8. One weird trick to avoid being mugged in Buenos Aires
When I get back from La Plata, my first destination is La Cultura Del Barrio. This is a Centro Cultural, an institution that exists to support the arts scene of Buenos Aires. Here, musicians can play, artists can exhibit, plays can be performed and so on.
Here today, there is a festival called Kawaiicon, celebrating Japanese culture. There is a heavy influence from Cosplay and Japanese street style. Various posters around the physical space contain lengthy explanations on different Japanese aesthetics. Three musical performers are on stage today; the frantic and manic Japanese inspired punk pop act Kiddo Kuppa, electronic artist Camille Android and the warbling psychedelic solo artist Lucian Iann. Upstairs are tables full of handmade merchandise and crafts. One table is covered with T-shirts; [かわいい in the streets - へんたい in the sheets] says one. Another, which I buy, is covered in suggestive and fetishistic imagery, with the headline I HOPE UR MOM FINDS UR TUMBLR: a design that made a lot more sense before the once popular hangout of weirdly perverted nerds banned adult material in the last few days of 2018.
Here today, there is a festival called Kawaiicon, celebrating Japanese culture. There is a heavy influence from Cosplay and Japanese street style. Various posters around the physical space contain lengthy explanations on different Japanese aesthetics. Three musical performers are on stage today; the frantic and manic Japanese inspired punk pop act Kiddo Kuppa, electronic artist Camille Android and the warbling psychedelic solo artist Lucian Iann. Upstairs are tables full of handmade merchandise and crafts. One table is covered with T-shirts; [かわいい in the streets - へんたい in the sheets] says one. Another, which I buy, is covered in suggestive and fetishistic imagery, with the headline I HOPE UR MOM FINDS UR TUMBLR: a design that made a lot more sense before the once popular hangout of weirdly perverted nerds banned adult material in the last few days of 2018.
As I leave, one man directs my attention, and gestures to my bag, which is open with my camera poking out.
“This is Buenos Aires,” he says, and mimes someone grabbing the camera from out my bag.
“This is Buenos Aires,” he says, and mimes someone grabbing the camera from out my bag.
Alex Elgier is someone who has a foolproof plan for avoiding being robbed on the streets of Buenos Aires. Firstly, he tells me, he’s not so worried about being robbed here as he would be back in LA, where he comes from. Here, people will rob you because they are poor, whereas in LA they will kill you over gang conflict.
Secondly, his strategy is to beatbox. The logic is twofold. If he beatboxes, he seems unconcerned and like he can look after himself. Also, he’s clearly a musician, and if he could afford an instrument, he wouldn’t have to beatbox– therefore, he's not worth robbing!
It is raining softly when Alex explains this logic to me at a local café. We sit outside, under an umbrella attached to a table, and order some hot drinks. Like the performers and artists I saw yesterday, Alex has taken creative inspiration from overseas, including Asia. Right now he’s learning Vietnamese, and looking for opportunities to collaborate with artists from Vietnam.
“For me it's like opening channels that don't exist. You can imagine, there's no Vietnamese Argentine relations. There's no Vietnamese population here and there's no Argentinian population over there. There's really no reason to communicate, so I was thinking of opening a new communication channel, on some different line.”
Alex’s interest perhaps stems from his natural bilingualism, having been raised for the first decade of his life in the United States, before relocating to Argentina. He has also started learning Czech.
“I'm 29, so I've spent most of my life here, but ten years is a long time, so I remember how to speak English. But I don't have any ties over there because my family is over here. Really I feel Argentine.”
I know of Alex primarily through two of his projects – his involvement in a large improvised orchestra, and a duo project called Duo Fantasma. He also makes music under his own name. I start by asking Alex about the improvisation orchestra.
“The Orchestra, that’s done,” he says “We started that maybe six or seven years ago, and it lasted two or three years. It was really interesting because it started with a woman called Chefa Alonso. She's an improviser from Spain and she came over here to give a course on improvisation. Around 15 of us showed up to the course. We didn't know each other. Or maybe some of us, but not really. And we had a really good time. So when she left after the week of work we had together, we decided to continue.
‘It was a really great project. For me it was really a high point in my career, I guess I could say. Because for me it was a really horizontal kind of thing, nobody was in charge: we discussed everything together. And everybody was kind of on the same level. We were kind of young people starting out with improvisation and experimental music, and we talked a lot about what we wanted to do, but what ended up happening was that it’s really hard to coordinate something with so many people. For example, we couldn’t rehearse where we were having rehearsals any more so we started having it at people’s houses and it was really uncomfortable and eventually people started dwindling down and we decided to close it off. But it was a project I was really hopeful for. Because I like collaborating with people and I felt it made a feeling of community between us.”
‘It was a really great project. For me it was really a high point in my career, I guess I could say. Because for me it was a really horizontal kind of thing, nobody was in charge: we discussed everything together. And everybody was kind of on the same level. We were kind of young people starting out with improvisation and experimental music, and we talked a lot about what we wanted to do, but what ended up happening was that it’s really hard to coordinate something with so many people. For example, we couldn’t rehearse where we were having rehearsals any more so we started having it at people’s houses and it was really uncomfortable and eventually people started dwindling down and we decided to close it off. But it was a project I was really hopeful for. Because I like collaborating with people and I felt it made a feeling of community between us.”
The loose structure that made the band so unwieldly also allowed it to comprise of a broad range of instruments and ideas. Many traditional instruments were used in the orchestra, along with some more unusual selections. One subgroup within the orchestra - a three part group called Buenisssimo - used to make music with found objects such as toys or scraps of metal. The players also varied in their techniques, with a mix of traditional and non-traditional approaches. Other unconventional elements were used too, such as the inclusion of dance or singers singing through a megaphone.
"It wasn’t like an orchestra in a traditional sense, it was more like people coming together to do something. I think it was really not too traditional."
Alex’s own role in the orchestra included playing piano and clarinet, and also directing with his hands.
“We were using hand signals. I don’t know if you’ve seen that. It’s all improvised but there’s a director that uses different hand signals. For example, the director would say, you improvise or you stop or all of you play a note now, and the dancers would do the signs also. Maybe the dancer playing a note would be moving an arm or something. We had a few dancers in the orchestra; they had these dancing jams. So we were the staple band for the jams. But that was also the source of a conflict because there were people who didn’t want to play there because it was kind of like - very casual. There were people who wanted to have concerts and get bigger and some of us played at those, and some of us didn’t want to go and play at those jams.”
I ask about Duo Fantasma, a concept band that comprises of himself and a friend.
“The basic concept, the reason it’s called Fantasma, like ghost; we play really soft music, like barely audible, - the idea is to make music that’s as intense as possible but without that intensity coming from the loudness, so it’s really fast and spontaneous, but very, very, very soft.”
The music of Duo Fantasma is again improvised, a constant interest of Alex’s that perhaps ironically even helps to inform his current study… of composition.
“I bring things from my experiences in improvisation, so I’m interested in composing open structures and that type of thing.”
Alex and his bands have performed in a variety of venues. Duo Fantasma have mostly performed at private spaces in people’s houses, but the Improvisational Band in particular have played a wider range of public venues.
“We also played a lot at different Centro Culturales. We played at the one in Centro Cultural Recoleta, we played in the university of Tres de Febrero where they have a festival called Enlaces. It’s all about music and different arts, and is a really nice festival that has space for different kinds of music, so we played there. But mostly we played at the Centro Culturales, which means submitting a project, having it approved, that kind of thing.”
Both the show arranged by Cuco in La Plata and Kawaiicon have been hosted by Centro Culturales, so I am familiar with the concept. These venues have helped to support the arts in Argentina for a long time, but also come with their own limitations.
“The type of things you see there depend really on who’s curating them at the time. So they’ve been different at different times,” Alex says. “Since Cromañón a lot of them, especially the smaller ones, have really closed down because - we can go inside -”
The rain, at first drizzling, has continued to increase in force. Relatively safe under the umbrella, I say, “It’s alright,” and we continue our talk outdoors.
“It’s become tighter,” Alex continues. “A lot of places that were like, a room in a house or whatever, they shut down. A lot of them didn’t have the set up with fire escapes and whatever, typical things that are necessary. So they ended up getting shut down because putting them up to regulation costs money and not many of them are willing to make that kind of investment. So it’s really gotten worse in that sense. But the big ones like Centro Cultural Recoleta; they’ve always been up to regulation so they keep going. With respect to the type of music you could hear there, I think that experimental music is getting a lot more visibility in the last ten years. I think maybe ten years ago it might have been like something really strange or exotic. And now maybe it’s strange and exotic but it’s that normal part of the strange and the exotic that we’re used to seeing. Maybe that's something that happens with Contemporary art in general, where after an amount of time it’s not so shocking anymore. Like today we see a white on white painting and it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, somebody did that 40 years ago.’ It’s not so shocking now.”
“Do you want that shocking, disruptive effect?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says and chuckles. “I think you could say that I’m really interested in that. I’m not sure I would really put it into those words, because I think there are other people that are more into shock. And I certainly want to have an effect on people, but I’m not sure it’s through shock, it’s more like through reflection or something. I’m really into the calm to be honest. I don’t know, I’ve done a lot of things. I think shock could be a big part of what I do, but I think mostly it’s about like opening your mind, looking in different ways and seeing from another point of view.”
I ask where Alex’s work in improvised and experimental music fits, in relation to the broader Buenos Aires ‘Under’.
“There’s some people who act like a nexus I guess. I’m definitely on the side of acoustic type of music and definitely improvisation. So I’m not exactly too close to the rock side of things, but many of my friends, and the people that I’ve worked with across the years, are. So I’ve seen quite a bit of them and I know a few of them and sometimes we actually play together, so there is a bit of crossover, but I’d be happy saying they’re different things.”
Despite these genre distinctions, the music scene still holds relatively tight in Buenos Aires, in part due to the small number of venues. “There’s not too many places to go - to play I mean - so for example maybe there’s a band I’ve never heard of or heard but a friend’s like, ‘They’re playing at Palacio Beltrán,’ so I know they’re that same Underground that I’m from because they’re playing at that place where we all play.”
Alex embraces a slower pace of movement than some of his collaborators; he would rather take a long time to develop and explore certain directions, than rush headfirst towards fame and success. Lately he’s been doing projects on his own, where he can set the pace.
“I’ve been doing different kinds of compositions that are based on verbal instructions. I’ve been doing these pieces for choir where each singer has a pair of headphones, and I talk to them through the headphones. Not live, pre-recorded. And to each person I give an instruction, ‘Sing this note for ten seconds, say this word.’ And they just do it. I’ve been doing that and writing small chamber pieces for strings, cellos, violins, that kind of thing. That’s mostly what I’ve been up to lately. Also doing electronic music, which I really like. For me it isn’t a live thing; I don’t play live electronic music because I find somebody sitting in front of a PC boring as a show, but I really love the music, so I’ve been producing quite a lot of that.”
Alex’s electronic music encompasses a broad range of ideas.
“Sometimes they're more danceable and sometimes they’re really just for listening, like I call them sound poems because it’s more about what sounds are appearing than musical structure."
Alex has made no attempt to monetize much of this work. He simply puts it online, free to listen to or use, something that has been taken advantage of by other creatives such as dancers and film-makers. It’s the creation that matters, not the profits, which is fortunate, as Alex shares a degree of the local general pessimism around the impossibility of financial success through music. He is dedicated to a musical career, but intends to pursue this academically, though a University teaching role.
“I have a few friends that live from playing and I find that’s a really stressful life. I don’t like it. Because it has a lot to do with networking and talking to people and selling yourself; it’s a lot of work and the situation in Argentina is so difficult. For me it’s not worth it.”
However, he does emphasise that while life as a musician is hard, it’s not impossible.
“I have a friend who’s a drummer; he plays in a punk band. And he was really lucky that this band exists, is twenty years old, and really has a large following, a lot of fans. They have like 20 or 30 CDs. Their drummer died and my friend replaced him. He’s a young guy. They live by doing concerts and from the CDs they sell and everything. I think it’s amazing, and I really admire him. But he’s lucky because it’s this one band that’s part of a music scene that’s a lot bigger than the experimental music scenes like rock and punk. He has a big following so he’s in a really privileged spot. But really, I don’t know many people who live from music. I don’t know if it’s really feasible. And especially the strange music – it really isn’t.
‘Even though there are some places you can play, most of these places have problems. For example, if you play at Centro de Cultura de Regoletta, one of these places that is a nice place and government funded and everything, you play for free. They don’t pay you, they don’t charge entry, and you play with musicians, so it’s all free. So, it’s nice in some ways, but it’s terrible. One expects these official places that have funding to pay. And if they don’t pay, who’s going to pay? The smaller underground places, they don’t have money to pay, so they usually make an arrangement like 70 / 30 on the entrances. And if 20 people come to see you and you’re charging thirty pesos, and you get maybe 20 people, then you come and you leave with maybe 180 pesos which barely pays for the taxi you pay to get there with all your equipment. So it’s really not about making money. Not for this kind of music.”
We touch on Cromañón. Alex was beginning to study piano when the disaster happened. He knew people who lost friends in the fire. He says that after the initial shock, it took some time to see the longer term effects. “As time goes by there are still less places. They’re still closing. It’s not like we’re recuperating from that blow, it’s more like that blow hasn’t really finished hitting us.”
Similarly to others, he feels that that the political movements in Argentina have helped to dampen the rising optimism that seemed for a moment to be growing in the music scene. The current government doesn’t seem to support culture, at least beyond supporting the ‘official cultures’ like Tango, which help attract tourism. More marginal culture is not seen as important, which in particular affects genres such as experimental music, that by definition make their homes on the fringes of culture.
“I think government might do well to help that sector out a little bit, and it’s not really been happening for a long time now,” he tells me.
As an example of this economic rationalist approach, Alex points to a local festival of contemporary arts, where international acts are offered payment, but local acts are asked to play for free.
“If you have a big name and you’re known around the world, then you’re worth our money, and if you’re not, then you really aren’t. And they have this speech of, ‘You should want to play, because it gives you visibility. So you should play for free because it’s good for you.’ That for me is really offensive.”
I point out that this particular wisdom seems to be the bane of all artists internationally.
“I think maybe in the United States or Europe where there are more possibilities to make money and work within this kind of music, maybe if you play for free a few times it opens up a few doors and then you start making a bit of money, so it’s not too terrible. But here in Argentina, there’s really no perspective to make money, so even if you play for free a thousand times, nobody’s going to pay for anything. It’s not true when they say that it’s like an investment.”
One woman working to combat this situation is Adriana de los Santos, Alex’s music teacher and musical colleague. A member of the communist party, Santos aims to challenge Argentina's play-for-free culture.
“She’s very vocal and very involved in this whole situation, which is like playing for free, or even paying to play, because there are some places here that charge you to play. Maybe they charge you, but you can try to recuperate the money by selling tickets or something. She’s really fighting against those kinds of things, and so I’ve been really close to hearing these kinds of injustices in that sense these last years. Basically, it’s a difficult situation. There are no protections from anything really. Not between us - we can help each other out and it’s really about ‘Solidarity’. We really help each other out, but there’s no money. So, I can organise a concert and I can organise people to play, and it’s really nice, but I can’t really pay anybody. It’s the same situation for anyone who reciprocates. It’s really nice but there’s no real work protection.”
This situation is deepened by the failure of cultural and political institutions to affect change for musicians. Some of these institutions, such as the Musicians' Union have themselves been perceived as obstacles to change. The Union has found itself in a politically complex maze, being accused of Mafia-like behaviour due to opaque processes and efforts to suppress the voices of the musicians they represent in favour of an entrenched leadership class. These claims are made by and acted upon by an organisation Adriana de los Santos founded, Musicos Organizados. This group agitates for change, fights the union for influence, and also organises events such as concerts to benefit the musicians they represent. Musicos Organizados is also challenging one of the complicated side-effects of the Centro Culturales system; the dysfunctional workplace relations it creates.
"It wasn’t like an orchestra in a traditional sense, it was more like people coming together to do something. I think it was really not too traditional."
Alex’s own role in the orchestra included playing piano and clarinet, and also directing with his hands.
“We were using hand signals. I don’t know if you’ve seen that. It’s all improvised but there’s a director that uses different hand signals. For example, the director would say, you improvise or you stop or all of you play a note now, and the dancers would do the signs also. Maybe the dancer playing a note would be moving an arm or something. We had a few dancers in the orchestra; they had these dancing jams. So we were the staple band for the jams. But that was also the source of a conflict because there were people who didn’t want to play there because it was kind of like - very casual. There were people who wanted to have concerts and get bigger and some of us played at those, and some of us didn’t want to go and play at those jams.”
I ask about Duo Fantasma, a concept band that comprises of himself and a friend.
“The basic concept, the reason it’s called Fantasma, like ghost; we play really soft music, like barely audible, - the idea is to make music that’s as intense as possible but without that intensity coming from the loudness, so it’s really fast and spontaneous, but very, very, very soft.”
The music of Duo Fantasma is again improvised, a constant interest of Alex’s that perhaps ironically even helps to inform his current study… of composition.
“I bring things from my experiences in improvisation, so I’m interested in composing open structures and that type of thing.”
Alex and his bands have performed in a variety of venues. Duo Fantasma have mostly performed at private spaces in people’s houses, but the Improvisational Band in particular have played a wider range of public venues.
“We also played a lot at different Centro Culturales. We played at the one in Centro Cultural Recoleta, we played in the university of Tres de Febrero where they have a festival called Enlaces. It’s all about music and different arts, and is a really nice festival that has space for different kinds of music, so we played there. But mostly we played at the Centro Culturales, which means submitting a project, having it approved, that kind of thing.”
Both the show arranged by Cuco in La Plata and Kawaiicon have been hosted by Centro Culturales, so I am familiar with the concept. These venues have helped to support the arts in Argentina for a long time, but also come with their own limitations.
“The type of things you see there depend really on who’s curating them at the time. So they’ve been different at different times,” Alex says. “Since Cromañón a lot of them, especially the smaller ones, have really closed down because - we can go inside -”
The rain, at first drizzling, has continued to increase in force. Relatively safe under the umbrella, I say, “It’s alright,” and we continue our talk outdoors.
“It’s become tighter,” Alex continues. “A lot of places that were like, a room in a house or whatever, they shut down. A lot of them didn’t have the set up with fire escapes and whatever, typical things that are necessary. So they ended up getting shut down because putting them up to regulation costs money and not many of them are willing to make that kind of investment. So it’s really gotten worse in that sense. But the big ones like Centro Cultural Recoleta; they’ve always been up to regulation so they keep going. With respect to the type of music you could hear there, I think that experimental music is getting a lot more visibility in the last ten years. I think maybe ten years ago it might have been like something really strange or exotic. And now maybe it’s strange and exotic but it’s that normal part of the strange and the exotic that we’re used to seeing. Maybe that's something that happens with Contemporary art in general, where after an amount of time it’s not so shocking anymore. Like today we see a white on white painting and it’s like, ‘Oh yeah, somebody did that 40 years ago.’ It’s not so shocking now.”
“Do you want that shocking, disruptive effect?” I ask.
“Yeah,” he says and chuckles. “I think you could say that I’m really interested in that. I’m not sure I would really put it into those words, because I think there are other people that are more into shock. And I certainly want to have an effect on people, but I’m not sure it’s through shock, it’s more like through reflection or something. I’m really into the calm to be honest. I don’t know, I’ve done a lot of things. I think shock could be a big part of what I do, but I think mostly it’s about like opening your mind, looking in different ways and seeing from another point of view.”
I ask where Alex’s work in improvised and experimental music fits, in relation to the broader Buenos Aires ‘Under’.
“There’s some people who act like a nexus I guess. I’m definitely on the side of acoustic type of music and definitely improvisation. So I’m not exactly too close to the rock side of things, but many of my friends, and the people that I’ve worked with across the years, are. So I’ve seen quite a bit of them and I know a few of them and sometimes we actually play together, so there is a bit of crossover, but I’d be happy saying they’re different things.”
Despite these genre distinctions, the music scene still holds relatively tight in Buenos Aires, in part due to the small number of venues. “There’s not too many places to go - to play I mean - so for example maybe there’s a band I’ve never heard of or heard but a friend’s like, ‘They’re playing at Palacio Beltrán,’ so I know they’re that same Underground that I’m from because they’re playing at that place where we all play.”
Alex embraces a slower pace of movement than some of his collaborators; he would rather take a long time to develop and explore certain directions, than rush headfirst towards fame and success. Lately he’s been doing projects on his own, where he can set the pace.
“I’ve been doing different kinds of compositions that are based on verbal instructions. I’ve been doing these pieces for choir where each singer has a pair of headphones, and I talk to them through the headphones. Not live, pre-recorded. And to each person I give an instruction, ‘Sing this note for ten seconds, say this word.’ And they just do it. I’ve been doing that and writing small chamber pieces for strings, cellos, violins, that kind of thing. That’s mostly what I’ve been up to lately. Also doing electronic music, which I really like. For me it isn’t a live thing; I don’t play live electronic music because I find somebody sitting in front of a PC boring as a show, but I really love the music, so I’ve been producing quite a lot of that.”
Alex’s electronic music encompasses a broad range of ideas.
“Sometimes they're more danceable and sometimes they’re really just for listening, like I call them sound poems because it’s more about what sounds are appearing than musical structure."
Alex has made no attempt to monetize much of this work. He simply puts it online, free to listen to or use, something that has been taken advantage of by other creatives such as dancers and film-makers. It’s the creation that matters, not the profits, which is fortunate, as Alex shares a degree of the local general pessimism around the impossibility of financial success through music. He is dedicated to a musical career, but intends to pursue this academically, though a University teaching role.
“I have a few friends that live from playing and I find that’s a really stressful life. I don’t like it. Because it has a lot to do with networking and talking to people and selling yourself; it’s a lot of work and the situation in Argentina is so difficult. For me it’s not worth it.”
However, he does emphasise that while life as a musician is hard, it’s not impossible.
“I have a friend who’s a drummer; he plays in a punk band. And he was really lucky that this band exists, is twenty years old, and really has a large following, a lot of fans. They have like 20 or 30 CDs. Their drummer died and my friend replaced him. He’s a young guy. They live by doing concerts and from the CDs they sell and everything. I think it’s amazing, and I really admire him. But he’s lucky because it’s this one band that’s part of a music scene that’s a lot bigger than the experimental music scenes like rock and punk. He has a big following so he’s in a really privileged spot. But really, I don’t know many people who live from music. I don’t know if it’s really feasible. And especially the strange music – it really isn’t.
‘Even though there are some places you can play, most of these places have problems. For example, if you play at Centro de Cultura de Regoletta, one of these places that is a nice place and government funded and everything, you play for free. They don’t pay you, they don’t charge entry, and you play with musicians, so it’s all free. So, it’s nice in some ways, but it’s terrible. One expects these official places that have funding to pay. And if they don’t pay, who’s going to pay? The smaller underground places, they don’t have money to pay, so they usually make an arrangement like 70 / 30 on the entrances. And if 20 people come to see you and you’re charging thirty pesos, and you get maybe 20 people, then you come and you leave with maybe 180 pesos which barely pays for the taxi you pay to get there with all your equipment. So it’s really not about making money. Not for this kind of music.”
We touch on Cromañón. Alex was beginning to study piano when the disaster happened. He knew people who lost friends in the fire. He says that after the initial shock, it took some time to see the longer term effects. “As time goes by there are still less places. They’re still closing. It’s not like we’re recuperating from that blow, it’s more like that blow hasn’t really finished hitting us.”
Similarly to others, he feels that that the political movements in Argentina have helped to dampen the rising optimism that seemed for a moment to be growing in the music scene. The current government doesn’t seem to support culture, at least beyond supporting the ‘official cultures’ like Tango, which help attract tourism. More marginal culture is not seen as important, which in particular affects genres such as experimental music, that by definition make their homes on the fringes of culture.
“I think government might do well to help that sector out a little bit, and it’s not really been happening for a long time now,” he tells me.
As an example of this economic rationalist approach, Alex points to a local festival of contemporary arts, where international acts are offered payment, but local acts are asked to play for free.
“If you have a big name and you’re known around the world, then you’re worth our money, and if you’re not, then you really aren’t. And they have this speech of, ‘You should want to play, because it gives you visibility. So you should play for free because it’s good for you.’ That for me is really offensive.”
I point out that this particular wisdom seems to be the bane of all artists internationally.
“I think maybe in the United States or Europe where there are more possibilities to make money and work within this kind of music, maybe if you play for free a few times it opens up a few doors and then you start making a bit of money, so it’s not too terrible. But here in Argentina, there’s really no perspective to make money, so even if you play for free a thousand times, nobody’s going to pay for anything. It’s not true when they say that it’s like an investment.”
One woman working to combat this situation is Adriana de los Santos, Alex’s music teacher and musical colleague. A member of the communist party, Santos aims to challenge Argentina's play-for-free culture.
“She’s very vocal and very involved in this whole situation, which is like playing for free, or even paying to play, because there are some places here that charge you to play. Maybe they charge you, but you can try to recuperate the money by selling tickets or something. She’s really fighting against those kinds of things, and so I’ve been really close to hearing these kinds of injustices in that sense these last years. Basically, it’s a difficult situation. There are no protections from anything really. Not between us - we can help each other out and it’s really about ‘Solidarity’. We really help each other out, but there’s no money. So, I can organise a concert and I can organise people to play, and it’s really nice, but I can’t really pay anybody. It’s the same situation for anyone who reciprocates. It’s really nice but there’s no real work protection.”
This situation is deepened by the failure of cultural and political institutions to affect change for musicians. Some of these institutions, such as the Musicians' Union have themselves been perceived as obstacles to change. The Union has found itself in a politically complex maze, being accused of Mafia-like behaviour due to opaque processes and efforts to suppress the voices of the musicians they represent in favour of an entrenched leadership class. These claims are made by and acted upon by an organisation Adriana de los Santos founded, Musicos Organizados. This group agitates for change, fights the union for influence, and also organises events such as concerts to benefit the musicians they represent. Musicos Organizados is also challenging one of the complicated side-effects of the Centro Culturales system; the dysfunctional workplace relations it creates.
“There’s no contract," Alex points out. "They might call on you to play, but there’s no contract. If a light falls on your head and you die, you never officially, legally worked there. You can’t sue them for anything, it’s all very under the table. That’s all very dangerous for musicians.”
I later contact Musicos Organizados while fact-checking, and they have this to say:
The state in all its different expressions uses musicians without contracts or with very precarious contracts called “work contract”. These contracts do not have medical insurance in fact either. The payment delay is up to one year and taking into account inflation (40% -50% annually), when the musician receives the money, that money is not worth much. These contracts are reproduced both in festivals and in official theatres such as the Teatro Colon, Teatro Argentino de La Plata, Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional, or many other official agencies dependent on the state. It is not a minor aspect. The state reproduced illegal working conditions prohibited by labor law.
So it is correct to say that MO is fighting to change the contracting conditions of cultural centers.
As we finish up, I ask Alex if he has any final thoughts regarding the state of the scene, especially from the perspective of potential visitors from other nations.
“For those willing to find it, it’s really rewarding, in the sense that the music going on is really nice. I’m really proud of what’s going on in a lot of senses. And also I have a lot of faith in the people themselves. It’s really warm. It’s a really nice society we have going on.”
I later contact Musicos Organizados while fact-checking, and they have this to say:
The state in all its different expressions uses musicians without contracts or with very precarious contracts called “work contract”. These contracts do not have medical insurance in fact either. The payment delay is up to one year and taking into account inflation (40% -50% annually), when the musician receives the money, that money is not worth much. These contracts are reproduced both in festivals and in official theatres such as the Teatro Colon, Teatro Argentino de La Plata, Orquesta Sinfonica Nacional, or many other official agencies dependent on the state. It is not a minor aspect. The state reproduced illegal working conditions prohibited by labor law.
So it is correct to say that MO is fighting to change the contracting conditions of cultural centers.
As we finish up, I ask Alex if he has any final thoughts regarding the state of the scene, especially from the perspective of potential visitors from other nations.
“For those willing to find it, it’s really rewarding, in the sense that the music going on is really nice. I’m really proud of what’s going on in a lot of senses. And also I have a lot of faith in the people themselves. It’s really warm. It’s a really nice society we have going on.”
... |
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