PROJECT INFO | VISUALS | STORY LINE | CREDITS
WHAT
SUMA is a yearly independent music festival organised by Staf Magazine and Moments Festival, each edition taking place in several different venues and museums throughout the city of Málaga.
On the occassion of its 2023's edition opening at the Museo Carmen Thyssen Málaga, I was commissioned with musicians Matías López "El Mati" and CaraduSanto to create an original sonovisual project: Cante Jondo Modulado a live session of visuals plus electronic music mixed with Cante Jondo and flamenco rhythms.
HOW
Visuals for Cante Jondo Modulado are conceptually linked to SUMA's claim "Utopian sounds from avant-garde Málaga" via two story lines:
01. FLAMENCO AND MEMORY
Málaga holds an important place in the development of Flamenco music's canonical sound and performance through its Cafés Cantantes, from which new, hitherto unknown styles from the province (Ronda, Álora, El Palo, the Axarquía) were also disseminated at the turn of the 19th to the 20th century.
02. STABLISHMENT'S REJECTION
The continuous erosion perpetrated by Málaga's cultural institutions against the cultural heritage and the labouring creative present of its local creators through low, meagre budgets for the production of shows, artists hiring and underpromotion.
SHOW'S POSTER Original photo by Jürgen Schadeberg
VISUALS
Visuals for Cante Jondo Modulado were created as a dreamlike journey made of videos, images and found footage that travel through:
Flamenco imaginery
A recreation of symbols about the People of the Road
The waves of the river, the dust of the road, the spout of the fountain that relieves thirst and cleanses body and clothes, full of arabesques... They are all images that symbolically speak about the perpetual movement of the gypsy nation, mercheros and nomads. All these tropes were funneled through a filter of destruction and glitch reconstruction to integrate them with the look & feel of the project.
Málaga flamenca
A cry against the erosion of cultural heritage
As a tribute to the locations, venues and people from Málaga who helped shaping an important part of Flamenco music, the names of relevant towns, artists and Cafés Cantantes are displayed on these visuals, the latter altogether with the names of some bars and cultural spots from the 1980s to the 2020s Málaga - many of them, closed in the post-COVID era after heavy harassment by the city council.
Memory and Málaga
A lost city seen through a dream
Through documentary images of the 1930s Málaga, a tribute is paid to its humble people, to a huge part of its disappearing urban landscape and to one of its most important popular events: the fiesta of the Verdiales - the latter, using found footage that spans from the 1950s to the second decade of the 21st century.
STORY LINE
Visuals for Cante Jondo Modulado evolved over three acts articulated by the verses of an original poem:
II Act
El Camino
Los vientos
nos traen y nos llevan
por caminos que conocemos
de oído
—
The winds
do bring and carry us
along paths we know
by ear
III Act
La fuente
Aunque el tiempo lo cubre todo
haciendo olvido, no quiebra su filo
el caño de la fuente
Ruido continuo, hondo
Sin Fin
—
Although time covers everything
with oblivion, cannot its edge
cut the fountain's spout
Deep, continuous
endless noise
El Mati + CaraduSanto + PRRMB's live performance for SUMA II was held on Wednesday, October 18, 2023 at the central patio of Museo Carmen Thyssen Málaga
This is a recreation of that live session
CREDITS
VISUALS*
Original concept _ PRRMB!
Words _ PRRMB!
Water waves, arabesques _ assorted .glsl snippets from Shadertoy community
Remixed Verdiales footage _ Fandango de Montes y Sancti-Petri, NO-DO archive. 1956 - 1976 | Rito y Geografía del Cante. De Ronda a Málaga. Direction Gómez, Mario. Scripting Turbica, Pedro. Velázquez-Gaztelu, José María. 1971. RTVE archive | Panda Baños del Carmen en La Ermita Verdiales. Direction, recording, edition Miguel Enfoka. 2011
Remixed 1930s Málaga footage _ Málaga 1930. Direction, recording, edition Laan, Dick. 1929-1930. Film restored by the Beeld en Geluid Foundation (Netherlands)
MUSIC*
Track _ Chile {martinete} (alt. version)
Composers & interpreters _ Matías López "El Mati" cante flamenco, electronic percussion | CaraduSanto electronic music
* In spite of having been cut, edited, modified, loosely translated and remixed, all sources (sounds, tunes, code snippets, pictures and videos) appearing in this piece have been used with the utmost respect - despite the will to create something completely new upon them.
PrRmB! (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 EN)
