Quién hace tanta bulla, by Ale Hop & Ignacio Briceño (2023)

Quién hace tanta bulla, by Ale Hop & Ignacio Briceño
co-production Lumpen Station, released in may 2023

Peruvian artists, Ale Hop & Ignacio Briceño, join the celebrations for the 100th anniversary of the publication of Cesar Vallejo’s Trilce, one of the most innovative and influential works of poetry in the Spanish language, with the sound artwork QUIÉN HACE TANTA BULLA, an exploration of sound-staging poetry.

The radio piece weaves together poems I (Quién hace tanta bulla…), XLVII (Tengo ahora 70 soles peruanos…), LXIX (Qué nos buscas, oh mar…), XXXVI (Pugnamos insertarnos por un ojo de aguja…), along with an interview of literature professor Ricardo González Vigil.

Vallejo’s words on new poetry – “Often new voices can falter, yet as often the poem, without saying ‘airplane’, nonetheless conveys an airborne sensation in a way that is obscure and implicit, yet effective and humane”-served as the compositional north for the piece.

The artists read and re-read the poems, together with Gonzalez Vigil’s commented edition of Trilce and “Trilce – poema por poema” by Vïctor Vich and Alexandra Hibbett. The hermetic and fractured language in Vallejo’s poetry is conveyed by means of sound’s artifice – layering, sampling, autotuning, and other audio techniques used to resonate the emotion and meaning of his work.

Trilce arose in the first decades of the 20th century in Peru, a time in which the model of modernity —a promise dismantled in Vallejo’s poetry—brought about new tensions and social conflicts, that remain unresolved and exacerbated today. While we recorded this piece, social upheaval rises in the country in the wake of its 200th independence anniversary.

Recorded at L’Abri studios in Geneva, thanks to the support from the Swiss Arts Council Pro Helvetia South America.