Of Trains, Car Horns and Cactuses. Landscape, Sound and Politics in the Performances of Carmen Baliero

• In Event: Inside/Outside. Music and Politics in Latin America

Abstract

What are the sounds of a city? Trains, buses, cars, people. What are the sounds of a mountain valley? A more silent geography, this time we could say: wind, water, leaves, and birds. And in this last setting, what are the sounds of a cactus? Argentine experimental composer Carmen Baliero has asked herself all of these questions. Her works take on a practice not foreign to 20th century music: making non-musical objects sound musical and using traditional musical instruments in non-conventional ways. However the primary drive behind her instrumentation choices are social and political as much as aesthetic.
This paper will analyze three of her works. The first is Bocinas [Car Horns], written for 19 cars (and their horns), in both its performances in the cities of Buenos Aires (2007) and Córdoba (2009). The second is an ensemble of performances in the train station of Jujuy (2009), where she created a “human musical train” in one of the many closed stations in the country. Collaborating with musicians from as different traditions as western symphonic orchestras and local tribes, they tried to put into sounds the consequences of the destruction of the railway lines that took place during the 90s. Finally, her present project: a concert for more than 30 cactuses in the Quebrada de Humahuaca (in the Northwest of Argentina), where she will once again mix musicians from different traditions. Up to 32 feet tall, with thorns of up to 5 inches long, this species of cactus has no lack of particularities: growing only in earth containing human fossils, feared as well as revered by the locals who consider them cemeteries, these cactuses find themselves presently facing extinction due to a new plague.
I will analyze the creation and reception of these works in their social-political context to try to answer the following questions: how are the non-musical objects used as means of political critique? Can these works create bridges between different traditions within a Nation’s culture? How can acoustic, musical, historical, cultural and political concerns be mobilized by a musical performance?

Author

• Violeta Nigro Giunta