Práctica e intereses.

At the end of my bachelor`s degree, during the process of making my degree

thesis, due to the places where my family and ancestors come from (north from
Argentina) and where I belong to, my interest turned in to the study of music
from that area, traditional music from local communities belonging to quechua
and aimara cultures which are placed in Bolivian altiplano, Peruvian altiplano,
north from Chile and north from Argentina. In this way I complemented my
academic studies at the Ethnomusicological Research Institute (IIET, Buenos
Aires) specializing in Andean wind instruments. Also, in this period I started to
travel to Bolivia for recording and learning traditional music. The main target of
all this (and continuous to be) was reaching a compositive language containing
this symbolic universe and music belonging to it. As a result of this process, I had
the opportunity to work with ensembles like De Tanto Lejos, OEIN, AMUKI and
Ensamble Nueva Música, all of them dedicated to play both traditional and
contemporary music. I also presented my research/creative work about moqoni
during III Congreso internacional de sikuris. During 2020 I won a Teatro del
Bicentenario prize with my piece Canto al Sendero for hybrid trio.

Proyecto

This project aims to create a series pieces “written” for a traditional tarka
ensenmble (tarkas taika and mala size, bass drum, snare and cymbals) in which,
and from the thought of decolonial philosophy, it is possible to see the way of
understanding and relating to the world of quechua-aimara communities, inside a
contemporary musical language; and also to value customs and cosmovision of
central Andes communities.

Rodolfo Kusch says in “Geocultura del Hombre Americano” that the language is
directly related to how its speakers understand and relate with the world. He
says that in talking it is said much more that a literal content, and those other
things contribute to build the speaker existence. In this way of thinking, and
considering music as a language (within its own context), we suppose that it is
possible to acknowledge key aspects of the form of world understanding from
who practice it, in their épistémè building.

Foucault defines épistémè as the way in that epistemological structures

organize in systems, stablishing laws that rule costumes and knowledge inside a
culture. For Andean communities, Foucault would have used the concept of
analogical épistémè, which would have been displaced by a modern épistémè
with its principles of universality, scientism and individualism (“The Order of
Things”).

The modern épistémè imposed in America (and the whole world) during the
colonial period was the western épistémè, and it rules almost every part of our
life until today, since in this postcolonial period eurocentrism keeps what Anibal
Quijano calls ‘coloniality of power’ (“Coloniality of power and Eurocentrism in
Latin America), a way of ontological and epistemological hegemony, that also has
condemned any search attempt of true local identity along history.

Concerning to music, the institutionally legitimized activities after

independence were almost totally foreign, calling western written tradition
music as ‘cult music’. Nowadays, the existence of conservatories and the
repertoire taught in them, make evident that eurocentrism in music is alive.
However, as C. Prudencio says in “Contemporary music and audience in Latin
America”, history has condemned us to conquer our right of being.

This project aims, in this line of thoughts, to approach the instrument tarka,
through the study of its musical form, production context, communities
cosmovision, etc., and create a series of pieces which attempt to be identified
with the essence of the tradition and that interpolate it into a contemporary
musical language. In addition, it will be generated a paper to acknowledge the
process and conclusions achieved during residence time.
 Propuesta

With the purpose of making known in remote places Andean traditional music,
Andean cosmogony and contemporary music related to that symbolic universe, I
propose to program open weakly meetings during residence time to talk and
discuss about the three topics pointed before. Concerning to music praxis, the
proposal is to invite people to listen to ethnomusicological field records, and to
learn to play some instruments (tarkas and sikus provided by me). On cosmogony,
it aims to create in the community a general knowledge about Andean world
understanding. At last, it would be presented contemporary music work by
composers based in latinamericanist thought, in someway related to the Andean
world (structure, form, instruments, etc.). Through this strategies, the objective
is to create a study group able to play the pieces that the main project pretends
to create.

Recursos

For the residence period it wouldn`t be necessary several resources:

multimedia devices for presentations and to work.

The field recordings for studying and teaching comes from my trips and others
from La Feria Espacio y OEIN, both institutions from Bolivia.

The bibliographic resources are mostly from my own.

It would be interesting to achieve the collaboration from IFEA to have access to

their archive of recordings.