Minicomponente - Universos Oscilantes (2023)

“UNIVERSOS OSCILANTES” ... an experimental tribute to Aimé Painé.

Too much to say. We could elaborate on themes like colonization, identity and culture; on territorial and political vindication, sung as a form of insurrection in the younger generations of the Mapuche people. On the “Sons of Lautaro” who migrated to the city, working in construction sites and as servants of the white people. But, not being myself part of the Mapuche culture, I would only be able to talk almost exclusively from the outside, from a “half race”, that uncomfortable position in the middle, undefined, where many of us mestizos are found; that, nevertheless, was noticeable enough so that they asked us about it; profound enough to fell a cold shriek in our own flesh.

That is why I would not want this tribute to be merely aesthetic, a soft and nice gesture for an obliging audience. It is a spiritual homage, but not tepid. It is experimental, yes, due to the passage of that sacred song through the body, but it is not an intellectual one, and in no way one made by a scholar. It is a sonic re-reading of Aimé Painé: an orphan who was raised by winkas; a teenager raised in Catholicism, who had her first experiences as a singer in the liturgical chorus of her school; a young woman who, in search of her identity, returns to the indigenous community, where she stays and becomes part of the Mapuche culture: she learns the Taiel from the voice of the grandmothers, and sings it; a woman who, after taking those songs to several stages, accompanied only by her kultrun, dies young, without having ever recorded an album. A woman whose voice survived only in the home-made recordings made by those who were closest to her, who stored them carefully, only to have, years later, apocryphal audios going around in the Internet, falsely attributed to her.

And this is a re-reading, as well, made from my own culture: the culture “in the middle”, that unconformable, undefined place that, nevertheless, when traversed, evokes –with the strength of the Taiel– a song of rebellion and pride, where we can also hear the ashes of this dying regime. “Universos Oscilantes” is an experimental homage to Aimé Painé (1943-1987), a Mapuche singer whose interpretations, the Taiel –sacred songs– were compiled in the album “De lo profundo de la madre Tierra” (From the depths of Mother Earth) by Don Juan Namuncurá.

To create this record I conducted an investigation that took me far from the movies that have portrayed Aimé’s life, and into the importance of her singing and the profound meaning that the sound has for the Mapuche people; from the communities in the mountains to the “colonies”, the settlements in the Patagonia closest to the ocean, where the prejudice against the indigenous people is present to this day.

I found the history of the rivers, the trees, the animals and the mountains, that precede human language. In the Taiel, the sacred song, you can sing like the Luan – the dear–, the Huala –the duck– or maybe the Ngürü –the fox–, and every song has in it a bit of the spirit of each animal, and some of what the people want to remember and honor. In the Taiel there are rumours of life and an inner song that is one of a free man. Because the Mapuche believe that the life of each person is a path to find your own Taiel. That is how I learned the one singing it in a circle is not the best singer, but he who has the appropriate spirit to make the soul of the whole community go forward.

In this album is found the result of this search. Together with female artists who I invited to be part of these reinterpretations, we went in a journey back and forth from our culture to the sonic heritage of a brave people, with the conviction that there, in the culture of sound, dwell as well the imagination, the strength, and the dignity to not be defeated."

- Paula Zustovich (Minicomponente)