Composer and improviser Melissa Vargas has been mentioned already as being one of the people at the forefront of the CCMC. She studied composition and arrangements at the Francisco José de Caldas District University’s ASAB School of Arts, where she also completed her Master’s degree in Artistic Studies. Besides being one of the most active composers in Bogotá, she has dedicated much of her academic, organizational, and creative efforts to the research and dissemination of music made by women composers and creators, especially in Latin America. Her interests have led get to organize the Festival Mujeres en la Música Nueva FMMN (Women in New Music Festival), a yearly festival dedicated to promoting and recognizing the work of women in contemporary academic and experimental music.

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The FMMN was born out of the festival Sonora – Festival Internacional de Compositoras, an international music festival originating in Brasil but taking place simultaneously in several cities around the world, that presents and promotes the music of women creators. In 2017 one of those cities was Bogotá, and the festival was curated and organized by Melissa Vargas and composer Michele Abondano. This became a sort of first edition of the FMMN, which one year later, once again through the efforts of Vargas and Abondano, was officially organized as the 2018 edition of the FMMN. For the next editions, composer Diana Margarita Ortiz joined the team, and currently the festival’s organizing team also includes musicians Leidy Montilla, Paula Bogotá and Laura García.  Throughout her research, Vargas noticed a great gap regarding music made by women: very poor documentation of women composers throughout the history of Colombian music, and an astoundingly low number of pieces by women composers being played and recorded in Colombia (by 2020, less than 2% of the repertoire performed in one year) (Universidad del Atlántico, 2020). To counter this, Vargas and her colleagues created the festival and started inviting women musicians to perform and to compose pieces for it. The second edition of the festival included a call for works which were then performed during the festival, and for the third version, in addition to the call for works, young women composers were commissioned to write pieces for an ensemble in residence. Despite the interruption due to the COVID-19 pandemic, the 2020 version took place online, but a 2021 edition was not possible. This year, the festival is back and has already closed a call for works for which they received 199 compositions by 160 women composers in 39 different countries. Given the absence of activities during 2021, the festival will have events throughout 2022, specially during the months of September, October, and November, as well as producing a Podcast series.

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Besides overseeing the FMMN, Melissa Vargas has also given multiple conferences and presentations on the topics of women creators, feminism, gender, and music, which can be accessed online, and has also created a blog called Compositoras y creadoras musicales/sonoras desde Colombia (women sound/music composers and creators from Colombia), were you can find the names and information of women composers in Colombia since the 19th century to present times, as well as available resources and bibliography on the subject.

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Another project related to the topic of women composers was Compositoras Reverberantes, a video series directed by María ‘Mange’ Valencia who in 2020 was invited by the Centro Cultural Moravia in Medellín to produce a video series about women composers in Colombia. ‘Mange’ selected composers of different backgrounds and generations: some already quite known after years of activity within the musical community and others younger, starting to develop their careers, but all living and working today either in Colombia or in different parts of the world.  The first two episodes of the series concentrate on ten contemporary academic music composers: Ana María Romano, Melissa Vargas, Violeta Cruz, Alba Fernanda Triana, Natalia Domínguez Rangel, Natalia Valencia, Paula Sofía Contreras, Carolina Noguera, Ana María Franco, and Diana Margarita Ortiz. For a third episode, ‘Mange’ chose to portray six women composers working outside of contemporary academic music and/or involved with other musical practices such as electronic/techno, punk, film scoring, traditional Colombian music and improvised music. The six composers were Natalia Castrillón, Maria Elena Anchico Solís, Andrea Restrepo and her band Polikarpa y Sus Viciosas, María Linares, Sofía Elena Sánchez and Ana Magdalena Camargo.

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