Tensions at the Vanguard: New Music From Peru (1948 - 1979) Album

This new Pogus 2 CD compilation, curated by Luis Alvarado (writer, journalist, sound poet), presents some of the most important pieces of the Peruvian musical vanguard of the 1960’s and 70’s, offering a representative sample of works and composers from this important period in Peruvian music. This release also includes a 24-page booklet – in both Spanish and English – with an essay giving an overview of the works, the composers, and a brief musical and social history of Peru during this time. Thirteen works by thirteen different composers – 5 tape pieces and 8 instrumental works – give an excellent introduction to some fascinating composers who are known outside of Peru in varying degrees, if at all. These composers explored serial, electronic, electroacoustic, and aleatoric music during a time of tension between politics and the avant-garde in academic music in Latin America. The 1960s and 1970s were particularly difficult years for Latin American social movements, and a time when the concepts of vanguard, revolution and universalism enter into complex interactions. These works and their composers ask not how much experimentation occurred, but what the use of these techniques represent and to what extent did these musicians and their music engage critically with modernity?Our hope is that the listener will find some or all of these composers and their works of interest, and will further explore the music made by these fine composers as it hopefully becomes more available over time.