Kipú (listen), 2021
Francisco J. Rivas (Tito Rivas)
Phonography, sound field composition
14:06 min.
In a phonography we face a sonorous writing, a process of inscription that fixes on a surface the outline not only of a sonority, but also of the act of listening from which it emerges. Although it can be said that it is the machine —the phonograph— that hears, it is also possible to sense through it the experience of the listener, the eagerness, and instincts of the one who comes close trying to know about a reality in an aural way. In the phonograph what is written is the relief of an experience and within it is founded the gesture in which we communicate through the sinuous contour of the sonorous forms. Not an "aura" (as W. Benjamin would impose on these artifacts of the age of technical reproducibility) but perhaps an aurality, a device, a dispositif that emerges through listening with a specific sense of belonging and meaning.
In this phonography I have tried an aural approach to the Raramuri culture. The work is composed from field recordings made by the author in the Sierra Tarahumara and the re-use of archival sound documents, including the first phonographic testimony recorded in Mexico, made by the ethnographer Carl Lumholtz during his explorations in the area in 1898.
In the work are spliced recordings from three different temporalities that provide a window into the sonorities of the Raramuri people. Without altering the original recordings as possible, the composition invites to get immersed in that sound world.
Kipú is the Raramuri word that means “listening”. This work tries to open a space for this listening, a resonant place that would detaches from silence some form of communication.
F. Tito Rivas
Recorded on location in the Sierra Tarahumara, Chihuahua, Mexico, 2011, 2015.
Additional recordings extracted from:
Paisajes Sonoros de Chihuahua, Tito Rivas, Peter Avar and Erick Ruiz. Instituto Chihuahuense de Cultura, Fonoteca Nacional, Radio Berlin Brandenburg, 2015.
Mexico, Western Sierra Madre, tarahumare indians. Thick groove cylinder recording by Carl Lumholtz. Indiana University, Archives of Traditional Music, 1898.
Sonidos del México Profundo: Pascolas y matachines de la Sierra Tarahumara. INI-RAD-II-6 (XETAR), 1985.
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