* a work in progress album *
Armida Records 11-090824
artist: AILEM CARVAJAL composer
AILEM CARVAJAL (1972-)
GOTAS for solo tape (1996) (Ǝkos)
Ailem Carvajal‘s first composition to experiment with sound manipulation was “GOTAS” (1996). Inspired by Pierre Schaeffer‘s acousmatic experience, she recorded six drops and used various techniques to transform them into a piece lasting over six minutes. This piece, composed for tape in Havana at the EMEC – a studio for electroacoustic and computer music founded by her teacher Carlos Fariñas – was one of her early works. It laid the groundwork for her future electroacoustic compositions, establishing the soundscape that Carvajal blends into the enduring and ever-present memory of Havana.
Marta Rodríguez Cuervo (Musicologist)
Complutense University of Madrid (UCM)
AILEM CARVAJAL (1972-)
SILHOUETTES – Behind Ana Mendieta’s Footprints (Ǝkos)
For solo tape (2019)
Duration: 11’.20’’
Like a physical-sonorous scream, it seeks to approach the art of Ana Mendieta.
“SILHOUETTES – Behind Ana Mendieta’s Footprints“, pays tribute to the artist Ana Mendieta. It explores the process of displacement, transforming traces into actions and creating bridges that unite and connect. It recreates and permeates certain symbols and aspects of Afro-Cuban ritual practices. The electroacoustic fabric combines and incorporates elements of nature, ritual chants, body sounds, and Afro-Cuban percussive rhythms of Yoruba and Bantu origin, associated with the primitive and sacrificial rituals of Cuban spiritism. The dialogic combinations of brief, fluid gestures – regrouped and fragmented – amalgamate into a true heterophonic texture, rich in overlapping contrapuntal elaborations.
Winner of the CINTAS Fellowship Award in the USA in 2012
World premiere at the Havana International Festival of Contemporary Music, November 8, 2019
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Composed at Electroacoustic and Computer Music Studio (EMEC) – University of the Arts (Cuba)