One of the biggest challenges I found when attempting to discuss this topic is coming up with a precise definition of the music that I am referring to. Contemporary, improvised, experimental, academic, electroacoustic, popular, traditional; this plethora of labels are always tricky to use, and they usually bring up more questions than answers, yet there are three main musical practices that I have chosen to discuss, or at least chosen to include in the title of this essay: ‘contemporary academic’, ‘experimental’, and ‘improvised’. To define the latter, I will refer to George Lewis, who explains that “improvisation is neither a style of music nor a body of musical techniques” but defines ‘improvised music’ as “a social location inhibited by a considerable number of present-day musicians, coming from diverse cultural backgrounds and musical practices, who have chosen to make improvisation a central part of their musical discourse.” (Lewis, 1996) The conveniency of this definition will become apparent once we take a look at the diversity of musicians and musical practices that have embraced improvisation in the city of Bogotá and how this has enriched these practices and forged a particular attitude towards musicking.

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With regard to ‘experimental music’, I reproduce here the definition proposed by Ana R. Alonso-Minutti, Eduardo Herrera and Alejandro L. Madrid in their introduction to the book Experimentalisms in practice: music perspectives from Latin America, titled “The practices of experimentalism in Latin@ and Latin American music”. The authors consider that “the experimental character of any musical practice lies precisely within the practice itself; that is to say, experimentalisms are performative utterances that coalesce as such when practitioners act in experimental ways within the boundaries of their particular context.” (Alonso-Minutti et al., 2018). This allows for a local view on experimental music in Bogotá; it is not experimental music as compared to western Europe or the U.S.A, it is music that can be considered experimental within the Colombian context, and musicians who practice this experimentalism as part of a musical community that is deeply rooted in their city and country.

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Finally, regarding ‘contemporary academic music’, I will turn to the definition provided by the Círculo Colombiano de Música Contemporánea CCMC (Colombian Circle for Contemporary Music), an association that will be further discussed later in this text, and which in its statutes has stated that:

 

Contemporary academic music is understood as all repertoire created from the second half of the 20th century onwards, linked to the academic music tradition (also known as classical, art or concert music). This includes acoustic music (vocal and instrumental), electroacoustic and mixed music, genres such as experimental music, sound art, free improvisation, and its use for other artistic fields such as dance, audio-visual art, theatre, and others. (CCMC, 2010)

 

This definition has been adopted throughout the country to refer to the western academic music tradition in Colombia, which Acosta says has been constant throughout Latin America for the last five centuries; a tradition that “belongs to us as much as speaking Spanish”, as opposed to some views that consider that this musical practice is a tradition from elsewhere, that has been imposed and has no roots in Latin American culture (Castro Espejo & Almenara, 2021). Composer Daniel Leguizamón, another founding member of the CCMC, attributes this to a narrow vision of the complexity of cultural processes and regrets that “we still hear the classical music that we do in Latin America being referred to as an imported, borrowed phenomenon, and even an imposed one” (CCMC [XI Jornadas de Música Contemporánea CCMC - 2021], 2020). However, the attempt of the definition to also encompass experimental and improvised music, among others, is not something I completely agree with, as intertwined as they may be. For this reason I will continue to refer to academic contemporary, experimental and improvised music as distinct things.

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