Born in Asturias, Spain, Ernesto Paredano is a composer and artist living in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. Paredano @paredano has also developed a great career as a musical creative director in the field of cinema. He studied music through the Asturian gaita; this instrument, as well as the traditional music of this region, was losing visibility and attention. Later, as a professional musician, he initiated a process of research and recording of songs and sounds with traditional instruments in very remote villages and “brañas” in Asturias. This interest in rescuing and preserving a cultural heritage continued later with the recording of the sound of the “turullo”, which is a large seashell used by the Vaqueiros de Alzada (a community of transhumant shepherds) to communicate between brañas (high, steep places in the mountains).
“Territorio (sonico)” is a tropical papers project, which proposes an investigation of the collection of recordings of music, interviews, instruments and voices made by Oswaldo Lares in the 60s and 80s in rural Venezuela. The Lares archive is an exhaustive compilation of sounds and a cultural testimony of inestimable richness.
Within the framework of its residency programme, tropical papers has extended an invitation to Ernesto Paredano to work on this archive, which gives an insight into the political, social and economic panorama of rural Venezuelan communities. By preserving and activating the sounds of the original instruments and voices (particularly the female ones) and highlighting the importance of testimonies that question through music the recent cultural, social and political history of a country, the archive becomes not only a pedagogical and historical tool, but also a source for the creation of new sounds and narratives.
Ernesto Paredano worked on this project during his residency in tropical papers (2020-2022) and was accompanied by: Guillermo Lares (director ArchivOlares, Venezuela) in the archival research process; María Inés Rodríguez and Mariana Vieira in the curatorship and production.
“Territorio (sonic)” has been presented at Museo Amparo, Puebla Mexico in November 2022; and at TEA, Canarias in 2023.
https://museoamparo.com/exposiciones/piezas/269/territorio-sonico-ernesto-paredano
https://archivolares.org/#home
POSTED: @tropicalpapers_ 28.12.2022 – 25.01.2023