Text by Wilson Saliwonczyk.
Who has not been moved by hearing a song again, or by a taste or smell from the happy days of childhood?
In this case our senses are moved by things that belong to our own history, as individuals or as a people.
I think that first of all making music and experiences with noises is disruptive, that’s why we also like, for example, electronic music from the 80’s or samplings. I don’t know if we are tired of the wig of Mozart and Bach, but these kinds of new textures come to the ear as a freshness; be it the elementary noises of the countryside, of childhood, or the new sounds of machines.
They are disruptive.
I imagine that many specialised thinkers have already talked ad nauseam about how poetry is a music and music is a poetry, which by breaking the strict mechanics of the word with its meaning becomes more accessible, even to touch that sensitive fibre of our being where the ineffable is housed and there comes the emotion, thanks to the sound of a melodic or poetic phrase.
I have already said that the new sounds of machines can feel pleasant thanks to the freshness of novelty and to the annoyance or weariness of the established, canonised and institutionalised. It is not only the weariness of having lived a whole life listening to the well-tempered harpsichord, it is also the weariness caused by formality, the fossilised, the conservative and, why not say it, in a way the exercise of power of that which is established as “music”. I also mentioned the music that takes us back to the happy summers of childhood and adolescence.
But what are the sounds that take us back to the gallop of the horse that hurries to the querencia or those pranks of beating with a stick, a wire fence or the tower of a mill?
Well, these are precisely the sounds, the music and the metaphors that take us back to those times with emotion. The sound of the stirrup against the bones of the horse’s hand, the creaking of the bit, the noise of the chewed bridle and the chin strap, etc. I could listen to or make music for example with the whistle or the rattle of a steam train, but that wouldn’t make the same sense to me as it would to someone who lived his childhood in that scenario, for me it would be combining sounds like someone who combines words at random.
I think art is about saying something new or in a new way that we need to say.
In a way we could say that art always tries to tell a story. These familiar and endearing noises of the countryside are music with a deep meaning, with a deep significance for those of us who experience them.
I believe that even the highest exercises of intellect in music and poetry, such as the works of Borges and Piazzola, aspire to and achieve emotion, not the mere expression of erudition that combines sounds mechanically.
Our country noises that strike the soul are both disruptive and nostalgic…
I hope you enjoy these works.
▌Wilson Saliwonczyk
▌DECEMBER — 2023
