Saa Ñu’ú - JAMVA - Composer

Saa Ñu’ú / Birds Clay
Duration / 8:15
Year / 2021
Format / Soundscape (& video / binaural, stereo, multi-channel)

Comissioned by SD CELAR at the British Museum as part of a digital artistic residency, this work is a space for listening – echo from sound materialities, which dialogues and weaves complex conceptions of pre-colonial Mesoamerican cultures through elements of their sound universes. The work invites us to rethink the temporality of this heritage through a contemplative and empathic aesthetic – sensorial experience. The sound piece establishes metaphorical relationships with different acoustic devices and new technologies through the execution of sound artifacts of pre-hispanic tradition, as well as poeticized field recordings in natural landscapes and narrations.

The work establishes conceptual relationships with evocative sounds of symbols, figurative and representative elements of the Mesoamerican worldview referred to in manuscripts, codices and other historical documents. Saa Nu’ú is a soundscape that evokes Mesoamerican sound universes, particularly those in the Mixtec culture. It is presented as a work whose creative process takes place in an open, collaborative and participatory space. The piece reflects on memory and sound elements, not as something from the past, but as processes, as moving, living, perpetual spirits. For this composition, pre-hispanic instruments and field recordings of the Puebla-Oaxaca Mixtec border were used.

Jorge Martínez Valderrama:

Nadia Ñuu Savi:

Luis (Grupo Yodoquinsi):

Marco Antonio Lara:

Galileo Galaz Rodríguez:

Julio César González:

Liza Herrejón:

Mariana Pinto Morales:

Concept and composition

Voice

Mixtec instruments

Video