Various Artists “Anthology of Experimental Music from Mexico” (Unexplained Sounds Group, 2020)

There are records who are interesting for the music they convey, and records interesting because they help you to rethink your thoughts. The music in this album, released on November 6 last year, is important for both the reasons. But first, a little bit of history. In a market dominated by English and American musicians and productions, one think that in other parts of the world improvised or experimental music can be only a new acquaintance, or the product of a colonialisation.

To tell the truth, there are musicians all over the world who play experimental music since decades. Re:KonstruKt label, which I documented many years ago through AAJ, is one of them. They had a relatively bright exposure on the media because they were good and lucky enough to play with people like Peter Brotzmann, Joe McPhee or William Parker. But nobody dug the roots of Istanbul experimental music. So, since I will talk in this article of Mexican experimental music, I want to play a little bit with its history.

At the end of XIX Century, composer Julian Carrillo developed “Sonido 13”, or “The 13^th Sound Theory”. Not applied until he composed “Prelude to Colon” in 1925, this theory pioneered microtonal music. In fact, Carrillo divided every octave in 13 instead of 12 pitches, as it occurs through the history of Western music. To show how easy this new system was, Carrillo asked some guys studying in an elementary school of New York to transcribe a Bach work according to Sonido 13. 

Every guy in the classroom did the transcription in less than one hour. Easy as the theory can be, in fact Sonido 13 to be executed needed a new bunch of instruments, apted to the new music. As an example, a well tempered piano has 88 keys. For Sonido 13, a piano would need 704 keys instead. Anyway, new music instruments were built. But Carrillo was not alone in this attempt to create a new, more contemporary, music.

Carlos Jimenez Mabarak transitioned from tonal music to dodecaphonic music in the 1950s, and it opened the music he wrote to new, experimental methods. His mother was a writer working in the diplomatic service, so he studied as a young guy far from Mexico, in Guatemala, Chile and Belgium. He had a diploma in 1936, and the following year he took the decision to dedicate himself completely to music. So, he started teaching composition at the National Conservatory of Mexico City. 

In 1945 Mabarak composed for Chavez his Symphony in E flat. His music can be divided into three periods: traditional (1935-1955), dodecaphonic (1956-1976) and then a comeback to traditional sounds until his death in 1994. But his compositions are important since they’re showing how it is difficult to divide the work of a composer between tradition and innovation, since the two elements can be intertwined together.

This little excursus – I advice you my reader to give a try to both Mabarak and Carrillo, since their music is available through the World Wide Web – just to show you how music is usually divided by critics in traditional and innovative, and then in subgenres, but such divisions are hystorical, and need to be criticize. Ugo Volli, an important semiologist in my Italy, writing about paintings stated that there is no such things as a Impressionistic picture, or a Pop picture, per se. 

All you have in fact, are figures depicted on a canvas, with more or less recurring elements, more or less rounded, or edgy, parts, created with different techniques, and it is the critic or the viewer who, thanks to his notions and cultural background, give the work of art a particular place in the known history of paintings on his own mind. But this is an intellectual operation. More or less, the same I do when I write a review for a piece of music. So, musically speaking, there are no such ‘traditional’ or ‘innovational’ elements per se.

Obviously the listener, or the critic, will be able to frame a given music, and he can also take his pleasure in doing so, but this is usually not what musicians do. Take as an extreme example William Parker when, interviewed on The Wire, said at the beginning of the new century “I’m a conductor of energies, more than a composer”. How many improvisors or composers would subscribe such a statement? Many, in my opinion. 

And so, here we are with this record issued last year by the Italian label Unexplained Sounds Group, that features pieces of experimental music created in these last years by Mexican artists and that is the demonstration of the fact that not only it is difficult quite often to recognize a sound – it is a voice, a guitar, an electronic machinery? – but also to give name to what you’re hearing without questioning your preconceived notions.

In fact, the less interesting artists here are the ones who uses only one set of brushes, so to speak, instead of mixing different techniques. But, let’s give the record a new spin so that I can describe the music, and the artists, herein. The opening track is a piece by a musician I met in London in 2011, Rogelio Sosa. Musician and sound artist, he studied electro acoustic composition and improvisation through different medias. 

His piece La Noche Del Nahual consists of sonic patterns, the ones you find in some of the most intriguing compositions by Bruno Maderna using computers of his own time, but here you have anyway an autonomous and personal idea of music. So there is the reference to Maderna, but you’re able to enjoy the piece and its climax per se, not only for his references.

Then, it follows the Tecuexe Band, an acousmatic ensemble that uses pre-Hispanic, Mariachi and electronic tools. Their purpose is to explore music traditions of the old Mexico. So they give this anthology a piece of music called Acahual with the chia that is percussive but a little bit foregone. 17°48’N by Juanjose Rivas is also something we have listened to so many times before. The ‘nomadic multispecies’ collective called Interspecifics are the last one to give life to rhizomes that in a way are older than the rest, through their Topologias del Deseo. 

Then, we are finally run pleasantly over by Israel Martinez with his Totaua: the repetitive patterns are sufficiently disturbing to become really interesting, and also the way he plays with the full&void dynamics are very personal. Unluckily on a record we’ll not be able to see him working with different medias like videos and photographs as he usually do, but if you are planning to visit Mexico, maybe the so called ‘restart’ can bring us new live performances by such artists.

Simonel on the opposite uses electronic obsolete instruments to give life to a fresh sound interspersed with melancholy and exstasy. You hear it is electronic analogic music, but the intention will show you how much the artist has reflected intensely on what he’s doing. After, you can immerse yourself in the music of Roberto Romero-Molina, a sound and visual artist from Tijuana, who works on both sides of the border. 

Escandinavia por Ala Delta starts with rhythmical sounds with glitches here and there, loops of recorded voices and other sonic gestures. The atmosphere is interesting, you exspect that something will happen and effectively at a certain point you run into a Diamanda Galàs-like moaning voice. And then it’s the turn for Rodrigo Ambriz, both composer and actor, with his very interesting Et voici la fièvre.

The voice is distorted electronically, echoing both Antonin Artaud and Isidore Isou a little bit, with an ‘evil’ mood, and a dramatic quality that, even if it’s the longest piece with its 15 minutes, it’s the most interesting and very far from being boring, at the opposite: it’s one of the most intriguing in this anthology. Then it’s the time for Mito del Desierto and its Larva ella que trastorna: basically it’s a poliphonic ensemble of sounds and voices, with a rhythmical background. 

Last three pieces of music are the flux rich of sonic debrises and echoes of far away melodies of Los Heraldos Negros’ Amydos, the concrète sounds orchestrated to reach an apted climax in Conception Huerta’s INVASION and the almost lynchian sound design by IN FORMALDEHYDE ad their NoirLand. Last music you’ll hear in this record are again Tecuexe Band with Sembrador, another rhithmically driven piece of music, where the melody of a flute is fluorishing around electronic sounds imitating the ones from nature.

If you’ll buy the record through Bandcamp you’ll obtain also some digital bonus tracks not on the original CD, printed as a limited edition of 200 copies. Hope to hear more from some of these artists in the future, especially from Sosa, Ambriz and Conception Huerta, but this is because of my personal background. While listening to this record, you can obviously have your own favorites and continue to explore this intriguing music coming from Mexico in the near future.