Скачать или смотреть Ricardo Teruel & Jacques Broquet - Pobre Música Electrónica Pobre (1983 Venezuela, Experimental)

These are obscure experimental recordings from the 80's by Venezuelan musician and composer Ricardo Teruel accompanied by choreographer Jacques Broquet. The pieces consist of vocal interpretations of electronic music and reveal another forgotten piece of the avant-garde music history of Venezuela. Read the entire story about this South-American electronic music oddity below.

Ricardo Teruel was one of the first composers to join the re-established Institute of Phonology in 1983 that was originally established in 1971 by Venezuelan composer Antonio Estevéz. Estevéz started working with electronic music in Paris during the early 60's at the studio's of Pierre Schaeffer. During his time in Paris he also became friends with famous Venezuelan kinetic artist Jesús Soto. Estevéz was one of the only Venezuelan composers to work with electro-acoustic composition and musique concrète in those times. Later on he also composed concrete music for the Venezuelan pavillion at the 1967 World Expo of Montréal, Canada.

There is no offical cover artwork for this music by Ricardo Teruel so I decided to add some pictures of Venezuela's 60's and 70's modernist architecture and of the urban culture of Caracas of the 80s to this video. The cassette brand Sonotek was the main Venezuelan company that manufactured cassettes. The recording is taken from Archive.org (under Creative Commons license 4.0).

Información en Español: https://archive.org/details/RT004

Ricardo Teruel: https://rtcompositor.blogspot.com/

Tracklist:
01 - 00:00 - Pobre Música Pobre 1 (Versión Original con Himno)
02 - 14:12 - Pobre Música Pobre 2
03 - 26:57 - Es Inevitable

In English:
"In 1983 the State Foundation for the Youth Orchestra of Venezuela (F.E.S.N.O.J.I.V.) recovered the Institute of Phonology, an electronic music laboratory founded by Venezuelan composer Antonio Estévez in 1971 with the support of the Simón Bolívar Center.

A year earlier I attended the FESNOJIV call for composers who would be interested in composing electronic music in the laboratory to which they also had the 'Contemporary Music Ensemble' at their disposal. No payment was offered. I prepared a project to develop a work for a small instrumental group for a camera and recorded electronic sounds called: "No es seria(l)". I composed the work as an instrumental, without electronic resources. I received no response.

Eduardo Kusnir, an Argentinian composer based in Venezuela, was appointed director of the new Institute of Phonology and (I no longer remember how) he proposed me to participate with a work for the final concert of the first year of the Electroacoustic Music Workshop that was coming up.

At that time I had been able to acquire a Portastudio Fostex 250 with a four-track cassette (recorder and mixer) as a first step to do my personal electronic music studio. I had no budget for synthesizers, computers, effects processors, ... not even for microphones of medium quality.

Since 1981 I had been working with the contemporary dance company "Danzahoy" as an accompanying improvising pianist and composer and got to know Jacques Broquet. He was a dancer, choreographer as well as as percussionist of the company. He had a feeling for experimental creative projects and a similar sense of shared humor.

We decided to accept Eduardo Kusnir's proposal, but due to the limited resources and as a reaction to the little interest that was shown by FESNOJIV in stimulating the production of works at the Institute of Phonology, we performed an electronic music work without electronic sounds or processing. With our voices we imitated electronic sounds, used allusive texts and recorded our mockery in the middle of it all that we recorded with a walkman. We also incorporated some sounds from everyday objects and edited fragments of the national anthem of Venezuela in the original version.

The work is structured in the form of sketches and in the live presentation we incorporated gestures and actions (Tai Chi movements that were transformed into catching or killing mosquitoes, rubbing plastic candy bags rhythmically, gesturing like giving a speech ...). In one section, with Jacques on congas and me on the piano, we improvised in a language more akin to jazz and salsa practically denying electronic music.

Eduardo asked us not to use the part of the national anthem, since our intentions could be misinterpreted and hurt susceptibilities (and there is a criticism of empty nationalism and the imposition of national chains ... yes, 1983 ...). We prefer to be prudent."
Ricardo Teruel 2016