Exotica

UBUWeb has put a series of films by Mauricio Kagel online. You can find them here

Meanwhile, I found the original recording of Exotica (1971-1972) on YouTube, released on the album seen on video in the 1970s.

It is a composition in which six performers of European tradition and culture are forced to engage with non-European music and culture. In Exotica, the performers do not know how to play the instruments they are faced with (at least 10) because they all come from non-European cultures. Precisely for this reason, the score essentially prescribes durations and dynamics, while the melodic line is generally monody or limited to close intervals.

The score also requires singing, sometimes producing more or less distorted sounds. The voice is a very important part of the piece, so much so that, in places where a performer is unable to perform the instrumental and vocal parts together, the latter takes priority.

There are also 12 tapes containing authentic non-European music, which the performers must imitate with varying degrees of accuracy, from very well to very poorly, as prescribed in the score for the various parameters.

Performer — Christoph Caskel, Michel Portal, Siegfried Palm, Theodor Ross, Vinko Globokar, Wilhelm Bruck.

This images gives you an idea of how the performers were dressed at the first performance.

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