volume XII,January, February, March 1993. CENIDIM.Mexico DF.Soto Milln Eduardo. Dicccionario decompositores mexicanos de msica deconcierto. SACM and Fondo de culturaeconmica editors. Mexico DF. Two volumes.1996.Tello Aurelio. II encuentro mexicanocubano de msica electroacstica. In Pauta,Vol. III, No. 11, July, August, September1984.

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