Episode 17 of the TIMEZONES podcast series, co-initiated and co-produced by Norient and the Goethe-Institut. This episode looks into artistic ruptures and subjectivities in Lima, Perú, forged during a period of authoritarianism, economic recession, and widespread social hopelessness to understand the cyclical nature of Peruvian politics. It revisits the Peruvian subte (underground) scene, which created a space for young people to channel their frustrations through music.

Consulte Bandcamp para acceder a las versiones español-inglés del podcast y la charla adicional.

In Lima, Perú, between the mid-1980s and late 1990s, countercultural artistic movements emerged amidst a complex social and political crisis, followed by internal armed conflict and the Fujimori-Montesinos dictatorship (1990–2000). These artistic movements have endured the years of dictatorship and will hopefully also resist the most recent shift to, once again, authoritarian Peruvian politics. Since December 2022, Perú faces a new government, led by Dina Boluarte in the presidency and Fujimori’s party in Congress.

In this context, this episode sheds light on Lima’s subte scene. It offers a critical intersectional perspective through the positions of academics who have researched the topic. It further delves into the theme of artistic dissidence through the voices of some of its protagonists, while exploring some of the unequal social structures that divide the city through an examination of the relationship of contemporary musicians and artists with the city of Lima.

→ full transcript of episode 17

Credits

A podcast by Ale Hop (Alejandra Cárdenas)

Co-initiated and co-produced by Norient and the Goethe-Institut

Featuring: Olga Rodriguez-Ulloa, Wicho García, Fabiola Bazo, Domingo de Ramos, Wilder Gonzales Agreda, Frau Diamanda, Javi Vargas Sotomayor Original music by Fil Uno (cello), Ale Hop (electronics)

Includes a bonus talk, moderated and produced by Alonso Almenara, featuring Luis Alvarado

Music featured in the podcast:
Narcosis: «La Peste»
Narcosis: «La danza de los cristales»
María Tta: «La desbarrancada»
Wilder Gonzales Agreda: «Scala»
Wilder Gonzales Agreda: «¡Me Llegas Al Pincho!»
Frau Diamanda & Black Pleura: «Escena Catalana 9»
Frau Diamanda & Bondage: «Escena Catalana 9»

Artistic Editor: Suvani Suri
Project Management: Hannes Liechti
Video Trailer: Karrl
Jingle Voiceover: Nana Akosua Hanson
Jingle Mix: Daniel Jakob
Mastering: Adi Flück, Centraldubs
Artwork: Šejma Fere
Copy Editing: Kathrin Hadeler

Listen on

→ Listen to further TIMEZONES episodes

Featured Artists

Olga Rodriguez-Ulloa is assistant professor in the Department of American Studies and the Latino Studies Program at Indiana University in Bloomington. Her book project Sadistic Cholas: Sex and Violence in Contemporary Peru explores the political resignification of the racial slur chola as it is now deployed by queer trans feminist performers, authors, and collectives. The book engages with ethnic studies hemispherically. She has published in e-flux, Latin American Literary Review, and e-misférica among others. She is also the co-editor of the volume Punk! Las Américas Edition (Bristol: Intellect, 2021). Follow her on Instagram or Facebook.

Wicho García is a Peruvian musician, singer-songwriter, and music producer. In the 1980s, Wicho was the vocalist of the emblematic underground punk rock band Narcosis with whom he released the cassette Primera dosis (1985). After the band’s dissolution, he was a keyboardist in the short-lived group, La Banda Azul. He then worked as a sound engineer for singer-songwriter Miki Gonzalez until the early 1990s, after which he became the vocalist of the pop-rock band Mar de Copas. As a producer, García has produced original music for TV and film, as well as dozens of Peruvian albums, including those by Campo de Almas, Diagonal Zero, El Aire, and Viejo Café. Follow him on Instagram or Facebook.

Fabiola Bazo is a PhD candidate and public scholar at the Social Justice Institute at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada. Her research calls attention to music as a gendered social activity in Perú. She is the author of Desborde Subterráneo, a history of punk made in Perú, as well as other articles that highlight feminist interventions in Peruvian popular music. Fabiola is an editor of subterock.com. Follow her on Instagram.

Domingo de Ramos (Ica, 1960) Peruvian poet and co-founder of the Kloaka Movement (1982–1984). One of the most important Peruvian poets of his generation. Ramos studied sociology at the Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos. He has published dozens of books, including: Poemas (1986), Arquitectura del espanto (1988), Pastor de perros (1993), Luna cerrada (1995), Ósmosis (1996, COPE Petroperú Poetry Award), Las cenizas de Altamira (1999), Erótika de Klase (2004, Erotic Poetry Award «Carlos Oquendo de Amat»), Pastor de perros (Antología) (2006), Dorada Apocalipsis (2008), Demolido Fuego (2010), Cartas desde la azotea (2011). Lima Pop (Italian-Spanish Bilingual Edition, 2012), Banda nocturna (2012), Los Salvajes del Sur (2018), El rock de los ilusos (2020), Carpeta de Cuarentena (2020), Muerte por el viento (2020), and Palabras secas (2021). Follow him on Facebook.

Wilder Gonzales Agreda (1977) participated in the shoegaze post rock scene of the mid-1990s, Crisálida Sónica. Since then, he has cultivated noise, spatial music, and minimalism in various projects. He founded the label Superspace Records in 2003, and the blog Perú Avantgarde, a platform dedicated to experimental music and countercultures, in 2004. He has published under his own name since 2006. He participated in the Aloardi Peruvian New Music & Arts Festival held at the WORM Institute (Rotterdam, The Netherlands) in 2017, and received financial sponsorship from the Peruvian Ministry of Culture during the 2020 pandemic. Follow him on Facebook, X, or Instagram.

Frau Diamanda (Héctor Acuña, Lima, 1971) is a translator, writer, audiovisual artist, drag performer, independent curator, cultural agent, DJ, and occasional actress of Peruvian origin based in Barcelona. Since 2016, she specializes in transgender art and multimedia performance. In 2017–2018, she completed the PEI Independent Program run by MACBA, and in 2020, she published her book Escenas Catalanas: errancias antropológico-sexuales (Catalan Scenes: Anthropological-Sexual Wanderings) with the publishing house La Máquina Barcelona. She also works with photography, video art, theories of transvestism, spoken word, and multimedia platforms. Follow her on Instagram or Facebook.

Javi Vargas Sotomayor (Huancayo, 1972) is a visual artist, cartoonist, creator of cosmoses, audiovisual director, musician, and writer. He teaches theory and artistic practice. Since 1999, he has participated in several exhibitions, seminars, and interventions in Perú, Argentina, Mexico, Paraguay, Panama, and Spain. In his works, he seeks to expose images and dynamics to view that make other worlds possible, intersecting archeo-astronomy, topography, transfeminism, interspecies queer animality, Andean mythology, history, and ecology. He transits and explores different media such as photography, engraving, digital graphics, performance, drawing, short film, music, sound, and poetry. In 2021, he won the Contemporary Art Competition ICPNA. Since 2019, his work has been part of the permanent collection of the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía (MNCARS) in Madrid and, since 2022, the permanent collection of MALI (Museo de Arte de Lima). Follow him on his blog or Instagram.

Fil Uno (Lima, 1982) is a cellist, composer, orchestra conductor, and performer, who currently resides between Mexico City and Lima. Since 2015, he operates as a solo artist exploring both the technical and intuitive sides of the cello. The results of this research are captured in the album Violonchelo Solo (2016). The artist has collaborated with dozens of artists, providing original music for visual arts, dance, theater, performance, fashion, and film projects, in Norway, England, Botswana, Latvia, Germany, Spain, Portugal, Italy, the United States, Perú and elsewhere. Moreover, Fil Uno is the founder of the Sensualtrip record label, which promotes the production of significant artistic, audiovisual, film projects, as well as concerts, festivals, and artistic residencies. Follow him on Instagram, Facebook, SoundCloud, Bandcamp, or Spotify.

Bonus Talk

Precariousness and Globalization: The Sounds of the Lima Underground Scene
moderated and produced by Alonso Almenara

Alejandra Cárdenas and Luis Alvarado, two of the most prominent figures of the Lima underground music scene, join Peruvian journalist Alonso Almenara in a discussion about the current state of experimental music-making in the Peruvian capital.

Luis is a curator, a musician, and the director of the Lima-based record label Buh Records. Better known as Ale Hop, Cárdenas is an experimental musician currently living in Germany; her latest album, Agua Dulce (a collaboration with the cajonera Laura Robles) has received critical acclaim. Together, they discuss recent developments in Lima’s musical life, such as the creation of the collectives Deshumanización (which brings together experimental and free improv musicians) and Retama (a collective of women composers). They also look at the role of the trans community in these events, and the activities of music labels such as Buh Records, and of spaces such as Fundación Telefónica, Casa Bagre, and Proyecto AMIL. Finally, our guests reflect on the international connections of this scene, as well as its limitations in terms of financial autonomy and government support.

Luis Alvarado (Lima, 1980) studied audiovisual communication at the Pontifical Catholic University of Perú. He is an independent curator and researcher focused on art and sound, as well as on experimental music. He is the director of the record label Buh Records, which has made significant contributions to the historical archiving of avant-garde and experimental music from Perú and Latin America. As a curator, he has organized various documentary exhibitions, including Resistencias: primeras vanguardias musicales en el Perú (2006), Inventar la voz: nuevas tradiciones orales (2009), and Hacer la audición: Encuentros entre arte y sonido en el Perú (2016). He also manages centrodelsonido.pe, a digital archive of Peruvian sound art, and is involved in the development of centralamazonica.pe, a website dedicated to archiving Amazonian popular music. Follow him on Instagram.

Alonso Almenara (Lima, 1982) studied audiovisual communication at the Pontifical Catholic University of Perú. He is a journalist, communicator, and cultural critic who has written about music and visual arts for publications such as El Comercio, Caretas, Ojo Dorado, and The Wire. His recent articles on contemporary classical music can be found at centrodelsonido.pe, and his interviews with photographers are published at Vistprojects.com. He is one of the authors included in the book Sabor peruano: Travesías musicales (Editorial Universidad de Guadalajara, 2021). Follow him on Instagram.

Playlist

A playlist with recently released music from Lima, Perú, covering a wide musical spectrum from psych to electronics to experimental electroacoustic compositions, and more. Curated by Ale Hop.

Trailer

by Karrl