Sound check: MAC opens first sound lab in the island.

All the girls and ghouls of Halloween came out an evening earlier to prowl the angry streets of Santurce, but rest assured that these denizens of the night weren’t seeking to scare the wits out of city walkers; they just showed up to listen to the sounds emanating from a museum.

Last Saturday, the Contemporary Arts Museum (MAC Spanish acronym) unveiled its latest addition: the sonoMAClab, a gallery dedicated to sonic exploration and experimentation and the first of its kind in the island. To commemorate such a momentous (if not underappreciated) occasion, the museum is hosting a series of sound art sessions throughout November, the first of which was a night dedicated to composer/theorist/mycologist John Cage, field recordings and performing arts.

But first, how does a history teacher end up becoming a sonic-savvy aesthete? Well, Andrés Lugo Cruz doesn’t know how, but he sure knows the why of being the lab’s curator. “I’ve always liked minimalist music  and it just seemed logical for there to be  a sounds lab to explore sonic depths,” said Lugo Cruz. “I read up on sound art, sent a proposal, and before I knew it, we have the sonoMAClab.” Headlining other music art experiments such as the “Giratorio de Ekpresion”, Lugo Cruz set out to create an academic space for exploration and music gravitating towards the metaphorical art realm.

Wizzard Cretin Rock

The session kicked off a conference hosted by Prof. Nelson Rivera Rosario on John Cage’s contributions to the aural discipline followed by playback recordings of the likes of Brian Eno, Steve Reich and other avant-garde composers but he real show didn’t start until the first performance by duo René Sandín and Joel Rodríguez with their own brand of bubblegum art pop.Not the Phil Spector produced girl group twang of yesteryear, I’m talking about the literal sound of chewing gum. During the piece, the boys urged the audience to move towards a set of microphone and chew into them, producing a series of gnashing, biting masticating sounds in a stereo-field that would be later fed into and filtered through layers of feedback and modulation. It was a self-gestating piece, having the ice broken by its composers; the crowd flowed into the performance, growing all too aware of the floating harmonic gargle of pink gunk in people’s mouth. Concentration and attention was forced upon the unsuspecting, following the mantras of humming drones, being re-aware of reality through sonic appreciation. The chewing act was a piece in Buddhist contemplation as well as an appreciation of Cage, accepting and taking on the corporeal world but at the same time, destroying the integrity of the self by distorting and disassociating the sources of the pop and biting noises produced.

This piece segued into a dance sequence titled “Leyéndola hasta Xibalba” interpreted by dancer Cristina Lugo and local favorites Campo-Formio. Originally titled “The Xibalba Dance Propsal”, the band composed this piece of courtball trance through the Mayan underworld and had Lugo improvise to the pace of tonal vignettes. Oscillating between the sacrificial priestess of barbaric trials and tribulations and the tarnished beauty of Petroushka’s valentine, Lugo executed and convulsed through the chambers of torment in the Mayan underworld.  A classically trained ballerina, Lugo’s fluidity of joints and discipline over dance and her physical extensions epitomized the brutal human struggle in this realm and the next, shifting and reacting to the change of keys, counteracting the ultra-tight clockwork that is the band’s punishing mix of sinister bass lines, pounding drum rolls and the saccharine/cyanide tasty synth riffs with the bartering of a body freed of restriction, as thought the world had taken step of it. Campo-Formio brought their own brand of cretin rock to a wider artistic spectrum by connecting dialogues between the indian Salomé caught during the apocalyptic upheaval and the electric bards of the earth.  Much more harmonically formal that the previous gum incident, “Leyéndola hasta Xibalba” is not merely a rock n’ roll piece placed in a museum, it’s a collection of surrealistic musical instances discussing with ascendant vaults.

To tie off the evening, Prof. Nora Ponte and the University of Puerto Rico’s experimental music workshop interpreted Cage’s “Radio Music”, conducted by student Ricardo Villalón. The radiophony that ensued juggled between white noise, local news and top of pop charts classics in a sequence of transistor shuffles. “It’s difficult putting this type of music out there, since it’s still relevant even now,” said Ponte, who contextualized the piece in the local scenario, adding the island personalities and the gush of bad love songs sung by reggaeton artists and “rock en Español” faux troubadours.

Many a qualm was overheard saying “these pieces are outdated”, to unbelievers: I say nay. Though Cage’s ethos and temporal background is radically different than today’s, these sound artists have given a different face to compositions, incorporating to our local idioms and Caribbean narratives. Hardly anything nowadays is original, “avant-garde” is a word paraded like child model by its irresponsible parents, but what is still exciting about art (as the contemporary sensibilities tend to point tp) is its authenticity, and what can be more authentic than re-envisioning pieces under the white orbs of devotion that are local eyes?

Surprisingly, this type of soundscapes (of a more curious nature if thou wilt) fathomed well with the crowd. Perhaps it is that this generation is more open and more “epicurious” with its aural delicacies than past ages (in part because of the internet and information), but it’s great to see an interest in a different (yet still challenging) sonic scenario start to rise, especially in an island that has only a handful of truly adventurous musicians. If you’re still not convinced, the sonoMAClab is open to the public to make noise or art throughout this remaining season with activities more aural activities along the way.

For more information on the lab, please visit www.sonomaclab.blogspot.com