Featuring:
Elsa Justel
Miguel Garutti
Cecilia Castro
Rosa Nolly Bustos
Victoria Barca
Buenos Aires: Relations Condensed in Practice
Episode 13 of the Timezones podcast series, co-initiated and co-produced by Norient and the Goethe-Institut. This episode examines how practices among friends help build networks to strengthen the explorations and works of artists while collectively building survival skills. The backdrop for this episode is the Argentine capital of Buenos Aires, a very rich and complex city where mainstream spaces, venues, and cultural centers are playing a less than helpful role in the artistic scenes. It’s all about profit and not about culture, as producer Ailín Grad aka Aylu explains.
A little collection of pieces by all the artists interviewed in this episode. Most of the tracks appear as part of the music and sound design. There’s a mix of recent and older works, from electronic to acoustic and processed instruments. A small glimpse into Buenos Aires’ electroacoustic and experimental music scene. Curated by Ailín Grad aka Aylu.
A selection of eclectic, experimental, electroacoustic music from Buenos Aires, Argentina. All these compositions explore the plasticity of sound. They take us by the ear and into hallucinations that are as beautiful as they are chaotic, noisy, or delirious. Curated by Vic Bang.
[0:00] Introduction (various voices) The particular soundscape of Buenos Aires You must discover these other sounds Estar en un lugar certo That’s the best thing of Buenos Aires Old music, music made in other times and other places
[Aylu and AGF feat. Constanza Castagnet: “strike/huelga/streik/lakko!” Practice-p-p-p-p-practice Relations condensed in practice]
[0:54]
[Elsa Justel: “Yegl”]
[0:59] Elsa Justel
My name is Elsa Justel. I am an aged, hyperactive, anxious, curious woman. As for the sounds, I love all those that can be recorded and turned into music. I work principally with recorded sounds. You discover other things in the sound that you must discover, these other sounds, these other things that the sound wants to tell you. The most important thing is not how it sounds but how they move, and how they play, one with the other.
[1:53] Elsa Justel
You know, in Argentina, the things are always changing all the time. I don’t live in Buenos Aires, I don’t think it’s a good place to live for a composer mostly of electroacoustic music.
When I went to study composition, I loved Buenos Aires, because here, there was no composition in the conservatory, only education and instruments. So, uh, to study composition, I wasted some years to get enough money to pay for my travels and the teacher.
[2:40] Elsa Justel
So I traveled once a week, two sides, aller-retour, ida y vuelta, to have my courses, and at that time I loved Buenos Aires. I went to the Teatro Colon, to see the parks. I thought it was a beautiful city. But nowadays, I feel afraid. It’s not only noisy, but ugly, I don’t know, I don’t know. I dislike it. Not beautiful.
Argentina is a very big country and we had two or three studios and it was not easy to have access to these studios. And even if you had access, then, when you went out of the studio, you had nothing to work. So teaching was not preferred, but necessary.
[3:50] Elsa Justel
The first time I was in Darmstadt in 1986. It was at this festival that I knew somebody who told me: If you want to make electroacoustic you must go to Bourges, in France.
[3:34]
[Aylu: “Whistle”]
[4:05] Elsa Justel
So when I went to Europe, I was privileged because many of the studios in Europe opened the doors for me and I could have the mediums to work, and of course we are speaking about the period of analog technology. We had several recorders, several tape recorders, that were Studer or Revox, several in the studio. So you had a big mixer and you can make the mixing of the different tapes at the same time. And then there were a pan of effects: filters, and envelopes, I don’t remember, and oscillators, of course, to do electronic sounds, synthetic sounds. A reverberation, that was very important, reverberation! It was fantastic!
[5:28]
[Miguel Garutti: “Flex”]
[5:28] Miguel Garutti
My name is Miguel Garutti, musicologist. I make music with friends and for friends. One way that I found is to make contingent rules. Rules like mirages. The mirage spaces, I believe in them.
I went to Buenos Aires from Pehuajó, a little town, and I’m still here. I studied at Pehuajó’s provincial conservatory. My grandmother lived in Buenos Aires and in the holidays, we visited her but visited the city! I encountered the Teatro Colon and all these amazing spaces full of technical magic.
[6:39]
[Aylu: “Arancione”]
[6:43] Miguel Garutti
As a musicologist, I’m working on a storytelling about the laboratory of electronic music, the one and only at that time in Buenos Aires and Latin America. In the 1960s, the Instituto Di Tella represents avantgarde and, well, the future. At that time, there were two laboratories: Estudio de fonología musical (phonology studio of music at the university)and the Electronic Music Laboratory in Di Tella. There are very powerful people… they did very strange things, like apparatus to transform drawings into sounds and music.
[7:44] Miguel Garutti
There are a lot of people who hate this kind of music because they consider it very abstract, fantastic, and intellectual, and far from the real problems of other people. The 1970s ended early because of the direct imperialist action and military intervention of all the countries of the region. That was a plan, a good plan. Well, a very bad plan but a very well executed plan. Terrible repression of all the freedoms, especially the possibility to think in other possible worlds. And now it’s hard to think of other possible worlds. But we need to try out.
[8:06]
[Miguel Garutti: “Diamante con pelos”]
[8:38]
[Aylu: “Y_Y”]
[9:16]
[Cecilia Castro: “12 Dedos”]
[9:21] Cecilia Castro
My name is Cecilia. I’m a composer, a musician, from Buenos Aires, Argentina. I like to think that there’s something special about the sound of Buenos Aires City and that’s why I’m staying here. I really like this city. First of all because it’s home. But also, I really like noisy cities, and this one is quite noisy. And I live – well, let’s see, right now it’s night so it’s not that noisy – I live downtown, so let’s see: [window opens]
[10:03]
[Cecilia Castro and Astrosuka: “Roma III”]
[10:31] Cecilia Castro [window closes] Well, right now it’s not that noisy, but during the day it’s really noisy and I live close to the Congress, so I can listen to all the protests and the riots right next to my window and for some reason I really enjoy those types of soundscapes.
You can say that I really like the noise, how the sound of this city is edited. If we think there is a person editing the sound of the city, I really like the result. How the sounds mix with each other and how they interrupt each other. I like to think about the idea that this city has a particular way of being and I really like it.
[10:42]
[Cecilia Castro: “Para Eliza”]
[11:52] Cecilia Castro
Aah listen!
[11:55]
[Cecilia Castro: “Worm”]
[12:16]
[Cecilia Castro: “Para Eliza”]
[12:20] Cecilia Castro [window closes] Okay, sorry. No more windows. Promise! So right now, I’m working on my master’s degree, trying to understand how people listen to nature inside a city. A noisy and big city. So how do they understand nature in this context?
I’m working inside a big park, a big green area right next to the city, where there are a lot of people that go there to enjoy nature and birds and animals. And actually, if you go there and listen, there is a lot more than just animals and birds – there are helicopters and factories, a lot of noise. So I’m trying to understand these places through sounds.
[13:30] Cecilia Castro
I always feel something really natural in the process of sound and music. And I can say that after 20-something years of working with sounds, I really can’t explain what is sound. There is still, I find, something really magical about sound, and… something that is kind of in a boundary, in a line, in a border, that is really fascinating for me. I like to think that I work with mistakes, or follow, let’s say that I follow some mistakes. And I like to think about the idea that I’m not looking for specific results, but I find them.
[14:40]
[Rosa Nolly Bustos playing Saxophone]
[15:14] Rosa Nolly Bustos
My name is Rosa Nolly. I’m a composer. I play the saxophone. And I have a baby cat.
I moved to the South of Buenos Aires suburbs to study composition and now I’m a professor at the Public University of Quilmes. Later, I moved to the city of Buenos Aires.
[16:14]
[Rosa Nolly Bustos: “Polar”]
[15:59] Rosa Nolly Bustos
Here, I have possibilities to inhabit aesthetics that are very different from each other. In other words, to inhabit the circle of contemporary, experimental, and also popular music. Here, there’s a lot of chaos and a lot of stress. I like living here because I can be part of non-patriarchal and LGBTQ+ affective artistic networks.
I have a baby gray cat who calls me mom. In Spanish she says mamá.
When I compose music, I work with feedback, performance, circular movements, and open form.
[17:10]
[María Elena Walsh: “Canción especial introduction (Electroacoustic Version by Rosa Nolly Bustos and Ailín Grad)”]
[17:21] Rosa Nolly Bustos
The sounds of Buenos Aires are a mix of realities: eclectic, soft, human, mechanical, loud, intense, sharp, invasive…
[17:50]
[Vic Bang: “Orurro”]
[18:08] Victoria Barca
I’m Victoria Barca and I’m a musician and composer of electroacoustic music from Buenos Aires, Argentina.
I work mainly with samples and sounds that I design using digital synthesizers. When I choose a sample, I generally can’t leave it as it is. I always have to modify it or modulate it, and I think that way I can change the character of the sound and make it a little bit more personal to me.
[18:51]
[Vic Bang: “Arp”]
[18:53] Victoria Barca
So I really like that moment when I’m exploring with sounds. I feel like a scientist in a lab mixing different liquids to see new results.
[19:10]
[Aylu: “Cristal I”]
[19:15] Victoria Barca
In my music, I’m particularly interested in creating organic music. Though it’s electronic music, I feel like it’s important to sound organic, in continuous movement and alive.
[19:42]
[La Vibrazona (Vic Barca’s folk project): “Vivo en el campo”]
[19:43] Victoria Barca
Before, I used to play guitar or drums, but since I started making this kind of music and recording samples and designing sounds, I started paying a lot more attention to the sounds around me. And what the spaces I go to sound like, and listening all the time to the ambiance in which I am. And sometimes I discover rhythmic patterns in the ambience or in the city or in nature, and sometimes I listen to a particular sound and I imagine how I could generate it through synthesis, how I could imitate it. So I think that’s a really beautiful thing because it changed my whole perception of my everyday life.
[20:13]
[Vic Bang: “Orurro”]
[20:50] Victoria Barca
I think Buenos Aires is not a particularly good place to be a musician, and especially if you are an experimental musician, it’s very difficult to make a living out of it. But on the other hand, I think that… this generates that in the experimental music scene we are really supportive of each other.
[20:54]
[Vic Bang: “Lira macho”]
[21:18] Victoria Barca
And there are so many people exploring different things in different personal searches. And there is not really a lot of competition so you can share information with others and with your colleagues and make things together and collaborate with each other. Even with artists of other disciplines. I think that’s very inspiring. I think that I’m surrounded by people I love and also admire, there are so many interesting people. There are also so many cultures because there is a lot of immigration from other parts of Latin America and also from other parts of Argentina because Buenos Aires is THE big city in Argentina, so there are a lot of things to learn from other people, and I think that’s the best thing about Buenos Aires.
[22:31] Outro
Voices and various tracks mixed together
[Vic Bang: “Lira macho”]
[María Elena Wals: “Canción especial introduction (Electroacoustic Version by Rosa Nolly Bustos and Ailín Grad)”]
[Cecilia Castro: “Worm”]
[Elsa Justel: “Yegl”]
The following tracks are part of the podcast mix.
Listed in order of appearance.
Aylu and AGF feat. Constanza Castagnet: “strike/huelga/streik/lakko!”
Elsa Justel: “Yegl”
Aylu: “Whistle”
Miguel Garutti: “Flex”
Aylu: “Arancione”
Miguel Garutti: “Diamante con pelos”
Aylu: “Y_Y”
Cecilia Castro: “12 Dedos”
Cecilia Castro and Astrosuka: “Roma III”
Cecilia Castro: “Para Eliza”
Cecilia Castro: “Worm”
Cecilia Castro: “Para Eliza”
Rosa Nolly Bustos: “Polar”
María Elena Walsh: “Canción especial introduction (Electroacoustic Version by Rosa Nolly Bustos and Ailín Grad)”
Vic Bang: “Orurro”
Vic Bang: “Arp”
Aylu: “Cristal I”
La Vibrazona: “Vivo en el campo”
Vic Bang: “Orurro”
Vic Bang: “Lira macho”
María Elena Wals: “Canción especial introduction (Electroacoustic Version by Rosa Nolly Bustos and Ailín Grad)”
Maybe a Method
moderated and produced by Lola Granillo
In the end, Buenos Aires is a port on the banks of a river.
When I met with Aylu, producer of Timezones Buenos Aires, and contributor Cecilia Castro to record this bonus talk, there arose the memory of a historical event that changed our lives and our way of doing things as well as our sound. We currently experience a moment of increasing collective action and of the collective as a way of being and thinking in the face of the constant economic crisis in the region. In this bonus track, we talk about our common ghosts and fantasies as a population with a fairly large proportion of migrants and as people who live in a port city, with almost no other connection to the river than the supposed possibility of leaving in search of more resources, weighed against the importance of friendship and community.
Artistic Editor: Suvani Suri Project Management: Hannes Liechti Video Trailer: Emma Nzioka Jingle Voiceover: Nana Akosua Hanson Jingle Mix: Daniel Jakob Mastering: Adi Flück, Centraldubs Artwork:Šejma Fere
