While the world is on pause, the music plays on. Listen to a wild Norient mixtape by Chico Dub, curator of the In/Out Festival. It reflects the marginalized music scenes in South America affected by the coronavirus, from endangered local street musicians to native communities, and transgender activist groups.
The idea behind this mixtape is to showcase a glimpse of contemporary South American experimental music that was showcased at the In/Out Festival, from club aesthetics to experimental music, from electroacoustic, ambient, and noise to improv.
Many chosen artists participated in the festival. I don’t intend to cover the entire universe that happens in this gigantic, chaotic, exciting, and seething part of the world, but it is undoubtedly an invitation to further immersion. If it piques your interest, the game has been won. Even if recorded on software, it is an old style mixtape: Done in an improvised way, in a single take, assuming and not hiding the mixing errors.
1.
Artist: Pininga
Track: Freakção
Album: V/A – C LACRAIA ESTIVESSE VIVA (Tormenta, 2020)
Simultaneously building global connections with Staycore, GHE20G0TH1K, Parkingstone, Hiedrah, and N.A.A.F.I., and local ties with artists Linn da Quebrada and Teto Preto, the Tormenta Collective co-creator Eduardo Pininga – now calling himself EPX – stands as a crucial actor in the Brazilian contemporary club culture.
This track was taken from a great introduction to what’s going on in the country. C LACRAIA ESTIVESSE VIVA is a 50 plus collaborative album, for which all the proceeds go to LGBTQI+ NGOs and Brazilian marginalized projects.
2.
Artist: Ventura Profana y Podeserdesligado
Track: Eu Não Vou Morrer
Album: TRAQUEJOS PENTENCOSTAIS PARA MATAR O SENHOR (self released, 2020)
«I’m not going to die» sings Ventura Profana, a composer, evangelist singer, writer, performer, and visual artist raised in Baptist temples in Brazil. Calling herself a missionary, her practice is rooted in researching the implications and methodologies of deuteronomism in Brazil and abroad, through the spread of neo-Pentecostal churches. Production duties belong to Pode Ser Desligado, a Live PA project by artist and performer Jhonnata Vicente that questions the limited access of Black people to equipment to produce music in Brazil.
3.
Artist: Radio Diaspora & Ba Kimbuta
Track: A Prova De Balas
Album: Radio Diaspora & Ba Kimbuta (Sê-lo, 2018)
Radio Diaspora is a free jazz/improv duo formed by Romulo Alexis on the trumpet and Wagner Ramos on the drums. This track («A Prova de Balas» means «Bullet Proof») is a collaborative piece with rapper, musician, and Black movement activist Ba Kimbuta. The link with In/Out comes from the Sê-lo netlabel, an offshoot of Bahia’s CMC series on contemporary music events.
4.
Artist: Tantão & Os Fita
Track: Piorou
Album: Piorou (QTV, 2020)
One of Rio de Janeiro’s highlights, Tantão & Os Fita combines the minimal raw and rascous poetry of the underground icon Tantão (those affiliated with Brazil’s post punk might remember him from Black Future lelend) with the crooked punk beats from duo Os Fita formed by Abel Duarte and Cainã Bomilcar. Another joint not directly linked to the festival (the QTV label was born from Audio Rebel venue), the Tantão & Os Fita Live show is the exact catharsis you want for yourself in a free COVID-19 world.
5.
Artist: Gaona-García-Vargas-García-Valencia
Track: Correspondencia II
Album: Medio día en tu orilla (TVL, 2020
This track is taken from «medio día en tu orilla», an In/Out Festival project now transformed into an album. Proposed by Colombia’s Festival Mujeres en la Música Nueva, it is a collaborative exploration of communication, improvisation, and performing at a distance.
6.
Artist: Ale Hop
Track: The Life Of Insects
Album: The Life Of Insects (Buh, 2020)
We didn’t have anything coming from Peru in the festival and that was total shame. That’s why I chose to include a track that could represent such a broad, rich, and eclectic scene. Based in Berlin, Alejandra Cárdenas, aka Ale Hop, is probably – together with another Berlin resident, the Colombian Lucretia Dalt – my favorite electroacoustic artist with pop sensibilities.
7.
Artist: Ana Maria Romano
Track: El Suelo Desde El Viento
Album: VA – AUSTRAL (NÓTT, 2019)
Continuing into more atmospheric territory, now comes the legend Ana Maria Romano, one of the most important composers in South America. She is also incredibly fluent in the questions and intersections between gender and sexualities from feminist perspectives, mostly perhaps through En Tiempo Real, a feminist platform focused on artistic, educational, and editorial processes around the encounters between sound and technology.
8.
Artist: WRACK, Aggromance & Desdel Barro
Track: Cadena Riddim
Album: Travesía (Hiedrah, 2020)
Through an open call for works, In/Out got many incredible proposals that unfortunately we could not include. One of those came from Argentina’s Hiedrah, who, like Tormenta and Salviatek, combines all kinds of roots rhythms with global club influences. They say that they «promote the singularity of identity and cultural minorities in Latin America in order to create a new libertarian policy concerning the joy of bodies. We are not the same: We are boosted by our differences».
9.
Artist: Rasenk & Pobvio
Track: Anty
Album: Latido (Salviatek, 2020)
Uruguayan Producers Pobvio (Felipe Lobato) and Lechuga Zafiro (Pablo de Vargas) are Salviatek’s dons, Montevideo’s label and party that references the past while facing the future. Their mix of cumbia, reggaeton, baile funk, techno, and the local candombe rhythm aims to decolonize the music and its associated Latino culture.
10.
Artist: Emma Harumi
Track: Muxe
Album: Tanabata (self released, 2020)
I discovered both Emma Harumi and CNTV (check track #15 on the mixtape) after the In/Out collaboration with Argentinian Plataforma Lodo. Emma Harumi is a producer, DJ, multi-instrumentalist, and trans activist born in Mar del Plata, Argentina, now living in San Telmo, Buenos Aires.
«Muxe» was taken from Tanabata, a compilation of old records produced between 2015–17. The name is a reference to a Japanese festival originating from the Chinese Qixi Festival. Both celebrate the annual meeting of the stars Orihime and Hikoboshi, which represent, in the album concept, the female and male energies.
10.
Artist: Genosidra
Track: Ruin
Album: Ruin (TVL, 2020)
Carlos Eduardo Quebrada Vásquez, aka Genosidra, is a Colombian musician born in Bogotá, now settled in Buenos Aires. Since 2009, he has been a relevant figure in Argentine and Colombian contemporary creative music and avant-jazz scene. Using electric bass, cassette recorder, and voice, the core of Quebrada’s sound is the search for an identity.
Labels are always a great primer for new discoveries. One of my favorites is Quebrada’s TVL REC, a record label with more than 15 albums published, encompassing experimental and new music by artists from Latin America and a monthly series of concerts since 2016 in Roseti, one of the most significant venues in Buenos Aires.
11.
Artist: Elpueblodechina
Track: Microconcierto Vol. XIV
Single: Acéfalo, 2020
Acéfalo Records is a production label and company, created in 2001 by the Chilean musician Luis Toto Alvarez. After initially publishing its own projects, the company went on to collaborate with other artists and also to develop projects, productions, tours, residencies, and the Acéfalo Festival.
Recorded Live in Acéfalo Microconciertos series, here is an extract from noisemaker, sound artist, and cultural activist Alejandra Pérez, aka Elpueblodechina, who is featured in CAB’s In/Out project.
12.
Artist: Badsista
Track: Soca Sem Parar feat. Mc Morena
Single: self released, 2020
Back to the dance side of things, (Rafaela) Badsista is one of the most prominent club-baile-funk infused producers from Brazil and South America. Also tied with star Linn da Quebrada, she has been DJing everywhere, from homecity São Paulo to Berlin’s Berghain and Jinja, Uganda, at the Nyege Nyege Festival. On this track, Badsista gives a different take on «Soca Sem Parar» (the original is by Brega Funk), that is a slightly reggaeton-ish new version of the Rio/São Paulo baile funk rhythm.
13.
Artist: Verraco
Track: +Decodification__
Album: Grial (Insurgentes, 2020)
Programmed between Medellín and Barcelona over the course of two years, this piece (and the whole Grial album) explores the concepts of mestizo and its «impurity». Rejecting the notion of a singular Latinx musical identity, Verraco paints his own vision of South American IDM, blending perreo, jungle ambiance, and mountainous Andes braindance.
14.
Artist: CNTV
Track: Movimiento 1 – Apertura
Album: Hipocampo (self released, 2017)
I wanted to include two ambient soundscapes since the genre has been in its heyday since the late 1970s. The first is by Emiliano Montenegro (A.K.A CNTV), who developed a concept close to The Caretaker (Leyland James Kirby) one: The conception of memory and the recesses of a person.
15.
Artist: Lem
Track: Abyssus Abyssum Invocat
Album: En el fin del mundo, hasta el fin del mundo (EMA, 2020)
The second one is by Lem, an ambient/post rock Chilean duo formed by Ottavio Berbakow and Oscar Burotto, active since the late 1990s. Together with two others – Juan Pablo Claro and Marcelo Buscaglia – they created EMA, a production and booking company that is now a label.
16.
Artist: Abençoada
Track: Playing Victims In A Mala Terra
Single: Self released, 2017
Ambient can be so beautiful and beatific, but we needed to finish things in a more violent way and as a warning sign. Abençoada is the more dancefloor oriented moniker from Bartira, who collaborated with the CMC project within In/Out.
