Universos Oscilantes

minicomponente · UNIVERSOS OSCILANTES (Snippet)

Universos Oscilantes - Experimental tribute to Aimé Painé

1.
Too much to say. We could elaborate on themes like colonizaton, identity and
culture; on territorial and political vindication, sung as a form of insurrection in the
younger generations of the Mapuche people. On the “sons of Lautaro” who
migrated to the city, working in construction sites and as servants of the white
people. But, not being myself part of the Mapuche culture, I would only be able to
talk almost exclusively from the outside, from a “half race”, that uncomfortable
position in the middle, undefined, where many us mestizos are found; that,
nevertheless, was noticeable enough so that they asked us about it; profound
enough to fell a cold shriek in our own flesh.

That is why I would not want this tribute to be merely aesthetic, a soft and nice
gesture for an obliging audience. It is a spiritual homage, but not tepid. It is
experimental, yes, due to the passage of that sacred song through the body, but it is
not an intellectual one, and in no way one made by a scholar. It is a sonic re-reading
of Aimé Painé: an orphan who was raised by winkas; a teenager raised in
Catholicism, who had her first experiences as a singer in the liturgical chorus of her
school; a young woman who, in search of her identity, returns to the indigenous
community, where she stays and becomes part of the Mapuche culture: she learns
the Taiel from the voice of the grandmothers, and sings it; a woman who, aJer
taking those songs to several stages, accompanied only by her kultrun, dies young,
without having ever recorded an album. A woman whose voice survived only in the
home-made recordings made by those who were closest to her, who stored them
carefully, only to have, years later, apocryphal audios going around in the Internet,
falsely atributed to her.

And this is a re-reading, as well, made from my own culture: the culture “in the
middle”, that unconformable, undefined place that, nevertheless, when traversed,
evokes –with the strength of the Taiel– a song of rebellion and pride, where we can
also hear the ashes of this dying regime.

2.
“Universos Oscilantes” is an experimental homage to Aimé Painé (1943-1987), a
Mapuche singer whose interpretations, the Taiel –sacred songs– were compiled in
the album “De lo profundo de la madre Tierra” (From the depths of Mother Earth) by
Don Juan Namuncurá.

To create this record I conducted an investigation that took me far from the movies
that have portrayed Aimé’s life, and into the importance of her singing and the
profound meaning that the sound has for the Mapuche people; from the
communi8es in the mountains to the “colonies”, the seQlements in the Patagonia
closest to the ocean, where the prejudice against the indigenous people is present to
this day.

I found the history of the rivers, the trees, the animals and the mountains, that
precede human language. In the Taiel, the sacred song, you can sing like the Luan –
the dear–, the Huala –the duck– or maybe the Ngürü –the fox– , and every song has
in it a bit of the spirit of each animal, and some of what the people want to
remember and honor. In the Taiel there are rumours of life and an inner song that is
one of a free man. Because the Mapuche believe that the life of each person is a
path to find your own Taiel. That is how I learned the one singing it in a circle is not
the best singer, but he who has the appropriate spirit to make the soul of the whole
community go forward.

In this album is found the result of this search. Together with female artists who I
invited to be part of these reinterpretations, we went in a journey back and forth
from our culture to the sonic heritage of a brave people, with the conviction that
there, in the culture of sound, dwell as well the imagina8on, the strength, and the
dignity to not be defeated.

Traducción al inglés: Horacio Ferro