Sound Anthology: Program Notes

Electroacoustic music has a long and rich tradition in Latin America, despite the many instances of political and economic turbulence that the region has experienced throughout its existence. Without much public or private support, composers such as Maurico Kagel, Reginaldo Carvalho, Jorge Antunes, José Vicente Asuar, Juan Amenabar, Juan Blanco, Carlos Jiménez Mabarak, and Franciso Kröpfl, among many others, established the foundations of what is now a vibrant and active Latin American computer music community. Ricardo Dal Farra’s article in this special issue, which we encourage the reader to visit, provides a profound and important account of the development of this genre in the region. One interesting fact to emphasize is that, in an era when communications were not as rapid and abundant as they are today, the time gap between the first European compositions of musique concrète and electronic music and their Latin American counterparts was not very long. The first Latin American works, created by Kagel, date from the early 1950s, and in 1956 the first Chilean and Brazilian pieces were composed. This, we believe, is evidence suggesting that the history and advances of this genre in the Latin American regions are as rich and important as the better-known European or North American equivalents. Another important aspect of the computer music of Latin America