La venganza del agua / The Vengeance of Water
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The creative thought of Costa Rican composer, scholar, singer, and multi-instrumentalist Susan Campos-Fonseca (b. 1975) is expansive and incommensurable. It is committed to the earth and emanates from it. Campos-Fonseca’s origin, her family, and her home lie at the foothills of the Turrialba Volcano; just like the volcano, her creative drive is powerful and explosive. The strength that sustains her inventiveness springs from a cry for justice, a call to respect humans and nonhumans, and to achieve a harmonious fellowship among species transiting from material and spiritual worlds.
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Campos-Fonseca presents her music as an offering to nature’s perfect design and as homage to indigenous epistemologies and cosmologies. As an expansive force, her creativity is not centered in herself, but rather opens space for the creativities of those with whom she collaborates: musicians, scientists, activists, and artists. This particular project functions as a point of convergence for a handful of brilliant minds: harpsichordist María Clara Vargas Cullell, multimedia artist Julián De La Chica, visual artist José Pablo Ureña, French horn player Luis Alfaro Bogantes, and pianist David Saravia Bolívar. Thanks to Campos-Fonseca’s initiative, this group is invited to envision and produce sonic worlds where individual and collective transformation is made possible.
This album includes a new version—a permutation—of the piece Esfinge (Sphinx), from 2016, premiered by harpsichordist María Clara Vargas-Cullell and sound artist Ronald Bustamante as part of the project ClaveciNoise. Recorded in 2021, this modular piece for solo harpsichord grants liberty to the performer to choose the order of the musical material written on the score. The piece, which in the composer’s words is “minutely fragile and wild,” unfolds in a crystalline and hypnotizing texture. As a point of reference, Campos-Fonseca alludes to a poem by Costa Rican artist Héctor Burke:
La esfinge calla
en su lítica armonía.
Los astros. La brisa.
Un hombre que yace
con su cabeza en el infinito,
la mirada abstraída,
sin ventanas.
(Translation)
The sphinx falls silent
in its lithic harmony.
The stars. The breeze.
A man who rests
his head into infinity,
his gaze absorbed,
without windows.
(Translation by Ana Alonso Minutti)
Tracklist:
01. Quesintuu & Umantuu
02. Kä Nague
03. Refugio
04. Esfinge
05. La creación sin mañana
06. La venganza del agua
In her alluring interpretation, Vargas-Cullell captivates our senses by expanding our expectations of the harpsichord’s timbre capabilities; it is as if the instrument’s manuals are an extension of her arms. Performer and instrument embody the sphinx alluded in the piece’s title.
Susan Campos - Fonseca
Photo: Self-Portrait
La creación sin mañana (The Creation Without Tomorrow), from 2020, is a piece for harpsichord with noise machine (both operated by the harpsichordist), two trumpets, four horns, piano, string orchestra, and percussion ensemble. It was commissioned by the University of Costa Rica’s Symphony Orchestra, directed by Alejandro Gutiérrez, and dedicated to María Clara Vargas Cullell.
This piece offers a rich exploration of timbres produced by seemingly disparate sonic elements. The unconventional use of traditionally orchestral instruments and the incorporation of a noise machine controlled by Vargas-Cullell produce a sonic platform where the acoustic and the electronic fuse. Although the challenge of erasing the porous line that divides acoustic and electronic sounds has been present in music composition for more than half a century, it appears renewed in this work. Noise exploration is the unifying thread that Campos-Fonseca uses to connect artisanal craft and musical craft. The noise machine used in this piece was created specifically for the composer by the experimental enterprise De La Puta Electronics, founded by Bolivian sound artist Cristina Collazos and music producer Ricardo Schnidrig.
Manzanillo Beach, Costa Rica (2021)
Photo by Bárbara Campos-Fonseca
La creación sin mañana is a sound meditation that offers performers and listeners an opportunity to immerse themselves in the composer’s aesthetic proposal. This proposal is characterized by a fierce commitment to the earth and the natural elements that surround the territory she calls home. Moreover, it is driven by a relentless exploration of disruptive sonic techniques and technologies. As a result, the ears of those who engage in Campos Fonseca’s proposal are redirected to an alternative—decolonizing—way of listening.
“Noise exploration is the unifying thread that Campos-Fonseca uses to connect artisanal craft and musical craft. The noise machine used in this piece was created specifically for the composer by the experimental enterprise De La Puta Electronics, founded by Bolivian sound artist Cristina Collazos and music producer Ricardo Schnidrig.”
This trajectory across Campos-Fonseca’s immeasurable and expansive creativity concludes with the piece that gives the album its title, La venganza del agua (The Vengeance of Water), from 2021, performed by the composer at the piano, harpsichordist Vargas-Cullell, and visual artist José Pablo Ureña.
The title of the piece alludes to the natural elements’ response to the extractivism propagated by colonialism; the continuous abuse and exploitation of the land. Within a localized frame, Campos-Fonseca alludes to the regular overflowing of the Turrialba River that furiously demolishes human settlements that disturb its course.
Gandoca Beach, Costa Rica 2022
Photo by Susan Campos - Fonseca
La venganza del agua is built upon the use of graphic notation and a significant degree of improvisation. The intensity of the piece demands of performers great physical strength. This tour de force for piano, harpsichord, and live drawing (granting a percussive texture) offers a disturbing sound platform from where listeners are invited to adopt alternative ways of listening and thinking. The water’s fury, captured sonically in the piece, is a call to respect the biological and geological diversity that surround us. If we don’t respect the earth, the earth will impose respect on us.
Ana Alonso Minutti, PhD
University of New Mexico
Links:
Susan Campos-Fonseca on Instagram
Ana Alonso Minutti on Instagram
Ana Alonso Minutti Official website
Irreverence Group Music on Instagram