TA [P] CHAS References to Indigenous Traditions in Peruvian Electroacoustic Composition of the 1960s Renzo Filini C h o R o z C o This article reviews the compositional practice of Peruvian electroacoustic music in the 1960s, to investigate the methods and sources of influence on music and new technologies of that time. It therefore explores local expressions and national and regional identities ABSTRACT through elements of folk and traditional music used in these practices. The analysis of this repertoire, from a cross-cultural perspective, sheds new light on the history and originality of experimental art and music in Peru, as well as on Peruvian ethnomusicology. Time And WoRk oF A Generation As the larger fields of economic and cultural relations around a technology or technique extend, repeat, and mu- Fig. 1. Diagram of different music based on the books of Arguedas, which tate, they become recognizable to users as a medium. A influenced contemporary Peruvian art, in Mendívil [9]. (© Julio Mendívil) medium is therefore the social basis that allows a set of technologies to stand out as a unified thing with clearly defined functions [1]. Peru, and most of Latin America, have been characterized by a social and nationalist artistic stance, which, still to this The construction and interpretation of a musical perfor- day, seems to be irreconcilable with the big questions: Is it mance, in this case Peruvian, directs us to a broader vision in possible to establish a single canon for the wide variety of regard to “sound and knowledge”: Within indigenous ontolo- Latin American music that a broad range of social groups gies, the interaction between human beings and non–human enjoy? How do we speak, then, of the diversity of music in beings occupies a central position. In this case, not only is Latin America? the performance that takes place among human beings an In 1961, the Torcuato di Tella Institute, through Alberto object of study [2] but so are the performances that involve Ginastera, invited Edgar Valcárcel and César Bolaños to ap- animal or spiritual agents (interspecific interactions), as well ply for a grant offering twelve scholarships to the first gen- as objects and parts of the landscape (Fig. 1). eration of student fellows of the Centro Latinoamericano de As a result of a massive migration to the urban center of Altos Estudios Musicales (CLAEM) (Fig. 2). The institute’s Peru (Lima), in 1946, a remarkable number of young people intention was to level and transform the considerable musical applied to the newly created Conservatory. This marked the “backwardness” of the Latin American region [3]. Concern- best years of the Peruvian musical vanguard. Composers like ing this issue, Valcárcel wrote: Edgar Valcárcel, Enrique Pinilla, Celso Garrido-Lecca and César Bolaños, among others, were responsible for intro- The essential features of this new generation are the follow- ducing Peru into the musical languages of the international ing: the burden factor would be the echo of our musicians avant-garde. under the influence of a westernising tendency; the typical factor would be that which is our present, i.e. a marked atonality within free conceptions. Finally, the future factor, Renzo Filinich Orozco (composer, researcher, educator), Faculty of Arts, University a nationalism perceived in more than one young composer; of Arts, Sciences and Communications, Av. Salvador 1200, Providencia, Región Metropolitana 7501277, Chile. Email: <[email protected]>. a nationalism free of rhapsodists, born of the intimate See <www.mitpressjournals.org/toc/lmj/-/27> for supplemental files associated union of the blood and the spirit of the musician, with his with this issue. soil and with all that he owns as a Peruvian . [4]. ©2017 ISAST doi:10.1162/LMJ_a_01026 LEONARDO MUSIC JOURNAL, Vol. 27, pp. 93–97, 2017 93 Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LMJ_a_01026 by guest on 02 October 2021 Fig. 2. César Bolaños, in the Torcuato di Tella, Buenos Aires, Argentina, Fig. 3. The 1960s generation (from back to front): César Bolaños, Francisco 1966. (© Arch. Luis Alvarado) Pulgar Vidal, Leopoldo La Rosa and Edgar Valcárcel. (© Arch. Luis Alvarado) Edgar Valcárcel called this process of contact with the in- toire [8]. Far from the destructiveness traditionalists attach ternational academic world “a stage of updating” [5] a crucial to them, these distances from a current tradition also con- moment in the context of Peruvian music. This new genera- tribute to its own conservation, perpetuating conventional tion of composers (see Fig. 3) was not only the accession to forms by giving them renewed strength. The conception of a musical cultural model but also the beginning of musi- a new series of musical transformations was, of course, in cal searching and experimentation. These artists wanted to close connection with a new way of understanding Peruvian distinguish themselves from the articulate expression that identity, of how to play and present it [9]. identified the previous musical generation, known as the in- In 1964, Bolaños composed his first piece on tape at the digenist movement, which used pentatonic scales. The claim CLAEM, Intensidad y Altura, based on a poem of the same to represent a national genre of music could not be reduced name by Peruvian poet César Vallejo. This was the first elec- to the mere quote of a folk melody attached to a classical troacoustic piece created at the center, while its laboratory piece. Instead, such pretensions also required an awareness was still in its initial stages of development, and it was the first of the new modes of being that urban life had established. In electronic piece produced by a Peruvian. Although the use of 1956, a commentator wrote the following about the premiere folklore was not vital to Bolaños, his work could be read as of the work Ensayo by César Bolaños: a sign of the social transformations that Peru experienced in the 1950s and 1960s. This is what the pieceHomenaje al Cerro For César Bolaños, musical nationalism, regarded from the San Cosme (1957) suggests. Bolaños recalled of that time: point of view of indigenous people, is ineffective. He thinks that for the coastal musician, born as he was in Lima, a My father had a business in the town of El Porvenir; that’s city with enough cars and noises to drive anybody crazy, where I established contact with the world of Cerro San it is incoherent to believe in a vulgar autochthony, when, Cosme. I was struck by the recent invasion of the Andean as in his case, “he does not even directly know a tinya or world, they were coming to Lima. There were a few stands a quena” [6]. along Aviación Avenue. In the central part, there where the gardens should be, wooden stalls with speakers were sell- This way of thinking, diametrically opposed to that of ing music that you could hear throughout the Avenue [10]. other Peruvian composers, makes Bolaños’s music regarded as highly dissonant and modern within our field [7]. During the following years, Bolaños used electroacoustic media, and, even later, computers in his musical works. He ClAEM And The Birth oF PeRuviAn created works for tape only and mixed pieces, including live electroacoustiC muSiC electronics and multimedia resources, in some of them. One The conformation of the CLAEM and its openness to the of Bolaños’s most representative works during his stay at the world was based on the facilities that the U.S. government CLAEM was Interpolaciones, a four-channel work for electric offered through the Alliance for Progress, a program es- guitar and magnetic band (Fig. 4). tablished by John F. Kennedy. Its purpose was to promote The guitar used in Interpolaciones did not have the con- Latin American art and culture, in an attempt to counter the ventional speaker of an electric guitar; instead it had a device emergence of guerrillas inspired by the Cuban revolution, composed of micro-switches, controlled by the guitarist’s which had influenced many intellectuals and artists in Latin foot, that could place the amplified guitar sound in any of America, including Bolaños. the six speakers in the room. The speakers could also ro- We can contend that periods of distancing from tradition tate by rotating the guitarist’s foot. The work was structured are followed by clear reinstatements of that tradition, which from a set of values and a geometric ratio. The instrumental- recover traditional elements that had become marginal. It ist translated these approximate values and heights that fell could not have been otherwise, since, as Steven Feld notes, within a certain area [11]. it is only through the history of hearing that a listener can Interpolaciones was made for playback systems incorpo- recognize whether a song can be considered within a reper- rated in the audiovisual room of the di Tella Institute. It was 94 Filinich, TA [P] CHAS Downloaded from http://www.mitpressjournals.org/doi/pdf/10.1162/LMJ_a_01026 by guest on 02 October 2021 Valcárcel was studying electronic music at the Computer Music Center (CMC) at Columbia University (Fig. 5), thanks to a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was a student of Vladimir Ussachevsky and the Argentinian Alcides Lanza. Beyond the light effects by Mario Acha, the piece stood out because of its use of visual poems slide-projected and composed by Romualdo himself. Among the 117 projections that night, there were images of Túpac Amaru’s face in color, which gave the presentation a pop flair that was in perfect tune with the posters designed by Jesús Ruiz Durand for the revolutionary government of Juan Velasco Alvarado. A note, published in Oiga magazine, was titled Canto Fig. 4. Interpolaciones for electric guitar and magnetic tape, 1966.